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| Irish Vote to Close Citizenship 'Loophole'
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| 06.13.04 (8:29 am) [edit] |
Irish Vote to Close Citizenship 'Loophole'
By REUTERS
June 12, 2004
DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Irish voted ``yes´´ in a referendum on citizenship, final results showed on Sunday, giving the government a green light to crack down on immigrants it says exploit the law to get into the European Union.
Dublin says non-EU nationals come to give birth in Ireland so they can then claim residency as parents of children who automatically become Irish citizens.
In a decision sure to anger campaigners for immigrants' rights, nearly 80 percent of voters in Friday's referendum backed a government proposal to amend the rules on citizenship in the constitution.
Provisional results showed 20.9 percent opposing the proposal on a turnout of 57.4 percent.
The result means Ireland, the last country in the EU to offer citizenship automatically to all children born on its soil, is almost certain to withdraw that right later this year.
The government will now draft new citizenship legislation, expected to be approved swiftly by parliament.
The centrist administration of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern called the referendum to close ``a loophole.´´
The vote sparked a vigorous debate about race and identity in Ireland, which until recently had one of the most homogenous populations in Europe but is rapidly evolving into a multi-cultural nation.
It also proved that immigration and race are among the most contentious issues in European politics.
The government said its proposal was modest and sensible while opponents branded it mean-spirited, misguided and based on anecdotal evidence. Some said it was racist.
``We´re very disappointed,´´ said Malachy Murphy, co-chair of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
LAND OF EMIGRANTS BECOMES LAND OF IMMIGRANTS
The government welcomed the result of the vote, which was held alongside local and European elections in order to maximize the turnout, saying the people had given it a clear mandate to bring in new legislation.
Friday's vote tapped deep into the psyche of a people aware that over the past two centuries, millions of their compatriots have emigrated across the globe and have often been welcomed with open arms.
Now, however, the tables are turned and Ireland, with one of the fastest-growing economies and lowest unemployment rates in the EU, has become a destination of choice for immigrants.
During the referendum campaign, newspapers highlighted the cases of heavily pregnant women, many from Africa, who have arrived in Ireland just weeks before giving birth to take advantage of the law.
One senior doctor told of a woman who flew to Ireland from South Africa just 36 hours before giving birth to quads.
Statistics were hotly disputed.
The government said the number of non-nationals born in Irish hospitals has increased nearly six-fold since 1998 and now accounts for 29 percent of total hospital births.
According to one major Dublin maternity clinic, well over 80 percent of women who turned up late or unbooked to gave birth last year were foreigners.
Opponents questioned those figures.
Irish Vote to Close Citizenship 'Loophole'
Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd
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| NBC'S KATIE COURIC LIES ABOUT REAGAN AND GUNS
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| 06.12.04 (1:30 pm) [edit] |
NBC'S KATIE COURIC LIES ABOUT REAGAN AND GUNS
THE BRADY CAMPAIGN, AND NBC'S KATIE COURIC, TRY TO RE-WRITE HISTORY
Exploiting tragedy for political gain is nothing new for the media and
the Brady Campaign, but this morning's appearance on NBC's Today Show
reached a new low. Katie Couric and Sarah Brady used the tragic
occasion of President Reagan's passing to shamelessly forward the
gun-ban agenda with deliberate misinformation. Led by carefully crafted
questions from Couric, Sarah Brady claimed that President Reagan wasn't
actually an NRA member, and that he "worked hard" for passage of the
so-called "assault weapons" ban.
In fact, President Reagan, the owner of an AR-15, was a strong and
consistent supporter of the Second Amendment and the NRA. He was a long
time member who actively courted the NRA's endorsement in both of his
presidential campaigns, and was the first presidential candidate in
history to receive that endorsement. He appeared on the cover of NRA
magazines four times. In 1983 he was offered, and accepted, an NRA
Honorary Life Membership, the highest honor bestowed by the NRA.
He was the first, and to date, only, sitting president to speak at our
Annual Meetings, saying, in part, "The NRA believes America's laws were
made to be obeyed and that our constitutional liberties are just as
important today as 200 years ago. And by the way, the Constitution does
not say Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms. The
Constitution says 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed.'" In 1986, President Reagan signed the landmark
Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA), and he never blamed law-abiding
gun owners for the actions of criminals.
Don't allow these offensive lies to go unchallenged! Please
immediately contact Tom Touchet, Executive Producer of the "Today Show,"
to express your outrage and demand that equal time be given for a
rebuttal.
Mr. Touchet can be reached by phone at (212) 664-3222, or by
e-mail at tom.touchet@NBC.com.
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| US vs. UK - violent crime & victim disarmament
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| 06.12.04 (1:21 pm) [edit] |
US vs. UK - violent crime & victim disarmament
Re post by request. 2x (Sal)
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDispla y.asp?aid=7862&mode=print" title="http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDispla y.asp?aid=7862&mode=print" target="_blank"http://www.chronwatch.com/con...
What Gun Controllers Don't Want You to Know
Written by Howard Nemerov
Friday, June 11, 2004
I used to support gun control, meaning civilian disarmament. There was no reason, the rationale went, for a private citizen to own a gun. The only ones who wanted guns had small genitalia, were paranoid crazies, and criminals.
All this was assumed, without any empirical or statistical research to base it upon. Due to the influence of one of my clients who is a person of great honor, I began to research the issue of gun control on my own. Having been a college boy who loved library research, I knew how to ferret out fact from fiction. It was interesting to find that the claims of the NRA, John Lott, et al., were easy to verify from neutral or even slightly pro-gun control sources.
More ominously, I found that the gun control groups consistently lied or twisted minor factoids taken out of context in their articles. This begged the question: if they are lying to advance their agenda, can we really trust the utopian outcome they promote as true?
The Utopian Thesis of Gun Control
The philosophy behind gun control is that by limiting access to guns, the public is made a safer place. (1,2) This is a noble undertaking, and all persons of conscience should support this. If it were proven beyond a reasonable doubt that disarming the law-abiding public would enhance public safety, save children's lives, and enhance or preserve our civil rights, I would be in favor of gun control.
Of course, there is a ''competing'' hypothesis: placing firearms into the hands of law-abiding citizens accomplishes the same goals with fewer unpleasant side-effects.
These hypotheses were being tested during my research. A simple litmus test could be set up; one can examine actual crime rates and trends in countries similar to our culture that have recently disarmed the public, and see what resulted.
The United Kingdom is an English speaking democracy with a bicameral legislature, similar enough for our litmus test. The UK instituted a massive gun ban in 1997, finally banning all handguns. While a tool of choice for criminals, because of its ease of concealment, this attribute also makes it a valuable personal protection tool for a law-abiding citizen.
If the gun control thesis is the correct one, then it should follow that by taking out an element that allegedly incites criminal behavior, in this case guns, crime rates should drop. So let's take a look at the statistical record to find out.
Facts, Not Rhetoric
What always made me reluctant to address the issue of gun control was all the hyperbole surrounding it from both sides of the issue. Therefore, it was imperative to be able to locate similar statistics from multiple sources, to insure factual validity.
First, it is important to establish a pre-ban baseline and then compare it to similar research after the ban to determine crime trends. For that, we will reference the International Crime Victimization Surveys of 1992 and 2000. (3)
In general, the research shows that violent crime rates were lower in the UK than the United States in 1992. (Rated in percent of those interviewed responding ''yes'' to being victimized.)
Burglary with entry: UK – 2.5% U.S. – 3.5%
Robbery: UK – .9% U.S. – 1.7%
Sexual assault of women: UK – .3% U.S. – 1.5%
Assault with force: UK – 1.1% U.S. – 2.2%
In the 2000 survey the researchers combined the three violent crimes of robbery, rape, and assault into one category entitled ''Selected Contact Crime.'' Here is what they report (post-ban for UK.)
