By Ken Gude

The United States is at its strongest when Americans have the courage to stand up for the values that make this country great. President Obama is upholding the best traditions of our Constitution by supporting Muslim Americans’ ability to build a mosque and community center on private property near Ground Zero.

September 11 left deep scars on Manhattan and the United States. The family and friends of the 3,000 who perished have suffered the most, yet all Americans share in the pain of that fateful day. Ground Zero is hallowed ground and will forever live in our hearts. But it is misguided to believe that we honor the victims by rejecting the values they cherished while succumbing to the very fear and hatred their murderers were trying to provoke.

Osama bin Laden wants Muslims to believe that America and the West are at war with Islam. That distorted view is the best and virtually only way he has to recruit young Muslims into his murderous cause. That cause targets America and our allies, but his primary mission is to destroy contemporary Islam, and the majority of his victims are Muslims.

The biggest threat to bin Laden is precisely the kind of Islam that is embodied in the Cordoba Initiative mosque and community center. Muslim Americans practicing their religion in freedom, rejecting the perversion of the faith that drives Al Qaeda, and preaching against radicalism and violence is exactly what bin Laden fears. Building this facility will help the United States and its allies prevail in this struggle against violent extremist groups like al Qaeda by undermining Osama bin Laden’s narrative that America is at war with the Muslim world.

We understand the raw emotions triggered by memories of September 11, but we are not at our strongest when we are fearful. The American experiment with freedom and religious liberty would not have been unique if it was easy and would not have survived without brave decisions to sustain it. We support building this mosque.

About the author: Ken Gude is Director of the International Justice and Security Program at the Center for American Progress.

Courtesy: Center for American Progress

By John LeBoutillier

The national economy – again – stalls. No new jobs are created. The immigration issue – again – becomes red hot. And the health care bill – still – is unpopular. Well, we can assume that 2012 will be a watershed election year with an at least a semi-unpopular and thus vulnerable incumbent, Barack Obama, who can possibly be defeated. This is a far cry from November 2008 when he was proclaimed the New Messiah.

But – and it is a big “but” – “you can’t beat somebody with nobody.” The Republican Party has a penchant for nominating “nobodies” for President lately. Let us remind ourselves of some recent disasters:

• In 2008 the GOP nominated John McCain, perhaps the most disastrous nominee possible. He refused to attack Obama; he wouldn’t even allow McCain surrogate speakers to use Obama’s middle name – Hussein!

• McCain is/was/always will be pro-amnesty-for-illegals – so he and Obama had the same position and thus there never was a debate in the 2008 election about immigration;

• Back in 1996, when Bill Clinton was vulnerable after the 1994 Republican Revolution, the GOP nominated Bob Dole, a great man, a great American and a great US Senator – but a total disaster as a national presidential candidate; (Perot drawing 9% of the vote away from the GOP didn’t help, either);

• Even in 2000, the GOP selected G.W. Bush who barely – maybe defeated the biggest dud stiff bore political candidate ever: Al Gore. Yes, on pure candidate skills, Bush was better that Gore. But he still wasn’t exactly scintillating.

What exactly makes someone a great political candidate? Here are my Five Tools that make a great political candidate:

1) Fire in the belly

This overriding hunger borders on the obsessive. Virtually all successful political candidates, no matter how well they disguise it, would “walk over their mothers” to win, as Nixon White House aide Charles Colson once put it.

2) Self-discipline

The ability to rein in one’s own worst instincts, habits and weaknesses. Both President Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich ruined their legacies through a lack of personal self-discipline. The speaker couldn’t keep his mouth shut; the president couldn’t keep his fly shut.

3) Authoritative presence

Especially in the television era, candidates must project an air of gravitas and weight. Dan Quayle’s “deer in the headlights” look undercut anything he said or did.

4) Raising money

All successful candidates find a way to raise enough money to win. Some, like JFK, merely ask their fathers to pay. Others spend years developing a network of donors; others cultivate special interests. However they do it, winning candidates always come up with “the mother’s milk of politics.”

5) Communicating a positive vision

Derided by President George H.W. Bush as “that vision thing,” it is this singular ability that elevated presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt into the political Hall of Fame. The skill to speak in a way that inspires voters is invaluable – and very rare. (No wonder so many campaigns today resort to “negative campaigning”; their candidates are incapable of painting with voice and words a believable picture of a better future.)

When a candidate has all five of these – and especially Numbers 3 and 5 – then you really have a potential star.

All the so-far mentioned 2012 GOP candidates – Romney, Palin, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, Daniels and Barbour – have some good points. But none of them are sincere or talented at Numbers 3 and 5.

Our fear must be that through the 2012 primaries and caucuses, the winnowing process will bring the GOP back to its boring, staid old self – and thus turn off the Tea Party fervor which is the hottest political movement in decades.

What we should be looking for in our 2012 candidate is a conservative who can sell conservatism – and also attract middle-of-the-road independents – all the while being pleasantly on the attack against the liberals, using humor and a light touch to harness the underlying fear and anxiety we are all feeling about our country’s future.

A tall order indeed.

The 2012 candidate who can do this has not yet surfaced. Let us hope he soon will.

About the author: John LeBoutillier is a former U.S. Congressman and a nationally recognized political commentator. He has been a frequent guest on many national talk show programs and is author of the book Harvard Hates America. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone. John LeBoutillier can be reached at: johnlebout@johnlebout.com. He keeps an archive of his articles at: JohnLeBout.com

Published originally at EtherZone.com

By Stephen Crockett

The Tea Party movement has started to come unglued over a series of internal contradictions that amount to an identity crisis. The Tea Party is caught in a “Catch 22″ position that has largely been ignored by the corporate mainstream media.

Just this morning I watched a local PBS show where a Republican operative claimed that the Tea Party movement was not “Republican, Right Wing or racist.” The comment appears to be the Republican Right Wing official spin on all things “Tea Party” in nature. Unfortunately, the claim really lacks credibility because it conflicts with the facts on the ground all over the nation.

Anyone who really watched the development of the Tea Party movement, as part of the anti-healthcare reform effort, understands that it was a creation of Fox News and corporate funded Right Wing Republican operatives. Despite many claims to the contrary, it brought very few new faces into the political process.

What the Tea Party public relations campaign did was simply “re-brand” the various largely discredited, Right Wing fringe elements in the Republican Party under a new name. It did con the mainstream corporate media very effectively into calling blatant corporatist, economic elitist policies “populist.” It was a bad joke that the media completely missed or just ignored.

Like the fake ACORN pimp and voter registration scandals, the storyline falls apart completely when the details are examined in any detail. The spin relies on manufactured “facts” that are really outrageous lies being told over and over again. In time, the storyline falls apart but often the damage has been done. It appears the mainstream corporate media has learned absolutely nothing from their Iraq War-Weapons of Mass Deception experience.

The reality is that there is probably not much of a Tea Party movement outside of Republican Right Wing corporate control. When it comes to economic populism, the Tea Party has either been completely missing in action or in outright opposition to every proposal that is populist in nature.

Our middle class has been under constant attack by corporate forces for decades. The Reagan-Bush Republicans have been pushing changes in government policy that benefit only the most elite of economic elitists for 30 years. American workers are being driven out of the middle class by government policy and market power. The Republican Right has successfully placed many of the levers of power in government in the hands of the corporatist economic elite. Some Democrats assisted parts of this corporate take-over of government but it was overwhelmingly Republican effort.

The government is not the enemy if it is controlled by the majority of middle class Americans. It is a check on excessive corporate power under those circumstances.

The genius behind the Tea Party campaign is that it is a corporate created public relations/political campaign designed to promote pro-corporate economic policies via government while calling the movement “anti-corporate and anti-government.” The racism angle is a just a way to hook “poor and middle class whites” into an effort designed to economically benefit the wealthiest of the wealthy at the expense of “the poor and middle class of all colors.”