Burglary with entry: UK – 2.8% U.S. – 1.8%
Selected contact crime: UK – 3.6% U.S. – 1.9%
These two reports were done with essentially the same criteria and methods, and they clearly show that while selected violent crime rates rose 100% in the UK, they fell 65 % in the U.S. During this time, Britain outlawed private ownership of firearms, while over 70 million additional civilian firearms were sold in the U.S. (4) At the very least, a reasonable person is forced to conclude that availability of firearms to the general public is not a contributing factor to any increase in crime.
These trends are confirmed by Britain's own Home Office. (5) In the period of 1997 through 2001, homicide rose 19% in the UK while it fell 12% in the USA. (6) Violent crime incidents rose 26% in the UK while falling 12% in the USA. (7) Robbery rates rose 92% in the UK and fell 15% in the USA. (8)
Trust Us, We're Your Government
''What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?'' – Thomas Jefferson
''Congress by the power of taxation, by that of raising an army, and by their control over the militia, have the sword in one hand and the purse in the other. Shall we be safe without either? Let him candidly tell me, where and when did freedom exist, when the sword and purse were given up from the people?'' – Patrick Henry
This same British Home Office report attempts to put a happy face on the UK crime trend by proclaiming on page one that during the period of 2002-2003 crime has dropped, attempting to devalue the entire body of the report to the reader. Such hyperbole is also expressed in another British Home Office report entitled ''Crime in England and Wales 2002/2003,'' (9) which consists of two parts. The first section relies on Britain's new Crime Survey, a governmental attempt to show crime reduction by selecting a small group of subjects to question. The Crime Survey findings contrast sharply with the second section of actual compiled police statistics that show sharp rises in nearly all crime categories.
Here are some crime trends collected from UK police crime data for the period of 1995 to 2003. (10)
Homicide rose 41%.
Attempted murder rose 29%.
Total Violent Crime rose 219%.
For those who believe that gun control benefits women and children, who are generally smaller and less physically capable of protecting themselves, it is interesting to note that during this time period female rape increased 129%, child abduction rose 143%, and cruelty to or neglect of children increased 79%.
In his book ''More Guns, Less Crime,'' John Lott discusses how when criminals know more citizens are armed they switch from crimes where they come into direct contact with their victims to crimes where there is no contact. So instead of robbery, where they confront the intended victim, they wait until people leave home and commit burglary. In an email interview, Professor Lott said: ''They do this in order to avoid victims who are now better able to defend themselves.''
''More Guns, Less Crime'' showed how such a crime trend is indeed in effect in Right-to-Carry states, where violent (confrontational) crime is dropping faster than property (non-confrontational) crime. The reason I bring this up now is because this substitution effect is borne out in the UK, where total property crime dropped 1% from 1995 to 2003. (11) As victims are more available due to the loss of self-defense capabilities, criminals see no need to spend the extra effort to plan burglary in order to avoid their victims; it is far easier to confront them and wave a gun in their face, demanding loot and sex.
Some may still want to deny the truth, saying ''but the population has increased, so even if crime increases, there still is no increase in crime rates.'' On the surface, this is a valid argument, but the same report shows that violent crime rates (per 100,000 population) increased 216% from 1995 to 2003, while property offenses dropped 2%. (12)
In her book ''Guns and Violence,'' Joyce Lee Malcolm discusses the same substitution effect was active historically as well. In the first part of the book, she does an overview of the earlier eras in Britain and concludes:
''...this era in which firearms first came into common use in everyday life as well as for the citizen militia, the century in which an Englishman's right to have 'arms for his defence' was proclaimed, also witnessed a sharp decline in violent homicide.'' (13)
In an e-mail interview, I asked Professor Malcolm about the discrepancy between the British Home Office Crime Survey results and the police statistics included in the same report from 2003.
Question: In your book you mention in the introduction that there are some irregularities in how the police report crime. Does this in fact make the Crime Survey a more accurate indicator of crime trends in the UK?
Professor Malcolm: ''The differences between the UK crime victimization studies and police statistics are indeed confusing and almost always at odds. Both come from government and are official. For many years the English police seemed to record only about 1/3 of the crimes reported to them, making the victimization studies more accurate. They also purposely underestimated a crime like burglary, for example, by counting several offences by the same individual as one burglary. The police reporting was so unabashedly political that the victimization studies were undertaken.''
Question: This brings up two concerns: first, it seems that one of the governmental branches, either the Home Office or the police, is in effect lying. Second, how can people trust the government when they can't even come out with a consistent answer on crime rates or even what constitutes a crime?
Professor Malcolm: ''The government now seems to be insisting that the police actually record a higher level of the crimes reported to them, but don't seem willing to explain what proportion or how it is being done. As a result, as crime rates go up dramatically in police statistics, especially for violent crime, the government keeps saying they are not really going up, it is just that the police are using a different method of recording crime. But for some crime, such as murder, the police could not easily have been under-reporting in the past, although they do track murders to pull them from the totals if the final judgment is anything less than a court finding of murder. At this point the government has used the ''new method of calculating crime'' excuse so repeatedly and without explanation that I am inclined not to trust their assurances that crime is going down or remaining steady. Murder, for instance, is at the highest level since statistics were kept.''
Question: Why is the British Crime Survey is at odds with the International Crime Victimization Survey of 2002 and your own article at Reason.com (14), which indicate that the UK is indeed increasingly more crime-ridden in many categories than the U.S.?
Professor Malcolm: ''I think the international crime victimization study released in 2002 is more reliable and offers a comparison of how England and Wales are doing compared to other industrial countries. Sadly, England has many times the violent crime of most European countries. But their methods of fighting crime by disarming and prosecuting victims is so counter-productive that the results do not surprise me. Unfortunately it is in the government's interest to demonstrate that its crime-fighting initiative is successful, which makes its assertions doubtful.''
The key point to remember is that murder is a statistic that is hard to fudge, and therefore a reliable indicator of crime trends. The police actually under-report murder rates, because if the court reduces the sentence, the police subtract that case from murder totals. Even so, murder has risen dramatically since the gun ban went into effect.
Referring back to the Founders' quotes leading this section, pray tell me this: how are the people of the United Kingdom are going to force a redressing of grievances upon their government? They have surrendered their arms and their purse, and therefore have no protection against a government acting without restraint, nor do they have the means to show their government any spirit of resistance to flawed and deadly policy. Once again, the age-old lessons are being taught on yet another stage: absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.
Conclusion:
The English experience proves that guns and violence have no corresponding relationship that justifies gun control. Do we want to go down the same road as the UK when the evidence is so alarming? When the consequences could be so deadly? How will we force our government to return power to the people once it has taken it?
Perhaps gun control will go away when we have the ''Million Armed Mom March in Washington, D.C.'' Women will drive this issue when they ask the politicians, ''Tell me exactly how you expect me to defend my children against violent predators? If gun control is so wonderful, how come more women are being raped and children being abused in England since guns were banned? Do you plan to sacrifice our lives to pander to your moneyed sponsor/constituents? Or do you just want power so much that you don't care who suffers?''
George Santayana coined the phrase: ''Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.'' To which I humbly wish to add: Those who have tasted power and developed an addiction to it, studied of history, intend to repeat it.
Footnotes
(1) Gun Laws Work, Loopholes Don't, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Violence
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/issues/?page=lo op" title="http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/issues/?page=lo op" target="_blank"http://www.bradycampaign.org/...
Numerous references at this site relating gun control to reducing violence.
(2) Information Page on Firearms Violence, Violence Policy Center.
http://www.vpc.org/fvtopic.htm" title="http://www.vpc.org/fvtopic.htm" target="_blank"http://www.vpc.org/fvtopic.ht...
Numerous articles relating gun control to reducing violence.
(3) Crime Victimisation in the Industrialised World: Key Findings of the 1989 and 1992 International Crime Surveys, van Dijk and Mayhew, The Hague: Ministry of Justice, Department of Crime Prevention, 1993.
Criminal Victimisation in Seventeen Industrialised Countries: Key-findings from the 2000 international Crime Victims Survey, Van Kesteren, Mayhew and Nieuwbeerta, The Hague: Ministry of Justice, Department of Crime Prevention, 2000. Both available at http://www.unicri.it/icvs/pub...
(4) Firearms Commerce in the United States 2001/2002. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/fi rearmscommerce/firearmsco mmerce.pdf" title="http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/fi rearmscommerce/firearmsco mmerce.pdf" target="_blank"http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-e...
(5) International Comparisons of Criminal Justice Statistics 2001. Britain Home Office and Council of Europe, 10/23/2003. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/...
(6) Ibid, page 10.
(7) Ibid, page 12.
(8) Ibid, page 13.
(9) Crime in England and Wales 2002/2003. British Home Office, July 2003.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb703.pdf" title="http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb703.pdf" target="_blank"http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/...
(10) Ibid, page 53.
(11) Ibid, page 56.
(12) Ibid, page 58.
(13) ''Guns and Violence, The English Experience,'' Joyce Lee Malcolm, Harvard University Press, 2002, pp 62-63.
(14) ''Gun Control's Twisted Outcome,'' Joyce Lee Malcolm, Reason Online, November 2002. http://reason.com/0211/fe.jm....
Copyright © 2004 ChronWatch. All rights reserved.
Celebrate The Bill of Rights
December Fifteenth
Never Compromise!
No Permission
No Permit
No Registration
Ever!
"Shall Not Be Infringed."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
US vs. UK - violent crime & victim disarmament
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| McCAIN/LIEBERMAN JOB KILLING ACT OF 2004
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| 06.09.04 (11:05 am) [edit] |
McCAIN/LIEBERMAN JOB KILLING ACT OF 2004
United for Jobs and the American Council for Capital Formation has released a study by Charles River Associates which demonstrates the true costs to the American consumer of the McCain-Lieberman "Climate Stewardship Act." Among the key findings of the study:
* Household purchasing power would be reduced by as much as $2,255 per family
* More than 600,000 U.S. jobs would be eliminated
* Electricity costs would be increased by 43%
* U.S. economic output reduced – Gross National Product would decline by 1.7%
The full study can be accessed online at www.unitedforjobs2004.org and www.accf.org
~~~~~~~~~~
EXPERTS: FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING A WASTE OF MONEY
"Investing in measures to control global warming would waste money that could be better spent on malaria, AIDS and malnutrition. That is the conclusion drawn by leading economists at a workshop held in Denmark last week. . . . The workshop's theme was to prioritise how the industrialised world's $50 billion aid budget should be spent. Nine participating economists, including three Nobel prize winners, ranked solutions to ten key challenges in terms of return on investment. On this basis, they rejected a global carbon tax that would halve emissions of greenhouse gases by the end of the century."
- Science & Development Network, 6/4/04
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| Religion Essential
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| 06.05.04 (3:39 pm) [edit] |
Religion Essential
by Charley Reese
I have come to believe that one can have a successful Christian society, Jewish society, Muslim society, Hindu society or Buddhist society, but not an agnostic or atheistic society that is successful.
George Washington, as he so often did, explained it quite well in his farewell address:
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. ... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
Washington was not talking about contentious and doctrinaire people arguing about dogma. He always condemned that. He was referring to the basic underlying morality that all the great religions teach.
The basic thing that protects our persons, our property and our liberty is the morality that individuals possess in their own hearts. The law cannot be a substitute for that. No law can protect you from a dishonest merchant or a thug because the law is always, of necessity, applied after the fact, and then only on a selective basis. Furthermore, as we have seen, the law and the system of justice often degenerate into a tragic farce.
It's interesting to note that the current debate on a constitution for the European Union involves several states that wish the new document to acknowledge Europe's Christian heritage. It indeed has one. Europe was once known as Christendom.
Our own country has a Christian heritage. Despite the fact that there were non-Christian minorities, during the Colonial and early republic days the overwhelming majority of Americans were of the Christian faith. What began happily as tolerance for non-Christians has now degenerated into demands by some non-Christians that all traces of Christianity be driven from the public square.
Again, Washington said, "With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles." It was that sameness of religion, manners, habits and political principles that united our ancestors. Substituting "diversity" will disunite us.
There is no virtue in diversity per se. Experience teaches that the most stable societies are the most homogeneous.
Experience also teaches us that a society without an underlying private morality will degenerate into a corrupt jungle. I surprised some people once by saying that I would rather live in a neighborhood of Islamic fundamentalists than in a neighborhood of atheists and agnostics.
That's true. You can count on the morality that Islam teaches; there is no morality for atheists and agnostics, except what they arbitrarily choose.
Some years ago, I inadvertently put this to the test by becoming lost late at night in the slums of Cairo, Egypt. Despite being dressed in an American business suit and far from any law enforcement, I was never accosted or threatened by anyone. I dare say there are American slums where no sensible person would wish to go late at night.
The bottom line is that if we become an immoral people, we will eventually lose both our prosperity and our liberty. A free society cannot exist without trust, and it is morality that cements that trust. We are drifting toward the abyss, and we had all better think seriously about why this is happening.
June 1, 2004
Religion Essential
by Charley Reese
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese77.html" title="http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese77.html" target="_blank"http://www.lewrockwell.com/re...
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| While we were sleeping! |
| 06.05.04 (9:21 am) [edit] |
The Patchwork Papers
The Revolution? It's Over.
The Rest is Just Enforcement
by
Dorothy Anne Seese
The cultural revolution is over. Without a shot being fired other than by government agents, America was changed, transformed, from a land of liberty to a nation of multicultural tolerance dolts with liberal educations and preemptive mindsets. There is still a bit of mop up work to do to clear out some radical free-thinkers (mostly pesky Christians and diehards of the Confederacy and its battle flag) but they will be eradicated within a decade. One way or another.
American heritage has been demeaned, despised and desecrated. It has also been revised by revisionists who have graduated from universities that inculcate principles of the cultural revolutionaries.
The South was uniquely regional in its character, belief system, social behavior and pride. A new "reconstruction" is mopping up where new, lesser and quieter "Shermans" have come and taken over its cities, media, schools and political arenas. The South will one day find its biscuits and gravy have been banned by the World Health Organization as nothing but flour and grease, and replaced by baked broccoli omelettes with sliced tomatoes. No Southerner will be permitted to refer to the Stars and Stripes as the "Union flag" and all displays of the Confederate battle flag will be banned under penalty of law. Free speech emanates from free thinking, and to control freedom of speech is eventually to change the direction and tenor of free thought.
The South has always been unique in character, something that the cultural revolution cannot permit in any area of the country. Arizonans were once rugged individualists. That situation has been corrected by cultural revolutionaries quietly moving over from California and occupying the major cities and some of the pricier small towns. In each case the newcomers took command by vocal minorities (or majorities) and initiating activism for liberal agendas. The only way the Arizona state seal escaped being altered for having the motto "Ditat Deus" (God provides) is that no one speaks Latin. There is no need to make an issue out of things the general public doesn't comprehend, the objective is to make issues out of what the public understands all too well, and to do it for great causes like "the children" or "the environment" or, that greatest of all masques, "the future of our country."