Racism has long been used to divide working Americans up along color lines so they do not demand a better deal from the economic and political elite. Racism serves an economic purpose and always has served an economic purpose. Racism is a sucker bet for working Americans. It has been a key element in building the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party since Richard Nixon. Republican Right wing economic policies are a disaster for 90% of Americans and social wedge issues including race have been the key to Republican victories for more than a generation.

If the Tea Party was really a new creature, it would be fielding third party candidates everywhere under the Tea Party name. Republican and Right Wing operatives claim it is independent of the Republican Party but at the same time strongly oppose real independence. The Republican Party is the Tea Party. The Tea Party is just the most extreme elements of the Republican Party devoted to driving any remaining moderates out of the Republican Party.

You cannot support Pat Toomey-Club for Growth economic policies and still claim to be a populist movement. You have to support economic policies that increase the wages of American workers, support government measures to help the unemployed, curtail the ability of corporations to move jobs outside the United States and sell untaxed imports in our country, shift the tax burden back in the direction of corporations and the Super Wealthy instead of putting it on the middle classes and seek to regulate corporate market power to be an economic populist.

Economic populists do not make excuses for BP like Rand Paul or Sharon Angle. Economic populists do not oppose government deficits during a severe economic downturn nor support government deficits in good economic times, like the Republicans are doing. Opposing better access to affordable health care is not a populist position. Giving massive tax cuts to wealthy people while our government is running massive deficits and local governments are firing teachers, firefighters and police is simply stupid economics and has nothing to do with economic populism.

If the Tea Party is” populist” in nature, as they claim, then the policies they support should demonstrate that populism. If the Tea Party is independent of the Republican Party, then they should field independent candidates in the November general elections to prove their independence. If the Tea Party is not racist, then they should condemn the expression of racism from within their movement every time they occur. If the Tea Party is not an expression of extreme Right Wing sentiments, then they should stop supporting the political agenda of the Far Right.

American voters will learn in coming months just how fake and flaky the Tea Party con job is by watching the Tea Party Republicans seeking office in November. You will learn nothing about this from Fox News but the mainstream media should not drop the ball on this story in 2010. The voters deserve a real discussion about the unreality of the Tea Party reality.

About the author: Stephen Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio and author of the Democratic Voices opinion column.

Source: OpEd News
Photo:Pargon

by Ian Millhiser

Spend a week listening to the right, and you’ll think the founders were all modern-day Tea Partiers. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) thinks the Constitution forbids Congress to spend federal money on programs he personally disapproves of. Justice Clarence Thomas thinks that the minimum wage, child labor laws, and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters all violate the Constitution. And of course, everyone on the right thinks that health reform is unconstitutional.

It’s enough to make you think they’re just making it up as they go along. It clearly can’t be the case that every single law cherished by progressives just happens to be unconstitutional.

Yet the reality is even worse. When the right’s view of the Constitution was ascendant 75 years ago, basic protections such as a restriction on child labor were declared unconstitutional; laws banning discrimination were unthinkable; and Social Security was widely viewed as next in line for the Supreme Court’s chopping block.

America’s right now wants nothing more than to revive this discredited theory of the Constitution. These conservatives are over-reading the Tenth Amendment, a provision of the Constitution that provides Congress’s power is not unlimited. So-called “tenther” conservatives are determined to use their twisted reinterpretation to shrink national leaders’ power to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub. They must not be allowed to succeed for three reasons:

• Tentherism is dangerous. Monopolists seized control of entire industries during tentherism’s last period of ascendance. Workers were denied the most basic protections, while management happily invoked the long arm of the law when a labor dispute arose. Worst of all, Congress was powerless against this effort. And the Court swiftly declared congressional action unconstitutional when elected officials took even the most modest steps to protect workers or limit corporate power.
• Tentherism has no basis in constitutional text or history. Nothing in the Constitution supports tenther arguments. And tenther claims are nothing new. Each of them was raised as early as the Washington administration, and each was rejected by George Washington himself.
• Tentherism is authoritarian. Health reform, Social Security, and the Civil Rights Act all exist because the people’s representatives said they should exist. The tenthers express goal is to make the Supreme Court strip these elected representatives of power and impose a conservative agenda upon the nation.

The right’s quizzical lawsuits challenging health reform are just the tip of the tenther iceberg. If these lawsuits succeed, much of America’s most cherished laws could be next against the wall.

The tenther agenda

In its strongest form, tentherism would eliminate most of the progress of the last century. It asserts that the federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty, child labor laws exceed Congress’s limited powers, and the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses. Many tenthers even oppose cherished programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Tenthers divine all this from the brief language of the 10th Amendment, which provides that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In layman’s terms, this simply means that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations—and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress’s authority.

The tenther constitution reads each of these powers very narrowly—too narrowly, it turns out, to permit much of the progress of the last century. As the nation emerges from the worst economic downturn in three generations, the tenthers would strip away the very reforms and economic regulations that beat back the Great Depression, and they would hamstring any attempt to enact new progressive legislation.

Killing health care

Congress’s authority is limited to the itemized list of powers contained in the text of the Constitution, and the right falsely claims that health reform does not make the list. Although Congress’s power is not limitless, it clearly permits national leaders to regulate the national health insurance market.

A provision of the Constitution known as the “commerce clause” gives Congress power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” There is a long line of cases holding that this provision gives Congress broad power to enact laws that substantially affect prices, marketplaces, commercial transactions, and other economic activity. And a law requiring all Americans to hold health insurance does all of these things.

Health reform opponents, faced with such a daunting case against their position, urge the courts to invent an entirely new limit on the commerce power. They believe the Constitution only permits Congress to regulate people who are already engaged in a particular kind of commerce. It does not permit Congress to require individuals to engage in economic activity they would not otherwise engage in, such as requiring uninsured Americans to carry insurance.

One searches the Constitution in vain for any language supporting such a novel theory, but the right’s anti-health care argument has another problem. It proves entirely too much.

Segregationists in the Jim Crow South explicitly demanded the right to not engage in commerce. Lunch counter operators wanted to not do business with black patrons. Employers wanted the right to not hire black workers. Realtors demanded the right to not sell certain homes to African Americans. If tenthers’ anti-health care arguments prevail, it’s unclear how the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters survives the purge.

For some tenthers, that may be the point. Indeed, some of the right’s leading jurists have long felt that laws such as the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act are unconstitutional.

Rolling back civil rights

Tentherism may be relatively dormant today, but tenthers dominated the Supreme Court from the late 1800s until 1937, when a majority of the Court finally recognized that national leaders must be empowered to solve a national economic crisis like the Great Depression.

Modern Supreme Court precedent dictates that the commerce clause gives Congress full authority to regulate the roads and railways used to transport goods in interstate commerce, as well as the goods themselves and the vehicles that transport them. The commerce clause also gives Congress the power to regulate activities that “substantially affect interstate commerce.” This “substantial effects” power is the basis of Congress’s authority to ban discrimination throughout the country.

Yet Justice Thomas claimed in three separate cases—U.S. v. Lopez, U.S. v. Morrison, and Gonzales v. Raich—that this “substantial effects” test is “at odds with the constitutional design.” It’s difficult to count how many laws would simply cease to exist if Thomas’s view of the Constitution ever prevailed, but a short list includes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, much of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the most basic worker protections such as the minimum wage, overtime laws, and the regulation of child labor.

Many of the right’s most celebrated jurists share Thomas’s views. President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Douglas Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1987—although Reagan was forced to withdraw the nomination after NPR reported that Ginsburg had a history of drug use. Ginsburg is most famous for describing tentherism as a “constitution in exile,” and for wanting to put that rightfully exiled monarch back on America’s throne.

But Judge Janice Rogers Brown may be the judiciary’s proudest tenther. She once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” And it was Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who brokered the deal that elevated Brown to the federal bench—feeding the widespread belief that McCain would have nominated her to the Supreme Court if he had been elected president.