The Revolution is over, and Americans are desensitized to the point where nothing short of an attack on New York, Washington, or San Francisco will get their attention, a larger attack than Nine-Eleven. Cases of outrage are few. The government ran some tests as to the outrage threshold of Americans and found it was peculiarly dense, satisfactory to the cultural commandants, when free Americans shrugged their shoulders at:
The killing of Vicky Weaver at Ruby Ridge by an FBI sniper;
The incinerating of women and children at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas;
The institution of martial law in Georgia twice, once in 1996 for the Olympics and again in June 2004 for the G8 Summit meeting on Sea Island.
The outsourcing of American border security to Accenture, a Bermuda-based corporation (formerly Arthur Andersen and Co. of the Enron scandal infamy), to pay offshore crooks up to $10 billion to "defend" the American borders, but no one has said which way the guns will be facing. We do know that the U.S. Marines, when questioned as to whether they would fire on fellow Americans, said "no." Outsourcing to mercenaries is the only answer to a military that is loyal to its countrymen until they can be replaced by those whose mindset is not to protect the people but only the state and the powers that run it.
Whoever controls the firepower controls the state, which is why the insistence of the various UN and liberal American globalists that average citizens surrender their guns. Los Angeles is out of control with gangs and a police force that is not controlling them. Murder rates in both Los Angeles, California and Phoenix, Arizona are staggering.
It will become necessary, of course, to have some sort of martial law to provide for the safety of our citizens, and the citizens will cry for protection at any price. After that, the success of The Second Revolution can be announced, but then it will be so obvious it will need no announcement, like daybreak. Or nightfall.
The Constitution is worth no more than the integrity of the judiciary that interprets it, so it can stand as the "living" framework for our nation as long as no one uses it to limit governmental authority over subjugated citizens.
Education has degenerated to little more than federal indoctrination, carried out through university level, for the purpose of instilling in young minds the worthlessness of the American heritage and the future of the new order to come.
Heritage, ancestry, tradition, morality, religion, family lines and any other allegiances are worthless to statists and will be educated out of the newer generations just as they are being despised publicly and anyone who dares to speak to the contrary is expelled or otherwise disciplined for egregious behavior. Students are the tools of the order to come, to carry on where the mortal leaders of this generation leave off.
The shot that signaled the onset of the Second Revolution was the shot that killed the late president John F. Kennedy.
The year 1963 saw prayers banned in schools, and the Christians didn't oppose it, although something over 80% of this nation declares that they are "Christian." That probably means they do not belong to any other religion, grandma was a Christian, or they go to church twice a year. JFK was about to do away with the Federal Reserve, which is neither part of the federal government nor a true reserve, it is a cartel of US and foreign bankers.
They control the money supply of the United States, and they took the hard currency upon which our monetary system was based. When Kennedy announced his intentions, he did not live long.
The Second Revolution continued with the Vietnam war protests. Regardless of the benefit or uselessness of the war, the hippie movement, the flower children and flag burners were tolerated by Americans who shrugged as long as nothing was happening on their block. It was just something on the news. But it brought immorality into vogue, made way for the feminist bra-burning protests, and eventually the gay rights movement.
Then came the drug dealers and cartels from around the world. Those were followed by an open border policy to the south, so that millions of illegal invaders could dilute the remnant of American culture by their sheer numbers and their general lawlessness. The sex trade became part of America's corporate structure and philosophy, as was exposed during the war in Kosovo, then disappeared from journalistic sight.
Every bit of the above and more is available through the internet and breaking news wires. Such sources often yield interesting stories that are "timed out" and never picked up by major media.
People have asked how I get my information. Via the internet, from village chat out in diners and markets, wherever I can pick up American thought and global information. The only work left to do for a writer is to connect the stories and conversations and make a coherent picture out of it, then type. The times, trends and events are out there for all to see, but most folks are too busy to look.
Many well-meaning Americans are waiting for the right time to fight the takeover of America by the New World Order. They are expecting a revolution. But ... the revolution came, in fact it began over forty years ago. They were waiting for gunfire and got professors. They were waiting for tanks in the streets before it was time, so they got gay rights parades instead. They turned to homeschooling after the government had anticipated a small rebellion and instead merely got rules and requirements for homeschool curricula.
The list could go on, but everything the honest American patriots were waiting for had been anticipated and circumvented by a different type of revolution.
The globalists are evil, but they are not stupid. Their planning has been better than anyone gave them credit for being able to accomplish.
It was time to "shoot the bastards" four decades ago but no one saw the handwriting on the wall. Now the wall is encircling us and everything we should like to see done to restore America. That will take a third revolution, because the second succeeded in taking our liberties and twisting our values, our mindsets and abolishing our cultural heritage. It was right out in plain sight, and no one saw.
Now the internet writers are corresponding with each other while major media, a mind-control system straight from Stalin's old Pravda, keeps spewing the doctrine of the new order in politically correct language and with slanted stories that the majority of Americans believe.
The Revolution? It's Over.
The Rest is Just Enforcement
http://www.tech.com.au" title="http://www.tech.com.au" target="_blank"http://www.tech.com.au:8080/flagship/servlet/st ory.servlet.ShowStory?category
Written in June, 2004, from Occupied America.
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| The Unconstitutional Tax on American Exports
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| 06.04.04 (11:21 am) [edit] |
The Unconstitutional Tax on American Exports
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
The January 2004 issue of North & South magazine features a debate on the topic, "Lincoln: Savior or Tyrant?" between myself and Professor Gerald Prokopowicz of East Carolina University.
The debate occurred online between the two of us, and was then published in North and South. The unscrupulous editor of the magazine, one Keith Poulter, apparently couldn't resist the cheap shot of inviting Princeton historian James McPherson to add an additional critique of one sentence of my contribution, without offering me the opportunity to respond or without treating my debating partner in the same way by asking someone to critique some of his more dubious statements.
The sentence that McPherson was asked to criticize was one in which I cite Charles Adams who, in When in the Course of Human Events, estimated that in 1860 Southerners were paying a disproportionate share of the federal import tariff, which at the time accounted for 95 percent of all federal revenues (See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970).
Southerners had been complaining about such an injustice since the 1824 tariff act, which received only 3 votes out of 107 from Southern congressmen and 2 out of 25 U.S. senators who voted on the bill. South Carolina nullified the even more heavily protectionist 1828 "Tariff of Abominations," after which tariff rates were gradually reduced. By the late 1850s, however, the protectionist Republican Party regained the upper hand and more than doubled the average tariff rate with the Morrill Tariff (named after Vermont congressman and steel manufacturer Justin Morrill). Only 1 "yes" vote on the Morrill Tariff (out of 105) came from a secessionist state (Tennessee) during the 1859–60 session in the U.S. House of Representatives.
North and South editor Keith Poulter labeled McPherson's comments "The Truth About Tariffs" and promised they would "set the record straight." It is easy to prove, however, that McPherson's comments are misleading, a-historical, and contrary to standard economic theory.
McPherson relied on his "authority" as the "dean" of "Civil War" historians to make a "fair guess" that Northerners paid 70 percent of the tariff in 1860. But in the next sentence he essentially admits that his guess is completely useless by admitting that "there is no way to measure this precisely" since no statistics were kept on the final destination of dutiable products.
McPherson's comments are worse than "data mining" – he merely speculates and fumbles around without the benefit of any data at all. But the more fundamental problem is that his comments are completely uninformed by even elementary economic theory. Commenting on the incidence of tariffs without the benefit of economic theory is like trying to find one's way around a foreign city without the benefit of street signs.
Southern congressmen were not being stupid or delusional in voting almost unanimously against protectionist tariffs in 1824, 1828, and 1860, or in outlawing protectionist tariffs altogether in the Confederate Constitution – as McPherson and Poulter imply. They were voting their economic self-interest, and the basic economics of international trade – something that McPherson and Keith Poulter seem completely oblivious to – bear this out.
It has long been understood by economists that import tariffs impose a disproportionate burden on export-dependent regions. And even McPherson admits that the South in 1860 exported about 60 percent of what it produced (others have estimated it as being closer to 75 percent). As Wilson Brown and Jan Hogendorn explain in their popular textbook, International Economics (p. 121), a tax on imports is effectively a tax on exports as well. This is because after a tariff causes the price of certain goods to rise,
. . . consumers . . . include the . . . price increases in their wage and salary demands.
Everybody tries to pass the tax to someone else. The only group that is powerless to pass the costs on further are the exporters, who have to sell at world prices and swallow these costs. In essence, a tax on imports becomes a tax on exports (emphasis added).
International trade economists call this the "pass-through effect" of a tariff.
Unlike McPherson and Poulter, early nineteenth century Southerners understood this perfectly well because they observed how their incomes fell whenever tariff rates rose. As John C. Calhoun explained in a September 1, 1828 letter to Micah Sterling of Watertown, New York regarding his opposition to the Tariff of Abominations, a protectionist tariff "gives to one section [the North] the power of recharging . . . the duty, while to the other [the South] it is a pure unmitigated burden." This is so, wrote Calhoun, because the South "was engaged in cultivating the great staples of the country for a foreign market, in a market where we can receive no protection, and where we cannot receive one cent more to indemnify us for the heavy duties we have to pay as consumers" (Clyde Wilson, ed., The Essential Calhoun, p. 190).
There is a second, more roundabout way in which import tariffs impose a disproportionate burden on exporters. As Wilson and Hogendorn further explain:
As tariffs cause imports to fall, less foreign exchange is needed to purchase them and the demand for foreign currency declines. The domestic currency will thus rise in value on the foreign exchange market. Exporters find that their foreign-currency earnings purchase less domestic currency and therefore they suffer.
Milton and Rose Friedman explain how tariffs discriminate against exporters and export-dependent regions on an even more fundamental level in their bestseller, Free to Choose (Avon paperback, 1980, p. 38):
If tariffs are imposed on, say, textiles, that will add to output and employment in the domestic textile industry. However, foreign producers who no longer can sell their textiles in the United States earn fewer dollars. They will have less to spend in the United States. Exports will go down to balance decreased imports. Employment will go up in the textile industry, down in the export industries. And the shift of employment to less productive uses will reduce total output.
This again is exactly how the export-dependent South viewed all the protectionist tariff bills promoted by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, a lifelong protectionist, and his Republican Party. Apply the Friedmans' example to 1861, and one can easily see how higher tariffs on textile imports benefited the New England textile manufacturers and workers but harmed the export-dependent South. This is exactly how protectionist tariffs are always and everywhere a tool of political plunder. To make matters worse, as the Friedmans point out, they also cause an overall reduction in total output in an economy, making everyone poorer in an aggregate sense.
It wasn't just the antebellum South that was victimized by Republican Party protectionism. By 1863, with the Southern Democrats out of Congress, the Republican Party increased the average tariff rate to nearly 50 percent. It remained at such lofty levels until the income tax was adopted in 1913. In a classic bait-and-switch con game, the federal government temporarily reduced the average tariff rate to gain support for the income tax, and then once the income tax was adopted tariff rates rose sharply once again.
During this time of Republican Party protectionist hegemony the farmers of the American West and the Midwest, who also depended quite heavily on foreign markets, were similarly plundered by tariffs. This led to a political movement for lower tariffs on the part of the "Populists." As explained by Frank Chodorov in his classic book, The Income Tax (pp. 36–37):
The plight of these farmers was made worse by the protective-tariff policy of the government. The best they could get for their products was the competitive world price, while the manufactures they bought, from the East, were loaded down with duties. Next to their demand for more money, the Populists clamored for lower tariffs.
Finally, the great mid-nineteenth century British champion of free trade, Richard Cobden, understood that 1) the South had a constitutional right to secede; and 2) the North was waging a war of economic plunder, not of humanitarianism. (Along with William Bright, Cobden was responsible for getting the British government to abolish almost all tariffs by the early 1850s). In a June 22, 1861 letter to one W. Hargreaves, Cobden wrote:
I have been reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America . . . he takes the Southern view of the right of secession. He says, 'The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so; and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims either by force or by right.' He then goes on to argue that among the States united by the Federal tie there may be some which have a great interest in maintaining the Union on which their prosperity depends; and then he remarks – 'Great things may then be done in the name of the Federal Government, but in reality that Government will have ceased to exist.' Has he not accurately anticipated both the fact and the motive of the present attitude of the State of New York? Is it not commercial gain and mercantile ascendancy which prompt their warlike zeal for the Federal Government?
At all events, it is a little unreasonable in the New York politicians to require us to treat the South as rebels, in the face of the opinion of our highest European authority [Tocqueville] as to the right of secession (John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fischer Unwin, 1905), pp. 849–50).
Thus, the nineteenth century's greatest European champion of free trade, a British counterpart to John C. Calhoun, interpreted the War to Prevent Southern Independence as being motivated primarily by a lust for commercial gain on the part of the North, with the protectionist tariff as one of its chief weapons.
Regardless of what the exact percentage of tariffs that were ultimately paid by North versus South in 1861 was, it is not debatable that Southern secession and the creation of free trade in all the Southern ports would have been a huge drain on federal revenues, fully 95 percent of which came from tariff revenues.
That is why, in his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln stated that it was his duty "to collect the duties and imposts," but beyond that "there will be no invasion of any state." That is, fail to collect the newly-doubled tariff rate, as the South Carolinians did with respect to the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, and there will be an invasion. He was true to his word.
The founders wisely made taxes on exports unconstitutional because they are so obviously harmful to American interests. What they failed to understand, however, is the basic economics of tariffs, which shows how a tax on imports is also effectively a tax on exports as well. As with all forms of tax incidence, what matters is who ultimately actually pays the tax, not who the law says should (in theory) be paying. John C. Calhoun understood this, as did most of his fellow Southerners since they were so burdened by protectionism. Northern steel manufacturers like Congressmen Justin Morrill of Vermont and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania understood it as well, for the opposite reason: They were on the receiving end of the plunder that was extracted by the Morrill Tariff.
If taxes on exports are unconstitutional, then so are taxes on imports, or tariffs.
Anyone who claims to believe in the U.S. Constitution should therefore be in favor of one hundred percent free trade with no tariffs, quotas, or trade barriers of any kind.
January 15, 2004
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| Cheap Gas |
| 06.04.04 (10:42 am) [edit] |
Gas Buddy
With gas prices constantly on the rise, car owners could use a good friend. GasBuddy is a portal to over 170 web sites in the US and Canada that allows consumers to share information on where to find the cheapest local gas prices in their neighborhood.
http://gasbuddy.com/" title="http://gasbuddy.com/" target="_blank"http://gasbuddy.com/
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| Chuck Muth's: News & Views |
| 06.04.04 (9:48 am) [edit] |
Chuck Muth's News & Views - June 4, 2004
http://chuckmuth.com/newsandviews/nv.cfm" title="http://chuckmuth.com/newsandviews/nv.cfm" target="_blank"http://chuckmuth.com/newsandv...
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EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT...