Making elections irrelevant

The Constitution gives Congress broad authority to “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” This means that elected congressional representatives—not judges—are allowed to decide what is in the federal budget. Yet tenthers believe that the Supreme Court should seize control of the budget and eliminate spending programs that they happen to disapprove of.

The fullest articulation of this vision by an elected official occurred during Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) urged the Supreme Court during those hearings to begin “some reining in of Congress in terms of the general welfare clause,” a reference to Congress’s authority to spend money to promote the general welfare.

Coburn’s plan to wrest control of the federal budget away from Congress and give it to the Supreme Court, would not only be completely unprecedented—it is also a terrible idea. There is nothing in the Constitution to guide the Court in determining which portions of the federal budget to strike down, so the justices own personal political views would inevitably drive the budgeting process.

The Constitution already has a mechanism to allow the people to reverse spending decisions they disapprove of: elections. Conservatives are simply wrong to claim that we should shift control of America’s massive economy over to unelected judges.

Tentherism is undoubtedly a terrible idea, but it is hardly unprecedented. America has seen this movie before and it doesn’t end well.

America was not founded by tenthers

Contrary to the right’s claims, tentherism has no basis in the Constitution or its history. President George Washington himself rejected tentherism early in American history, and this radical view of the Constitution gained no traction at all until fairly late in American history.

Clarence Thomas versus George Washington

Justice Thomas is probably the leading proponent of tentherism on the federal bench, but the founding generation would actually be quite shocked by his narrow view of Congress’s power to regulate commerce. Indeed, the framers viewed this power more expansively than a majority of the justices on today’s Supreme Court in many ways.

The Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Morrison, for example, struck down part of the Violence Against Women Act. The Court acknowledged that Congress has broad authority over economic matters, but rejected Congress’s authority over “noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct’s aggregate effect on interstate commerce.” In other words, Morrison eliminates much of Congress’s power to regulate violent activity. But Morrison would probably render a law signed by George Washington unconstitutional.

President Washington signed “An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with the Indian Tribes,” which the First United States Congress had passed pursuant to its commerce power. The 1790 act reached far beyond economic matters, prohibiting “any crime upon, or trespass against, the person or property of any peaceable and friendly Indian or Indians,” including wholly noneconomic crimes such as assault or murder. Washington’s decision to sign this bill demonstrates his expansive view of the commerce power—a view that in no way resembles tentherism.

Many tenthers claim that local businesses that serve only in-state consumers are immune from laws enacted under the commerce power because the commerce clause permits economic regulation “among the several states,” This view was also rejected early in American history.

A New York steamboat owner argued in the 1824 case called Gibbons v. Ogden that Congress lacked the power to regulate New York’s internal waters. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice John Marshall rejected this claim.

In Marshall’s view, “Commerce among the States, cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior” Congress can therefore regulate “commerce which concerns more States than one,” and only those rare economic activities that have no impact on other states’ economies are beyond Congress’s reach.

Washington and Marshall’s expansive view of the Commerce power remained largely unquestioned for most of the Constitution’s first century. Indeed, the Supreme Court did not strike down a single law as exceeding Congress’s Commerce power until 1870. So tenthers like Justice Thomas will find little comfort in the early history of the United States.

Tom Coburn versus George Washington

Senator Coburn’s claim that the Supreme Court can seize control of the federal budget would also shock the founding generation. There was vigorous debate among the founders regarding the proper scope of Congress’s power to spend money, but this debate was resolved very early in the Constitution’s history, and the courts have never since questioned that Congress has broad authority over the national purse.

Recall that the Constitution gives Congress broad authority to “provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” This language denotes few, if any, substantive limits on Congress’s spending power, but James Madison argued during the Washington administration that they had a hidden meaning. Madison’s early vision of the spending power dictates that federal spending is only permitted when it advances one of Congress’s other enumerated powers, such as by building a post office or funding a war.

Madison’s chief rival in the founders’ debate over the spending power’s scope was Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary and a co-author of Madison’s Federalist Papers. Hamilton believed that Congress’s spending authority extends over a “vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition.”

The debate between Madison and Hamilton came to a tee in 1791, when Congress passed a bill that would spend money to create the First Bank of the United States. Madison protested that the bill was unconstitutional, but President Washington sided with Hamilton and signed the bill into law.

Significantly, Madison appeared to abandon his narrow view of the spending clause by the time he entered the White House in 1809. Madison signed legislation when he was president establishing the Second Bank of the United States. Madison also appointed Justice Joseph Story to the Supreme Court, one of the strongest defenders of the Hamiltonian view of the spending clause.

The debate over the spending clause’s proper scope largely laid dormant until 1936 when the Court unanimously endorsed Hamilton’s view of the spending clause in U.S. v. Butler, a case challenging a New Deal agricultural program. Even Justice James McReynolds joined his brethren in siding with Hamilton over Madison—a telling decision since McReynolds was an archconservative who voted twice to hold Social Security unconstitutional and who liked to call President Franklin Roosevelt a “crippled son-of-a-bitch.”

Tenthers like Coburn are apparently radical even by McReynolds’ standards. Moreover, as Hamilton’s early triumph over Madison indicates, the founding generation firmly rejected the tenther view of Congress’s spending power very early in American history.

The Supreme Court’s failed experiment with tentherism

The Supreme Court briefly embraced some of the tenthers views in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the founding generation’s decisive verdict against them. The Court drastically cut back on Congress’s power to regulate commerce during this period, although it has never embraced a tenther view of the spending clause. Monopolies thrived as a result. Management was largely free to engage in the most abhorrent labor practices, and national leaders were powerless to stop them.

The Court’s brief flirtation with tentherism began with its 1888 decision in Kidd v. Pearson. Because the commerce clause permits regulation of commerce “among the several states,” Kidd determined that Congress cannot regulate activities that occur entirely within a single state’s borders, even if those activities are part of an interstate industry or otherwise impact other states’ economies.
Imagine, for example, that a Wisconsin baker imports flour from Iowa, bakes bread in Wisconsin, and then ships the bread to Minnesota. Kidd would allow Congress to regulate the act of importing the flour and shipping the bread since these activities cross state lines, but not the actual act of baking the bread. The Court explained this distinction saying that Congress could regulate transportation or even sales of products across state lines, but not “manufacturing.”

It didn’t take long after Kidd was decided for industry to figure out that it had been given a gift. A sugar monopoly claimed in 1895, for example, that it was immune from federal antitrust law, even though it had “acquired nearly complete control of the manufacture of refined sugar within the United States.” The justices happily agreed because, in their view, manufacturing sugar had nothing to do with selling sugar.

Congress quickly adapted to losing its power to directly regulate the production of goods and services by simply forbidding unwanted products from being transported, and the Supreme Court permitted Congress to do so—at least when such bans were enacted to achieve socially conservative ends.

The Court upheld a law in Champion v. Ames preventing the transportation of lottery tickets. It permitted Congress to ban the transportation of prostitutes in Hoke v. United States. And Congress was allowed to ban alcohol from interstate transit in Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Railway.

The Court’s 1918 decision in Hammer v. Dagenhart, however, revealed the justices’ distinction between regulating manufacturing and regulating transportation to be nothing more than an ideological charade. The case struck down Congress’s decision to regulate the interstate transport of products produced by child labor. In dissent, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes slammed the Court for imposing their own conservative values upon the Constitution: “It is not for this Court . . . to say that [regulation] is permissible as against strong drink but not as against the product of ruined lives.”

Hammer was hardly the only example of tenther justices applying a double standard in order to achieve conservative results. These justices repeatedly upheld laws protecting management while striking down laws benefiting labor.

Tenther justices engaged in a decades-long war against labor unions beginning with the Court’s 1908 decision in Adair v. U.S. Adair struck down a law forbidding employment discrimination against union members because, in the justices’ view, union membership had nothing to do with commerce. When Congress attempted to improve working conditions for mining workers, the Court held in Carter v. Carter Coal that mining—like “manufacturing”—is beyond Congress’s power to regulate.