We've got a new "Smoke Screen" today which features an update on the world-wide spread of smoking bans in bars and restaurants, an interesting ban effort which pits some school kids against the all-powerful teacher's union (that ought to be a brawl), a rare victory against such bans out on the Left Coast, more hysteria by the health nannies over smokeless tobacco marketing efforts to college-age ADULTS...and an absolutely BRUTAL and brilliant Wall Street Journal column by former Reagan speech-writer Peggy Noonan ripping the banners a new you-know-what. It's a thing of beauty. Read it all today on the News & Views EXTRA page at: http://www.chuckmuth.com/news...
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FAIR IS FAIR...BUT STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES
"Cheaper drinks for women at New Jersey bars could soon be a thing of the past," reports the Associated Press on Thursday. "The director of the state Division on Civil Rights ruled Tuesday that Ladies' Night at a Cherry Hill bar and restaurant was unlawful."
The bonehead who came up with this decision, J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, says his ruling "makes it pretty clear that this bodes trouble for bars that have ladies' night and similar programs in New Jersey." He defended his decision based on the "important social policy objectives of eradicating discrimination." What next? Banning discounts to senior citizens and children?
It should go without saying that the government should have NO RIGHT to dictate whether or not a privately-owned bar or restaurant can extend special prices or treatment to selected customers at their own discretion. Unfortunately, in this day and age it DOES need to be said...LOUDLY. Maybe now some of you who see nothing wrong with the government imposing smoking bans on privately-owned bars and restaurants will see where that slippery slope will inevitably lead.
SURVEY SAYS!
Will the new Medicare prescription drug discount cards be of significant benefit to senior citizens once they learn about and start using them?
* Yes
* No
* Not Sure
Cast your vote by clicking the "Survey Says!" tab at www.citizenoutreach.com
YES, IT WAS "LIBERATION"
"I would like to thank the coalition, led by the United States, for the sacrifices they have provided in the process of the liberation of Iraq."
- Iraq's new Prime Minister Allawi
FRENCH ISSUE WARNING
"France is saying that it will shoot down any private pilots who fly into airspace that is restricted for this weekend's ceremonies celebrating the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landing at Normandy. . . . Your best hope is that the French Air Force launches a Mirage 2000 fighter after you. Just turn your Cessna toward the French jet fighter, act aggressively, and watch him run!"
- Talk show host Neal Boortz
THE AL GORE KISS OF DEATH
"The good news is: Liberals' anti-war hysteria seems to have run its course. I base this conclusion on Al Gore's lunatic anti-war speech last week. Gore always comes out swinging just as an issue is about to go south. He's the stereotypical white guy always clapping on the wrong beat.
"Gore switched from being a pro-defense Democrat to a lefty peacenik – just before the 9-11 attack. He grew a beard – just in time for an attack on the nation by fundamentalist Muslims. He endorsed Howard Dean – just as the orange-capped Deaniacs were punching themselves out. Gore even went out and got really fat – just before America officially gave up carbs. This guy is always leaping into the mosh pit at the precise moment the crowd parts. Mark my words: Now that good old Al has come lunging in, the anti-war movement is dead."
- Columnist Ann Coulter
FLAT-LINING IN FLORIDA
"The American Spectator reports that Mr. Kerry seemed alarmed by the complete absence of applause, or other signs of life from his audience, as he spoke at a rally in Tampa yesterday. . . . At several points, Mr. Kerry paused and then only reluctantly went on after the expected applause failed to materialize. The audience was so subdued that at one point Mr. Kerry told them, 'I know you don't want to be here anymore.'
"'That line actually generated more real cheers,' said a Florida Democratic Party official. 'If this is the kind of response our campaign is getting elsewhere, we're dead. This was awful. He was awful.' "
- John Fund, Political Diary, 6/3/04
YOU RANG?
You know you're in trouble when the Bush-hating former editor of the New York Times, Harold Raines, writes the following about you in Britain's "The Guardian:"
"The TV camera is an X-ray for picking up attitudinal truths, and Kerry's lantern jaw and 'Addams Family' face somehow reinforce the message that this guy has passed from ponderous to pompous and is so accustomed to privilege that he doesn't have to worry about looking goofy. It's as if Lurch had gone to Choate. . . . Kerry radiates the feeling that he is entitled to his sense of entitlement. Probably that comes from spending too much time with Teddy Kennedy, but it's a problem."
DO AS WE SAY...NOT AS WE DO
Did anyone else happen to catch that Associate Press photo of John Kerry taking a ride on a police motorcycle in West Palm Beach, FL, yesterday? No helmet. Wonder if he was cited. The "for your own good" laws enacted by Democrat elected officials never actually apply to Democrat elected officials, do they?
Also, there's a confab of the vast left-wing conspiracy taking place in Washington this weekend. Julian Bond, the wingnut now running the NAACP, declared on Wednesday, "We are going to offer Americans an alternative to the failed policies of the right."
Problem is, all the "failed" policies enacted under President Bush and the Republican Congress are actually DEMOCRAT policies - such as expanding the federal role in education, government-employee baggage inspectors, import tariffs, that new prescription drug entitlement, restrictions on political speech, government spending through the roof, amnesty for illegal aliens, no Social Security reform, no conservative judges confirmed, etc., etc., etc.
What in the heck does the left have to complain about? It's the RIGHT that should be kvetching.
NAILING THE TSA
"The major problem we have is that TSA (Transportation Security Agency) is a Soviet-style centralized bureaucracy serving 440 airports. . . . I know TSA intimately. TSA has had problems because it is a centralized system. It will never get it right. Until there is reform, they will not be able to address security needs or schedule the requirements of 440 airports across the country."
- House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.), The Hill, 6/2/04
DOWNSIZING THE SUPER-SIZED GOVERNMENT
"The federal government is headed toward a financial crisis as a result of chronic overspending, large deficits, and huge future cost increases in Social Security and Medicare," reports Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute. "Social Security and Medicare would be big fiscal challenges even if the rest of the government were lean and efficient, but the budget is littered with wasteful and unnecessary programs."
However, rather than simply complain about the weather, Edwards puts forward $300 billion worth of cuts to federal programs which could be phased in over five years without touching President Bush's tax cuts. Wanna blueprint for downsizing government instead of further supersizing it? Go to: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/...
MEDIA SHRUGGED
If you think I've been tough on the Libertarian Party since its selection of Michael Badnarik as their 2004 presidential candidate, at least I'm not alone...or the most harsh. Here's how Eric Dondero, a former Libertarian Party leader and columnist, describes the nominee: "A non-college graduate, so-called 'scholar' who is a semi-employed computer programmer (who) has never held elective office." Ouch.
"I guess it was predictable," writes Jerome Tuccille on LewRockwell.com. "The Libertarian Party, faced with the opportunity to select a candidate for president who had millions to spend on his own campaign, who had achieved a measure of fame in Hollywood as a producer of films and a consort of celebrities on the order of Bette Midler, and someone else with no money and zero name recognition, chose…well you know the answer; I said it was predictable, didn't I?"
And I thought it was only Republicans who never blew an opportunity to blow an opportunity. You can read the rest of Tuccille's column at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/or...
VOLTAIRE ANYONE?
Whatever happened to, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It seems so quintessentially American - certainly embraced by our Founders - yet our present-day government schools (and society in general) seem to have lost the concept completely. Speech today, it seems, is only permissible if it is "politically correct."
We take you now to the Poway Unified School District in California. During what was billed as a national "Day of Silence" back on April 21, "high school and college students were urged to remain silent to show support for homosexuals, bisexuals and trans-gender students." OK, fine. But one student opted NOT to remain silent, and expressed a countering view by wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the message: "Homosexuality is Shameful."
You know, it really doesn't matter whether you agree with him or not. The fact remains, in this country exercising one's freedom of speech rights should be ENCOURAGED among our youth - even speech which some might find offensive - not penalized. Which makes it so distressing that the Poway pooh-bahs SUSPENDED the student wearing the t-shirt.