Yet when mine owners sued a mining union to prevent the union from using cutthroat tactics to organize mine workers, the Court in United Mine Workers v. Coronado Coal decided that Congress should be allowed to regulate mining workers after all.

The Court applied a similar double standard in two cases involving the meat and poultry industry. The Court upheld Congress’s power to regulate stockyards where livestock was kept prior to sales in Stafford v. Wallace. But the minute Congress attempted to improve the working conditions in poultry slaughterhouses, the Court held such improvements unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry v. U.S.

The Supreme Court’s much-repeated claim that Congress has the authority to regulate interstate transportation also broke down when Congress invoked this power to protect workers. The Court struck down a federal pension system for railroad workers in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad even though it is difficult to imagine a line of work more closely connected to interstate transportation.

It’s easy to mock tenther justices as purely driven by ideology, and such mockery is justified. There’s no way to defend cases that allow Congress to protect management but not workers, or that shield monopolists but punish unions. But another, equally important lesson emerges from this age of discredited jurisprudence: judges are very bad at overseeing economic regulation.

The distinction between manufacturing and transportation may seem simple enough, but it proved completely unworkable in practice. The confusion that ensued from trying to draw a rigid line between two intimately connected activities made it very easy for tenther justices to resolve cases according to their own personal political beliefs. Fine constitutional decisions invite activist judging entirely because there are plausible arguments on both sides of the questions these distinctions raise.

This is why modern commerce clause doctrine abandoned such fine distinctions, granting Congress broad discretion over economic regulation. Indeed, our democratic Constitution demands such an approach because it is simply undemocratic to turn America’s economic policy over to unelected judges who are guided by little more than their own discretion.

This is the vision Chief Justice Marshall embraced in Gibbons when he wrote that the “wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents posses at elections” are the most robust limits on Congress’s commerce power. If national leaders want to cast aside the minimum wage, allow poor children to toil in sweatshops, and eliminate Social Security and Medicare, than they have that right. But the American people must also have the power to swiftly cast such fools out of office.

Conclusion

Democracy is not easy, and American democracy has seen more than its share of hard fought battles. Today’s progressives stared down defeat time and time again to ensure affordable health care for all Americans. Civil rights era progressives combated filibusters, racism, and lynchings to ensure that America’s promise would extend to all Americans. And New Deal progressives went up against a deeply activist Court in order to give us Social Security and the most basic workplace protections.

All of these are powerful, lasting victories—the kind of victories that elected officials do not overturn if they plan on keeping their jobs.

Tenthers understand this. They understand that the American people will not stand for an agenda that would kill Social Security, civil rights, and health reform. Sadly, that is why they want to strip the American people of their power to make such decisions and give it to a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives.

About the author: Ian Millhiser is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

Source: Center for American Progress

Last week, the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons.

First, the IMF deserves a substantial share of the blame for the economic crisis that gave us big deficits in the first place. The IMF is supposed to oversee the operations of the international financial system. According to standard economic theory, capital is supposed to flow from rich countries like the United States to poor countries to finance their development. In other words, the United States should be having a trade surplus, which would correspond to the money that we are investing in poor countries to finance their development.

However, the IMF messed up its management of financial crises so badly in the last 15 years that poor countries decided that they had to accumulate huge amounts of currency reserves in order to avoid ever being forced to deal with the IMF. This meant that capital was flowing in huge amounts in the wrong direction. One result of this reverse flow was that the United States ran a huge trade deficit instead of a trade surplus.

The trade deficit in the United States was a big part of the story of the housing bubble. The trade deficit cost millions of workers their jobs. This was one of the main reasons that economy was so weak coming out of the 2001 recession. This weakness led the Fed to keep interest rates at 50-year lows, until the growth of the housing bubble eventually began to generate jobs in the fall of 2003.

The IMF both bears much of the blame for the imbalances in the world economy and then for failing to clearly sound the alarms about the dangers of the bubble. While the IMF has no problem warning about retired workers getting too much in Social Security benefits, it apparently could not find its voice when the issue was the junk securities from Goldman Sachs or Citigroup that helped to fuel the housing bubble.

The collapse of this bubble has not only sank the world economy, it also destroyed most of the savings of the near retirees for whom the IMF wants to cut Social Security. The vast majority of middle-income retirees have most of their wealth in their home equity. This home equity largely disappeared when the bubble burst. Maybe the IMF doesn’t have access to house price series and data on wealth, because if they did, it’s hard to believe that they would advocate further harm to some of the main victims of their policy failure.

The other reason that the IMF’s call for cutting Social Security benefits is infuriating is the incredible hypocrisy involved. The average Social Security benefit is just under $1,200 a month. No one can collect benefits until they reach the age of 62. By contrast, many IMF economists first qualify for benefits in their early 50s. They can begin drawing pensions at age 51 or 52 of more than $100,000 a year.

This means that we have IMF economists, who failed disastrously at their jobs, who can draw six-figure pensions at age 52, telling ordinary workers that they have to take a cut in their $14,000 a year Social Security benefits that they can’t start getting until age 62. Now that is real black helicopter material.

Author’s Bio: Dr. Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.

Source: OpEd News
Photo: -John–

By Kevin Gosztola

Another cycle of conversation on the bitter disappointment that is the Obama presidency appears to be taking place once again among liberals or progressives. Writers for prominent progressive media like The Nation and leaders in prominent progressive organizations like Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) are expressing their discontent and offering suggestions to dismayed Americans who had hoped change would actually come from the Obama Administration.

Eric Alterman of The Nation published an article recently calling the Obama presidency “a big disappointment.” Katrina vanden Heuvel, also of The Nation, suggested that people aren’t just disappointed in Obama but really wonder where this country is headed. And, Norman Solomon, on the executive board of Progressive Democrats of America, recently told Real News’ Paul Jay, “The Obama Administration is more and more moving towards policies that many who worked to elect Obama have worked to oppose in recent years.”

The emerging consensus, which has been present over the past year and a half as more and more progressives confess frustration with President Obama, is that the presidency has taken a turn away from progressivism, a turn that many didn’t expect or hoped would not occur. There are a few progressive minds who are being asked what to do next that appear willing to admit they held their nose and voted for a centrist Democrat, but an overwhelming amount continue to cling to their history of delusions and maintain Obama could have been progressive.

The consensus also religiously clings to the reality that Republicans are becoming increasingly dangerous for the country and hold that reality up as an excuse for why Obama has “failed” progressives tremendously. To them, the power of the minority has made it near impossible for any progressive agenda, any major social reforms to get through. This would be a valid argument if plenty of evidence of Democratic Party leaders allowing or quite often colluding with the toxic talk and agenda of the Republican Party did not exist.

Not extending unemployment benefits and not raising more of a fuss as Republicans obstruct the renewal of these jobless benefits, appointing Petraeus to replace McChrystal in Afghanistan and continuing a war in a country often regarded as “the graveyard of empires,” maintaining a permanent troop presence in Iraq, contributing to culture which led to the BP oil disaster by indicating renewed support for offshore drilling one month before the disaster, keeping the option of a national public-financed healthcare system off the table as Republicans cried foul about a socialist takeover of healthcare and talked death panels, refusal to advance the minor reform that labor unions have desired, the Employee Free Choice Act (pretty much the only real demand they have had for Obama), the continued use of rendition, believing the truth will endanger soldiers and lead to increased deaths and instability in the Middle East and refusing to investigate torture or release photos of the abuse that soldiers inflicted on detainees— These are just some of the victories Republicans have won from Obama. These are just some of the many examples of continuity that Republicans have enjoyed.

Progressives have gradually woken up from their hope-induced coma and begun to realize more and more the folly that they have been engaging in. They had been dithering on what to do as social movements stumbled (e.g. the antiwar movement, which Cindy Sheehan has tried to re-ignite without much success). That’s why more and more editorial writers and more and more leaders and organizers are being critical.