Fortunately, an organization has sued the school district on the student's behalf, maintaining the district violated the student's civil rights by kicking him out of school. We hope they are successful. And we hope they include in their case proceedings generous references to Voltaire's admonition. It might be the only place the kids AND the adults in Poway learn about this important principle (unless, of course, they subscribe to News & Views!).
THERE GOES THE JUDGE
Wanna do something about judicial activism? Well, maybe it's time for Congress to take the Washington Times' editorial advice (http://washingtontimes.com/op...) and really fire a shot across the judiciary's bow by impeaching U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton.
As the Times notes, last December Judge Hamilton "declared as constitutional the role-playing of Islam forced on a class of seventh-graders at a California middle school. The students were required to take a Muslim name, give up candy for a day to demonstrate the daytime fast of Ramadan and even recite a Muslim prayer. In ruling on the subsequent lawsuit, Judge Hamilton breezily asserted that the students 'cannot be considered to have performed any actual religious activities.' Any teacher caught trying to do the same with Christianity would be crucified."
And this week, Judge Hamilton single-handedly ruled that the OVERWHELMINGLY-passed Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was unconstitutional.
Many folks in Congress point to the Massachusetts gay marriage decision as an example of "judicial activism." But those were STATE justices, not federal ones. In any event, the effort to get Congress to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is a waste of time because...it ain't gonna happen. And even if it did, it wouldn't prevent the kind of judicial activism on other non-gay marriage issues by the likes of Judge Hamilton.
However...impeaching a ultra-liberal justice who has stepped on Congress's toes and gotten too big for her britches is certainly doable and addresses the much wider issue of judicial activism as a whole. And all it would take is just a little bit of courage by the Republican members of Congress.
Never mind.
STICK A FORK IN HIM...HE'S DONE
Any Nevada Republican who still harbors hope that Sen. Harry Reid, the Minority Whip and #2 leader in the Democrat caucus, can be defeated in November by anti-gay marriage activist Richard Ziser probably also thinks the Libertarian Party candidate for president has a shot at winning the White House. But if you DO have such illusions, this story in Thursday's The Hill should bring you back to reality. Republican leaders are signing up to back Democrat Reid in droves...
http://thehill.com/news/060304/reid.aspx" title="http://thehill.com/news/060304/reid.aspx" target="_blank"http://thehill.com/news/06030...
Republican donors hoping to knock out a top Democrat in the Senate this year should instead send their money to former Republican Rep. John Thune out in South Dakota, who has a DARN good shot at taking out Tommy Daschle in November. In fact, ALL those Reid supporters in Nevada, including Democrats, ought to send some dough to Thune. If Thune DOES knock off Daschle, Reid would be next in line for the Democrats' top job.
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Chuck Muth's News & Views is published by Citizen Outreach, a non-partisan, 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. The opinions and views expressed in Chuck Muth's News & Views reflect those of the writers, editors and columnists therein and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Citizen Outreach, its officers, directors or employees.
Published by: Citizen Outreach
Chuck Muth
Editor/Publisher
611 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, #439
Washington, DC 20003-4303
E-mail: chuck@citizenoutreach.com
To SUBSCRIBE, just go to: http://www.chuckmuth.com/news...
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| Stupidity Virus Running Rampant in Gov't Schools |
| 06.04.04 (9:22 am) [edit] |
Stupidity Virus Running Rampant in Gov't Schools
STUPIDITY VIRUS SPREADS OUT-OF-CONTROL
June 4, 2004
Chuck Muth -News and Views
http://chuckmuth.com/newsandviews/nv.cfm" title="http://chuckmuth.com/newsandviews/nv.cfm" target="_blank"http://chuckmuth.com/newsandv...
Folks, this Stupidity Virus running rampant through our government schools is reaching epidemic proportions. Two new incidents were discovered this morning...one in John Kerry's Massachusetts and the other in Bill Clinton's Arkansas. Go figure. You might want to take your blood-pressure medicine before reading these…
KILLER CUPCAKES: "Students celebrating their birthdays this fall at the Chandler School in Duxbury (MA) can expect their classmates to sing 'Happy Birthday,' but cupcakes are out of the question," reports the Boston Globe this morning (http://www.boston.com/news/lo...). "Concerned that the children are eating too much junk food, the Chandler School Council and the Parent Teacher Association are forbidding parents from bringing sweets to their child's classroom birthday party."
A government school "forbidding" CUPCAKES? What the hell is going on here? This is INSANE!
" 'We love birthdays, but we decided to shift the focus onto the child and not the food,' said principal Deborah Zetterberg, who is also cochairwoman of the school council. 'What we proposed was to have a birthday package, as we're calling it.' The package includes a special birthday chair cover that will be placed on the back of the student's chair, Zetterberg said. The birthday boy or girl can also wear a sash. They get a special pencil and a sticker with the school's mascot, the Happy Dragon, she said. Preschool and kindergarten students also get to wear a birthday crown, she said."
Waahooo! A chair cover, a sash, a sticker and a pencil? That sounds SOOOOO much better than singing "Happy Birthday," making a wish and blowing out the candles. Good grief.
"A letter was sent home to parents this week alerting them to the sweets ban. . . . Traditionally, parents bring in treats for an entire class when it is their child's birthday, Zetterberg said. But a new practice will begin in September when parents will no longer be allowed to bring in sweets, she said."
"No longer be allowed to bring in sweets"? Will parents be given a "time out" or be put in the corner? How many years of college does it take to attain such a level of non-intelligence? How do these people become PRINCIPALS of schools?
Here's the contact information:
Principal Deborah Zetterberg
d_zetterberg@duxbury.k12.ma.us
(781) 934-7680
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GRADE INFLATION: "To combat childhood obesity," reports Fox
News this morning (http://www.foxnews.com/story/...,2933,121735,00.html), "every Arkansas public school student this month will be receiving two report cards in the mail: one assessing them on math, science and social studies, and the other grading them on their weight." Margo Bushmiaer, health services nanny for the Little Rock School District says, "We're going to know how many are overweight, how many are underweight, how many are normal weight." How lovely.
Parents can expect their government-issued report card on whether or not their kid is a "fatty" by as early as next week. Yeah, this ought to be GREAT for kids' self-esteem, huh? In fact, while the stupidity of such a measure is lost on government school functionaries, at least parents - who generally don't possess the education degrees of our government school educators - immediately recognized the huge problem with this boneheaded move.
"There are some children that probably will be teased with other children knowing how much they weigh and starting to make fun of them," said Karen Phelps, the parent of a fourth grader. Fox News notes that, "There is also concern that the weight-oriented report cards may cause an epidemic of anorexia and bulimia among older students." No problemo, though. "The school district says it will now be on the lookout for those health problems."
Wonderful. The school morons who came up with this original moronic idea are going to be looking out for a new potential problem which they can address with a new moronic solution. Oh, we feel MUCH better now.
Contact information:
Margo Bushmiaer
Margo.Bushmiaer@lrsd.org
(501) 447-7480
Apparently, the school district is operating without a permanent superintendent at present time, which may explain why it appears the inmates are running the asylum. So you might also want to contact school board President Tony Rose and suggest that some immediate adult supervision of the school district health nanny may be in order...or just copy him on any notes you send to Herr Bushmiaer.
His email address is: tonyrose1@comcast.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chuck Muth
President
Citizen Outreach
chuck@citizenoutreach.com
Stupidity Virus Running Rampant in Gov't Schools
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The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority… It is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people. FRANK I. COBB (1869-1923), LaFolletteâ's Magazine, January 1920.
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| "PCBS" = STUPIDITY VIRUS STRIKES IN BIG SKY COUNTRY
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| 06.03.04 (5:14 pm) [edit] |
STUPIDITY VIRUS STRIKES IN BIG SKY COUNTRY
June 2, 2004
By: Chuck Muth
Good grief. It appears a national epidemic has broken out in recent weeks. But when this kind of anti-gun paranoia nonsense hits in MONTANA, you know we REALLY have a big problem.
Heres the latest: An 11-year-old kid finds an unloaded .22-caliber pistol with a part missing which rendered the gun inoperable.
Not knowing what to do with it, he took it to his school principal's office and turned it in. The principal then turned kid in...to the cops.
The Havre Daily News (http://www.havredailynews.com...) reported on Tuesday that "police responded at 8:51 a.m. and took the juvenile to the police station for questioning...(where he was) issued a summons on a charge of possessing a weapon in a school building."ť The paper says the local police chief maintains the grade-school kid should have taken the gun to the police station rather than the principal's office.
What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here? Do any government bureaucrats anywhere in the country possess any level of common sense any more? And has anybody else noticed that whenever extreme examples of adult stupidity occur, it's usually in a government-run school? Is that cause...or effect?
I attempted to reach Principal Linda Kaze this afternoon; however, I was informed that she was tied up conducting various end-of-year award ceremonies all day...ceremonies which, by the way, the young lad in question is NOT a part of. All the adult powers-that-be agreed that the boy shouldn’t attend the final two days of the school year (but at least he wasn't "officially"ť suspended!).
I also tried to reach School Superintendent Kirk Miller, who was referenced in the Daily News story, but he was "in a meeting."ť However, the person answering the phone did verify that what was reported in the paper accurately reflected what actually happened and seemed surprised that I was so upset about it. Go figure.
I'm sure Principal Kaze and Dr. Miller have perfectly logical explanations for how and why this whole thing was handled. I can hardly wait to hear them...
BRUSHFIRE ALERT: Principal's Name: Linda Kaze. Principal's email address: kazel@ss.havre.k12.mt.us. Ms. Kaze's phone number is: (406) 265-9671. Dr. Miller's phone number: (406) 265-4356.
Chuck Muth
President
Citizen Outreach
chuck@citizenoutreach.com
STUPIDITY VIRUS STRIKES IN BIG SKY COUNTRY
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| 15 FAMOUS QUOTES ABOUT WAR |
| 06.03.04 (8:17 am) [edit] |
15 Famous Quotes About War
War evokes such conflicting emotions--horror, glory, shame, pride, and sorrow--that it is often difficult to express them in words. Here is what some have said about war.
1. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror.
--William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), U.S. general. From a speech, Columbus, Ohio, August 11, 1880.
2. All counter-revolutionary wars are unjust, all revolutionary wars are just.
--Mao Zedong (1893-1976), Chinese statesman. From On Protracted War (1938).
3. All wars are popular for the first thirty days.
--Attributed to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917- ), U.S. historian.
4. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.
--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright and poet. From Henry V (1598?).
5. War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
--Karl Marie von Clausewitz (1780-1831), Prussian general. Often misquoted as "War is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means."
From On War (1833).
6. It has long been noted that some conquerors prefer enemies as fierce as tigers and brave as eagles, for only then can they savor the true joy of victory.
--Lu Xun (1881-1936), Chinese writer. From "The True Story of Ah Q" (1918).
7. It is well that war is so terrible; else we would grow too fond of it.
--Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), U.S. general. Said to another general during the battle of Fredericksburg (1862).
8. Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill each other if it is not done.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright. From Major Barbara (1905).
9. Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of Americaâ€"not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
--Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), Canadian sociologist. In the Montreal Gazette, 1975.
10. The guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog's disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with.
--Robert Taber (1928- ), U.S. writer. From War of the Flea (1965).
11. A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of being fought.
--George F. Kennan (1904- ), U.S. diplomat and scholar. From The Cloud of Danger (1977).
12. War is capitalism with the gloves off.
--Tom Stoppard (1937- ), British playwright and screenwriter. From Travesties (1974).
13. You no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
--Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), U.S. legislator.
14. Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days--the greatest days our country has ever lived.
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British prime minister and writer. From a speech, October 29, 1941.
15. Blood alone moves the wheels of history.
--Attributed to Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian dictator.
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| GOVERNMENT WORKERS: WORKING HARD OR HARDLY WORKING?
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| 06.02.04 (1:18 pm) [edit] |
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GOVERNMENT WORKERS: WORKING HARD OR HARDLY WORKING?
Last month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) made headlines with its report that scores of high ranking employees from eight federal agencies had degrees from bogus colleges or unaccredited schools. Worse yet, a GAO spokesman said, "It's a much larger problem than the evidence we have to date shows." That could be an understatement given that just three of the unaccredited schools the GAO examined revealed that 463 current or one-time students are federal employees.
Still, some were unfazed; one wit commented: "I'm not as concerned with whether government workers have degrees as with whether they are working at all."
That remark bespeaks the conventional wisdom that government work-excluding the Armed Forces and those in law enforcement--is the epitome of "inside work; no heavy lifting." Moreover, it reflects personal experience: people who have waited on line or on hold or who have heard "that's not my area" too often wonder if anyone works in federal agencies let alone if those working know what they are doing. Often they do not: a 2003 study disclosed that the IRS gives incorrect answers or no answer at all 43 percent of the time!
An actual, rather than anecdotal, example of a federal employee's work ethic was revealed in testimony in a challenge to a small mining claim in the Plumas National Forest some 100 miles northeast of Sacramento, California. There Donald Eno, a disabled veteran, seeks to provide for himself by working sixty hour weeks on his gold and travertine discoveries. His years of hard work may pay off: estimates are his gold is worth $650,000; his travertine is valued at $20 million, or more!
However, because of oddities in federal land law, the federal government could eject him from his property, if it can prove that his claim has no value or that it is more valuable for use as a sacred, scenic, or geological site. Because local U.S. Forest Service personnel oppose mining in general--in an area that has been mined for over 150 years--that is what they are trying to do.
In a recent administrative proceeding, the United States called, as its expert witness, a Forest Service geologist who testified that Mr. Eno's gold has no economic value. His testimony was not persuasive for numerous reasons, including, errors in basic math, use of the wrong mining equipment, and incorrect economic assumptions.
But his most ludicrous assertion was that every hour of dredging-the actual recovery of gold from the stream-required one and one-half hours of work. Part of that extra time was what the geologist said he needed to get ready to work each day; the other part was for frequent "work breaks." In fact, over the three days the geologist was at the claim, he averaged two hours a day in the stream recovering gold.
Mr. Eno faulted the geologist's lackadaisical approach to dredging for gold. Eight hours of work is eight hours of work, Mr. Eno argued.
Lawyers for the United States countered that the geologist's views are "standard in any business in America."
Hardly; however, the geologist's view may be "standard" in the federal government.
At least the geologist was in the stream and dredged for gold, which is more than could be said of another Forest Service employee who testified that Mr. Eno's claim was "sacred" to local American Indians. The purported expert witness did not interview any of those Indians, nearly a quarter of whom disagreed with her conclusions; she called them "statistical outliers." Moreover, as to two key "sacred" features about which the witness testified, she admitted during cross examination that she had not visited the sites! Perhaps she was on one of the geologist's "work breaks."
Fortunately, the administrative law judge rejected the testimony of the Forest Service employees and ruled for Mr. Eno. Other Americans, however, may not be so fortunate in their encounter with federal "workers."
https://www.ifr-ors.com/wpr.cfm?wp=14&A=1121
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