The questions must be asked: What level of responsibility should progressives take for the fact that they were swept up in Hope-a-Palooza ’08? How much are progressive writers, media makers, organizers, and leaders to blame for the current impact the Obama presidency has had on society, if any?

While it is uncomfortable and in some respects unreasonable to take to task the people who should be the biggest allies of social movements and, in fact, an ally of this writer (who considers himself to be progressive), the cycle with which progressives have the Left going in is incredibly destructive to the future of this country, the world and in fact the whole of humanity. The strategy and tactics of progressives increasingly look like the definition of insanity–doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.

Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen each appear in two different series produced by Real News on progressives and the Democratic Party. One set particularly addresses the dynamics between progressives and Obama and the other addresses the corporatism of the Democratic Party, which has made it about impossible for real change to occur.

Both offer a further understanding of what the role of progressives is in society. Solomon reminds progressives “the Democratic Party base is appreciably more progressive than those who get elected and that needs to be rectified. Primaries exist for a reason, they’re rarely utilized to the extent they could and should be.” Cohen expresses his belief in the idea that progressives can “take over” the Democratic Party “through social action and grassroots politics and money” just like the Republican Party did after the Eisenhower Administration.

Solomon and Cohen display faith in the tying of social movements and independent political action to electoral activity. Fundamentally, there is little wrong with this concept. The best movements understood they had to have a presence in the street and had to have an electoral arm of the struggle. But, all too often, those movements, which had presences in elections, were running on a single issue as a candidate for a smaller party that was not Democrat or Republican, an electoral strategy that Solomon and Cohen do not support.

Given the massive shortcomings of the past four decades, it is time for those who speak for progressives and who purport to know ideas on how to best move forward toward a more egalitarian, more socially responsible and less corporate-controlled country to explain why not just progressives but Americans are to believe that their so-called “inside-outside strategy” can work or should work.

Why should we who have visions of a world that the Democratic Party is not willing to push for, why should we support the efforts of groups like Progressive Democrats of America to keep all concerned, socially-minded and oftentimes left-leaning people in one big tent?

Lance Selfa writes in his book, Democrats: A Critical History, takes a close look at what groups like PDA and examines whether the left can take over the Democratic Party. He quotes PDA founder Kevin Spidel who told William Rivers Pitt, “The most important thing we do is that inside-outside strategy. Pulling together members of the Green Party, the Independent Progressive Politics Network, the hip-hop community, the civil rights community, our allies in Congress, the anti-war community. We are bringing together all the social movements within the Democratic Party under on effective tent, and we will do it better if people can contribute to our cause.”

Essentially, Spidel (and I imagine anyone who celebrates the “potential” of PDA) would like all those discontent to not let their discontent create alternatives to working with the Democratic Party. In fact, they would like people to help deter creations of alternatives; PDA did not do anything to denounce or deter the Democratic Party’s funded campaign to force Nader/Camejo off the ballots in the 2004 Election.

The examples of Dennis Kucinich’s campaigns, Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, writer Upton Sinclair’s 1934 primary victory, and Howard Dean’s eventual demise in 2004 are all bitter indications of the shenanigans and uphill battles candidates have to face as they organize and run as a Democrat. And, with Kucinich, candidates not only are forced out of the race but are tasked with the duty of herding progressives into the center of the Democratic Party and inspiring them to support a much less robust progressive agenda and much more corporate Democrat like current President Obama.

This writer is very cognizant of the dismal state of the Left. There currently exists no surefire way for any progressives, Greens, socialists, communists, Marxists, or whatever label members of key social movements anoint themselves with to win state power. Ballot access laws effectively make it a chore for candidates from parties not Democrat or Republican to run. Media corporations effectively refuse to cover politics that is not Democrat or Republican. And, the people of this country are conditioned to believe politics is only Democrat or Republican and, actually, that’s why so many Americans are angry and upset with the state of this country.

Many recognize how similar the Democratic and Republican Parties are in this country. The characterization is no longer simply that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference (as Ralph Nader has said) but much deeper. It’s that what Americans are faced with is a corporate party with a left and right wing. Or, it’s that we have a war party that splits off in a left and right direction (or something similar to these characterizations).

What is the answer? Where do we go? How willing are we to raise our expectations?

At forums all over the world like the World Social Forum, at summits organized by movement leaders all over the world and at conferences held here in the United States, there are people willing to make the cogent analyses necessary to understand the objective reality we face as a people. There are scholars and thinkers and concerned citizens and sharp, energetic organizers willing to develop and work to get this country turned around so it is no longer going in the destructive downward spiraling direction that it had been going in for decades.

But, what has to be done so this can translate into the political arena? When do social movements get to grow up and actually run this country? When leaders from social movements get to lead? And, when do we stop using the Democratic Party as a measuring stick for what’s possible in American politics?

I don’t have the answers to the problems this country faces because of the broken electoral system, the control corporations have over politics in this country, the influence that corporatism and it’s fiendish offspring militarism have over the agenda and policies of America, but I do have the unwavering interest in a better future one that my children, their children and their children and so on and so forth should be able to enjoy–a future where generations won’t have to confront the levels of contempt, exploitation and injustice toward humanity that seem to be increasing because of the policies of an elite few who run this country.

One wonders if a future focus is enough to take on the sharp contradictions of society. But, if that doesn’t push us to mature politically and socially, what will?

About the author: Kevin Gosztola is a trusted author for OpEdNews.com. He also publishes to Open Salon, The Seminal, and recently launched a blog on Alternet. He is a 2009 Young People For Fellow and a documentary filmmaker who will graduate with a Film/Video B.A. degree from Columbia College in Chicago in the Spring 2010. He co-organized a major arts & media summit called “Art, Access & Action,” which explored the intersection of politics, art and media and was supported by Free Press. He is also a member of the Media Democracy Day Think Tank in Chicago.

Courtesy: OpEd News

By Steve Burns

Since the opening of the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign has stoked our fears of those held in the prison, who have been routinely referred to as the “Worst of the worst.” After President Obama announced a plan to transfer Guantánamo prisoners to a prison within the U.S., the fear-mongering kicked into high gear and Congress capitulated, blocking funds for the transfer, based on the irrational belief that no prison could be secure enough to protect us from Guantánamo’s super-terrorists.

But some towns are now shaking off the fear and fighting back against the fear-mongers with an unusual tactic: Town-hall resolutions that invite the Federal government to relocate a released Guantánamo detainee in their town.

The campaign, organized by No More Guantánamos, has been helped by recent findings that the vast majority of those held in the prison are in fact innocent victims who had nothing to do with terrorism.

Just two weeks ago, a Federal judge, after finding that “there is no persuasive evidence to justify his detention,” ordered the release of Mohammed Hassen, a 27-year old Yemeni imprisoned by the U.S. without charges for 8 years. Hassen was the 36th detainee ordered released when a habeas corpus hearing found no evidence of ties to terrorism. As blogger Glenn Greenwald notes, 72% of the Guantánamo detainees offered a chance to challenge their imprisonment have been found innocent.

No More Guantánamos aims to tell the stories of Guantánamo’s prisoners in order to “Transform prisoners’ images in the U.S. from faceless, nameless ‘terrorists’ to human beings who deserve human rights and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.”

In two towns in Massachusetts, Leverett and Amherst, these public education campaigns have been so successful that resolutions calling for local resettlement of released Guantánamo prisoners have won passage in town-hall meetings.

The Leverett resolution, noting that “many detainees at Guantánamo have been cleared by our government of wrongdoing and have been determined to pose no threat to the United States” and “many of these detainees cannot be repatriated because they are either stateless or fear the harm awaiting them if returned to their home country” urges Congress to “repeal the ban on releasing cleared detainees into the United States” and “Welcomes such cleared detainees into our community as soon as the ban is lifted.”

Who are the detainees that the people of Leverett and Amherst hope to welcome into their communities? Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Colin Powell, President Bush’s Secretary of State, recently answered this question in a written statement in support of a lawsuit filed by one Guantánamo detainee. Wilkerson says that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93 — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken.

No More Guantánamos (NMG) encourages activists to start with a local “kickoff meeting” to discuss the plight of Guantánamo’s many innocent detainees and to introduce the idea of resettlement. After that initial step, NMG assists local groups in identifying a prisoner, finding information, telling his story, and even writing to the prisoner about their efforts. After sufficient public-education work, local activists may choose to move on to a town-hall or city-council resolution requesting resettlement of a freed Guantánamo prisoner.

What could life be like for a Guantánamo detainee newly resettled in your town? The experience of Uyghur detainees resettled to Palau and Bermuda offers one example. The Uyghurs, a persecuted ethnic and religious minority in their home country of China, came to Afghanistan in search of work, and were rounded up and sold to U.S. military officials by Afghan warlords working with the U.S. After eight years of imprisonment, the U.S. government admitted that the Uyghurs had no ties to terrorism and were no threat to the United States, but repatriation to their home country of China was not possible, given the risk of persecution by Chinese authorities. The Obama administration eventually worked out arrangements with Palau, a tiny island republic in the south Pacific, and Bermuda to relocate some of the Uyghur prisoners. Khalil Mamut, one of four Uyghur prisoners relocated to Bermuda, says, of his first year in his new home, “It has been a wonderful year. A year ago we were in Guantánamo Bay but this year, praise be to God, we are here. We have a lot of friends — some Muslims, some Christians — and they treat us as if we are Bermudian.”

Get started on your own No More Guantánamos campaign here…

About the author: Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network of Peace a Justice, a coalition of more than 160 groups that work for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability. www.wnpj.org

Source: OpEd News

Photo: John McNab

Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying, “The U.S trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to political turmoil…”. No economic issue today is more pressing than the U.S. Trade Deficit. This predicament should be America’s top priority. It is also a key reason why we have high unemployment. Yet most people in America do not understand this Silent Killer or what they can do about it. Even most economists are very defensive of our free trade policy, yet none of them can defend free trade’s 1000 pound Gorilla in the room” the U.S. yearly trade deficit. This article will outline the frightening facts and provide the reader with a number ways to make their voice heard to congress in an effort to create change on this U.S. economic crisis in favor of Fair and Equal Trade.

Here are important key facts on why the Trade Deficit now threatens our future:

1. First and foremost, there is absolutely no history that shows that any country including the U.S. can long sustain large yearly trade deficits without putting its future at risk. However, there are instances where empires have fallen due to trade deficit failures including the 17th Century Spanish Economy and a trade deficit was partially responsible for the fall of the great Roman Empire .

2. In the last 10 years the trade deficit has averaged $0.55 trillion. The U.S. Trade Deficit since 1971 is over $7.5 trillion and $6.5 trillion in just the last 20 years. By comparison, the national debt is now about $13 trillion.

3. This year the current trade deficit through May is $0.170 trillion on track for about $0.4 trillion. It’s only lower than average due to the lingering modern recession. The NAFTA (from 1993 through 2003) free trade agreement displaced a reported 879,280 jobs. Since the entrance of China, the U.S. has lost another 2.4 million jobs. The two combine for about 3.5 million total jobs lost due to the free trade policy allowing for these large deficits. This number is growing as more and more outsourcing is occurring. Last year 60% of the U.S. trade deficit was with China.

4. The free trade deficit profits have allowed foreigners to buy up America. According to the Grant Thornton report, “total assets at foreign-owned companies increased 15% to $9.2 trillion in 2005 from $8.0 trillion a year earlier and was more than three times the 1996 total of $3 trillion. Foreign-owned assets totaled just $37 billion in 1971″.

5. Foreign-owned companies in the United States have a work force of about 5.3 million, or some 3.5% of all workers. According to the last note (2005), they owned 15% of all U.S. businesses but only employ 3.5% of the workforce. Extrapolating this to 100% ownership (that we are on a crash course for) this would only equate to 25% employment in the U.S. This is our future.

6. Most of the U.S. trade deficit is with China and their ownership is the largest share of U.S. businesses and debt. Thus the U.S. is slowly being sold mostly to China from trade deficit profits dollars obtained from U.S. consumers.

7. The U.S. has a national debt crisis of about $13 Trillion. However with the massive trade deficit job losses, this author estimates lost tax revenues of about $1 trillion dollars. Thus the trade deficit contributes significantly to our national debt. Free trade is really not free!

8. We have a vicious cycle, we outsource jobs, increase unemployment, this creates tax losses, the U.S. goes further into debt from these lost tax revenues, the U.S. must then sell more treasury bonds to China and foreigners, consumers are forced to purchase more and more foreign imports with few U.S. made alternative products, this enables foreign to make huge trade deficit profits, which allows them to purchase more U.S. businesses and debt, foreign owned business pay far less taxes then U.S. equivalent businesses and hire fewer American employers, this creates higher unemployment and more tax losses, and the cycle continues.

9. Economic global greed is excessive; the U.S. free trade policy encourages foreigners to cheat as every country wants a piece of America. Well known is unethical trade deficit problems related to:

1. Currency manipulation by U.S. trading partners,
2. Excessive Job outsourcing by U.S. businesses
3. Product subsidies by foreign governments,
4. Unfair non tariff trade barriers by our trading partners, 5) Lack of intellectual property rights protection, and 6) Product counterfeiting.

10. Because of these massive trade deficit tax losses, this is like a reverse tariff that U.S. citizens must pay on trade deficit goods. These lost revenues cause increase tax programs. Every citizen must pay more taxes which means in part we are actually supporting all the unethical foreign greed issues cited above.

Finally the U.S. trade deficit is not just unethical, it is unconstitutional. The subtle reason why it violates U.S. constitutional law is fully explained at the website, CitizensForEqualTrade.org

What the reader can do. There are a number of organizations that are trying to force congress to act on the trade deficit. Here are some websites:

• CitizensForEqualTrade.org here you can sign a petition to support Equal Trade. This is the only website that is currently trying to force legislation for Equal Trade by acting on a Constitutional violation. This site believes the only way to get congress to act is by bringing this matter through the Supreme Court. Other sites below are working for fair trade. However, because of economic greed, forced Equal Trade is most likely necessary.
• Prosperousamerica.org This is the Coalition for a Prosperous America. They currently have two petitions one currently working on the issue of currency reform and the other to fix America’s economy. These petitions are worth signing as well.
• CitizensTrade.org This site supports the TRADE act for fair trade.
• Americaneconomicalert.org This site has numerous articles on the issues of the trade deficit. It is very educational.

All the above organizations need your support. Please take the time and support these petitions.

About the author: Dr. Alec Feinberg is the founder of Citizens for Equal Trade (CET). He is a reliability economist and author of the book, The Truth of the Modern Recession, Root Causes and Reliable Solutions and inventor of Reliability Economics for the layperson, congress people and economists. He is also on the steering committee for the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA).

Source: OpEd News

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Get ready for the BP bailout debate. As the most hated company in America led by the most despised CEO in business continues its systematic deceptions about the magnitude of the catastrophe, its systematic secrecy and threats of reprisal against employees who speak the truth in public and its systematic blockade against reporters seeking the basic facts, get ready for the mother of all political debates.

When the full damage of the oil is calculated, and the full payment of restitution is required and the full consequences of lawsuits are understood and the monetary consequences of such enormous personal and economic misery are realized, BP will tell us that we face the choice of BP going bankrupt and being unable to pay its debts or receiving a government bailout so it can meet its obligations from the damage it has done.

We will be told that BP is too big to fail.

Prediction: Before the rooster crows another 60 times, BP will be seeking a government bailout. If you thought the Wall Street bailout debate was nasty, wait until you see the BP bailout debate.

There should be NO bailout of BP paid for by ANY taxpayer, period, end of discussion, over and out. If necessary there should be a fund paid for by all of the oil companies doing offshore drilling, as the price of their doing business off our shores and as the incentive to make sure this does not happen again.

The economic damage and the political fallout have only begun. If the pictures of oil spewing from pipes are unsavory, and the pictures of angry citizens and dead pelicans are unsavory, watch what happens when we begin weeks of television news of the D-Day invasion of poison oil landing on the beaches of the American Normandy.

It would serve Washington right if the rivers of poison meet the loop current and the Gulf Stream and end up in the river of the Potomac so official Washington can see, taste and smell what has only begun for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Let us hope this does not happen, though it very well could.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, every video stream and internal memo that reveals the truth, whatever it is, about the size of the ocean of poison.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, the exact amount of chemical dispersants that are polluting our land, water and people.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should agree, that all restrictions against media be ended and all reprisals against media should be stopped, and if rights are being violated, those responsible should be prosecuted.

The sooner the truth comes out, the safer our people will be.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, the exact and complete chemical composition of the dispersants so Americans do not wake up on some future morning with news about deformed babies or cancerous disease.

Mark my words: The abuse of dispersants, the composition of which are being kept secret, in amounts that are probably infinitely larger than what is being disclosed, create the potential for a grave, extreme and mortal health catastrophe whose pain and cost are not even remotely understood today.

What does it tell us that these secrets are being kept from the people even today? It tells us that the damage is far more than realized, and that the cost is far greater than understood, and that the BP bailout is far more likely than realized.

With BP delaying so much payment to so many people already, heaven help the victims when the payments due mount from the millions that are currently unpaid today, to the billions of dollars that will be due tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, mark my words, the BP bailout issue will soon reach the front pages and television screens, and our answer to the “bailout for BP” idea should be simple:

No, no, no, no, no.

Let the cash-rich oil industry pay the full cost, not the hard-hit taxpayers of an outraged nation who have been slammed too hard, far too often.

About the author: Brent Budowsky is a regular columnist on thehill.com. He served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management.

Source: OpEd News

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Entirely dispelled are any lingering doubts about the disdain Israel has for international law. Before going any further, just reflect upon all the apologist responses to the global condemnation of the Mediterranean Massacre. All the toadies that carry the water for the Zionist despotism are predictable and deceitful. Based on a foundation of sand their mantra ignores the facts and rests on false axioms.

NeoCon Glenn Beck is a devoted cheerleader of Zionism. Making things worse, he is also a Dispensationalist. Departing from the solid research on condemning the failed philosophy of Progressivism, Beck demeans his audience with a false history of Palestine and the nature of the Israeli state. His religious doctrine regarding Israel makes him an apostate. Duping well intentions, but ill-informed viewers into accepting the crimes of Israel, as the will of God, is why he is a Trojan horse.

He is just one of the countless buffoons or propagandists who earned their place in the media circus by proving their loyalty to a gang of criminals. Israel is no ally of the United States. Zionism is not a victim. “Likudnick” Benjamin Bebe Netanyahu is no friend of America. Most importantly, not all Jews are Zionists or even support the state of Israel.

In NeoCons are a terminal disease, a profound question is asked.

“There is no canon within our heritage that deems that America has the responsibility to foster the interests of any other foreign country. However, that is exactly the goal of the NeoCons. The question is simple; can you name one such scalawag scoundrel that would not trade the safety and treasure of our country for the benefit of the Zionist despotism of Israel?”

Israel uses Christian-Zionists as ignorant tools and treats them as useful idiots. They are the most pathetic of the lot. From, How much fun is this war?

“But the best are the holy rollers who are infested with Dispensationalist Dementia, who grovel at the feet of Zionists, in the name of their Savior, while they bolster a Likud Central Committee Party for a Greater Israel policy and can’t wait for the third temple to be erected. Christ’s words are all too easily ignored if they conflict with devotion to their false doctrine. “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” – Jesus Christ, John 17:15, NAS”

A blockade is an act of war. Defenders of Israeli’s arrogant attack on an unarmed flotilla of humanitarian stores, claim the Israeli Defense Force was acting in self-defense. Pirates are not commandos. Henry Morgan, knighted and made Lieutenant Governor to Jamaica for his privateer adventures, served the expansion of the British Empire. So too Netanyahu’s, “Greater Israel” designs applied their military arm to keep their colonial concentration camp in check.

Only tactics and sophisticated technology separates the IDF air assault from the crude violence of Somali pirates. These third world criminals kill for money, while Zionist use American weapons and money to expand their genocide on an entire race and expand their geographic reach in the region.

Where was the international outrage back in 1981 when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor? The Untied States was complicit then and are far more culpable today with joint plans for a replay air strike, this time on Iran facilities. Since Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, why should the world accept their building of a nuclear arsenal with impunity?

Zionists have no compunction from violating laws, moral principles and human rights.

The Guardian Newspaper recently reports: “Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower who exposed Israel’s nuclear arsenal to the world and paid for it with 18 years in jail, mostly in solitary confinement, was sent back to prison today for a new three-month sentence.” The reason – unauthorized meetings with foreigners. Amnesty International said he had been living under a “draconian” military order and was now considered a “prisoner of conscience”.

Today Mordechai Vanunu is the modern day Alfred Dreyfus, but where is his Émile Zola? If Iran wants an atomic deterrent to counter the nukes from the Dimona reactor, what Talmudic authority gives contemporary Elders of Zion the protocols to ferment a nuclear winter?

With the sneak attack record of pre-emptive strikes, how can the planet allow Israeli retention of military nuclear weapons?

The Samson Option still threatens the world. Israel’s nuclear arsenal and American foreign policy makes a compelling case that the steady and clandestine growth of an Israeli nuclear industry proved so successful that Israel was able to coerce several U.S. administrations into doing its bidding. “Once Israel had the Bomb, they are in a position to bring it all down on everyone if ever they feel cornered. It’s the ultimate in Israeli security as a nation-state, if not for the security of humankind.”

The significance of the attack upon the humanitarian flotilla is that Israel proves itself as a rogue state and a threat to the entire civilized world. One does not have to be pro-Palestinian or anti-Semitic towards Jewish people to condemn Israel. The analogy that the government of the United States has forfeited its moral authority seems minor in comparison to the depths of pathological insanity that is the sociopathic state of Israel.

Hijacking on the high seas cannot be an acceptable foreign policy. Yet, it is business as usual for the self-selected chosen masters of the Middle East. Religion clouds the politics. This is not a Jewish issue. Squarely, Zionist power underpins and threatens the region and the entire world. Pirates usually want to take the booty, but when their invasion seeks to control the territory and inflict permanent rule, you get perpetual warfare. The Zionist buccaneers have created their own Port Royal.

Few pirate states are able to withdraw from their piracy, with little legal retribution. The pillage and moral decay that is intrinsic in the Zionist mindset awaits universal condemnation and eternal justice. There will be no easy life, Henry Morgan, retirement for Israel as long as malefic supremacy is the model for their corrupt society.

About the author: Sartre is the pen name of a reformed, former political operative. This pundit’s formal instruction in History, Philosophy and Political Science served as training for activism, on the staff of several politicians and in many campaigns. He is a past columnist for Ether Zone.

Sartre can be reached at: BATR@batr.org We invite you to visit his website at: BREAKING ALL THE RULES.

Published originally at EtherZone.com

Photo: gageskidmore

by Larry Pruett

At first glance, the answer seems simple. Most people would say “yes.” And why not? Our politicians are constantly talking about our democracy, the Media shows us “Democracy in Action”, and we always hear about “spreading Democracy” around the globe.

However, we are NOT a Democracy.

We are a Representative Republic.

Most people today do not understand the difference, but it is crucial. In a pure Democracy, the majority decides things. Each issue would be voted on by the masses, and the majority would win. So, should we have a new tax on the “rich?” Everyone cast your vote. Since the majority of people do not fall in the “rich” category, the vote would probably pass and our economy would be damaged.

I explain this to my kids like this. There are seven people in our family. That means that if we were a Democracy, four of us could agree on something and the rest of the family would have to go along. So, if my 2-year old and 4-year old (who’s votes can easily be bought with marshmallows) go along with two older kids, they could outvote my wife and I every time. This would mean sugar for breakfast, lunch and supper, no chores, no school, and a day filled with video games and movies. There is no extra weight given for position, age, experience, wisdom, or even Biblical authority — everyone has an equal vote in a Democracy. Of course, we do not exercise democracy in our home, but my kids can keep dreaming about it.

In a republic, the people elect representatives to make laws, supposedly for the best of the people. If the people don’t like the way the representative handles himself, they have the right and duty to simply vote him out during the next election cycle.

But here is the biggest difference about these two forms of government. In a Democracy, the government is run on the feelings of the majority at that time. In a republic the government is based upon the rule of law.

Noah Webster, in his History of the United States, said that “the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible.” This means that in a Republic, the rule of law will always prevail. Murder will always be against the law because the Bible has already established it as against God’s law. In a Democracy, however, there is always a chance that the majority’s feelings may be swayed to change so that murder could become legal.

America has gradually declined toward democratic principles in the last century. What would the founders think of this? I’ll have to answer that next time. Look for my next article entitled, ‘What Did the Founders Think About Democracy’!

About the author: Larry Pruett is the owner of Stepping Stones Company, a Christian organization dedicated to the preservation of our national heritage. His website is www.1776web.com, where you can find much more information on the founding of the United States of America. He also owns an online bookstore, Ancient Paths Christian Bookstore. You could see his store at: www.ancientpathsweb.com or www.stores.ebay.com/ancientpathschristianbookstore.

Source: www.goarticles.com

By John LeBoutillier

1) Iran—and the combined two stories of their nuclear program and their ongoing new revolution—will be the dominant news story of the year.

1a) There is a strong likelihood that the Islamic Republic itself will fall in 2010. That is what is now at stake. Not regime change—the switching of one office-holder for another within the same system—but total governmental change.

The young have decided the aging and corrupt and obscenely-rich mullahs—and the rigged governmental system which sustains them—can no longer stand. That is why these brave young people are willing to risk their lives on the streets each day facing the thug Basij militia and the VEVAK security forces, both of which—on direct orders from Ayatollah Khamenei—specialize in using terror to quash dissent.

The development of the Iranian nuclear program is a key factor driving the fomenting revolution. As the West draws a line for Tehran not to cross, the Iranian people—already disaffected by last June’s rigged elections—see their government pursuing a policy that will isolate Iran from the West and cause terrible economic dislocation for the Iranian people for years to come.

Yet the Ahmadinejad Government insists on racing to join the Nuclear Club, figuring that once they’re in the club the other club members will treat them differently. Tehran reads history this way: if Saddam had had nukes, no 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Thus, if Iran has ’em, no US or Israel aggression against Iran. Plus, they can bully the Saudis and other rich Arabs with their superior military power once they acquire these weapons.

So Iran is the flash-point for many stories in 2010.

Look for violence, hatred, ugliness—a passive President Obama refusing to side with these brave people fighting for their freedom—and ultimately for the Hand of God. “What,” you ask?

Yes, the Hand of God is at work here. Go back to 1989—the fall of the Berlin Wall followed by the almost-totally-peaceful end of the Soviet Union, the “focus of Evil in the modern world,” as President Reagan called it. How could the dreaded, all-powerful Soviet Empire crumble—without a shot being fired—if it weren’t for God’s intervention, perhaps beginning with the mysterious selection of Pope John Paul II followed by the creation of the Solidarity Movement in Poland?

Indeed, God triumphed over pure man-made evil in that situation.

And perhaps it will repeat itself in Iran—only this time there is already more bloodshed. There are also reports that some Iranian police are refusing to fire on demonstrators—always a sign of the regime’s imminent loss of power.

Pray for the creation of a Persian democracy.

So—in sum—Iran is the nation to keep our eye on in 2010.

2) Obama: is going to decline even more in the polls.

The jobs situation will continue to rot away any good feeling about his Administration. There will be more and more Americans who see him as a political fluke, in-over-his-head, incompetent, too liberal and without a clue about how to get the economy back on track. His approval rate will drop to 42%.

3) The Health Care Bill—whatever version ends up passing—will grow even more unpopular as time goes on.

Why? Because from the day the bill becomes law, every medical billing or prescription problem or denied service will be blamed on “ObamaCare.” We all have these medical glitches—but now they will be “Obama’s fault.”

4) The Democrats are going to get creamed in the November mid-term elections.

Some big names may go down. Chris Dodd in Connecticut is on the Endangered Species list; so, too, is Harry Reid. One or both will lose. Former GOP Congressman Rob Simmons in Connecticut will defeat Dodd.

In the House, there will be a strong anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi push back in November. The GOP might not quite take back control, but they will narrow the gap and force the House back toward the political center.

5) In New York, Andrew Cuomo will be elected Governor.

But the Republicans will recapture control of the State Senate.

6) In Florida, Governor Charlie Crist will lose to Marco Rubio in their GOP Senate primary.

7) John McCain will sweat all through the year about his August Arizona GOP primary.

Former Representative J.D. Hayworth will run a tough race against McCain. If the immigration issue is pushed in DC by Obama—as he has said he would—then McCain will lose his primary by either flip-flopping on the issue or sticking with his pro-amnesty position. (McCain losing his own party’s primary less than two years after being that party’s presidential nominee would be a huge story. It will happen if the illegal immigration issue is back on the front page.)

8 ) In California, it will be former Governor—and former every-other-job-in-the-state—Jerry Brown versus GOP newcomer and former EBAY Boss Meg Whitman for Governor.

She has tons of money; he is known throughout the state from his four decades in public life. It is a Democratic state reeling under financial collapse—with a GOP Governator who hasn’t gotten the job done.

Brown can be testy and nasty; Meg is nice—and a bit boring and stiff.

He has been around a long time; she hasn’t even voted in most elections—a shocking revelation for someone who wants to run the biggest state after never holding a governmental position before. You can bet Brown will make a big deal out of this. It hurt Caroline Kennedy here in NY a lot. Not voting is inexplicable.

He can argue that he knows every nook and cranny of state government; she can argue that she will make Sacramento run like a business.

He is Mr. Inside; she is Mrs. Outside.

Who wins?

Meg Whitman—by 3 points.

And right away you will hear talk of her for Veep on the 2012 GOP ticket. After all, California is 55 Electoral votes – one fifth of the total you need to win.

9) The economy will grow in 2010—but not quickly—and not enough to reverse the horrendous 17.5% underemployment picture.

The perception of the bad economy will not change in 2010—or 2011—and thus Obama and incumbent Democrats will suffer greatly for it. He better pray that this perception changes by 2012, or he is a goner.

10) Al Qaeda will soon implant bombs right into the abdominal cavity of suicide bombers—and equip cell phones as detonators.

Can our airport screening machines look into someone—like an X-Ray machine—to see these objects? (Hey, if drug cartels use people as mules with swallowed condoms filled with heroin and cocaine, why won’t their terrorist cousins do the same thing?)

11) On The Right: Sarah Palin will continue to dominate the scene in 2010—and suck all the oxygen away from other potential 2012 GOP candidates.

Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Barbour and any others just get no coverage whatsoever compared to her.

11a) The next Conservative Leader will emerge onto the national scene in 2010. He is not prominent as of today.

11b) The Tea Party will be more popular than the Republican Party.

11c) If this new Conservative Leader can harness the passion of the Tea Parties and the built-in structure of the GOP, he can sweep the nation in 2012.

12) A controversial new book will emerge in 2010 that will reveal the truth about Obama’s past.

The publisher will be under pressure to quash the book. The so-called Mainstream Media will attack this book. But when it finally comes out, it will sell over a million copies hard-cover and several million in paperback—and the truth about many of the controversies in Obama’s past will finally be revealed.

Happy 2010 to you all!!!

About the author: John LeBoutillier is a former U.S. Congressman and a nationally recognized political commentator. He has been a frequent guest on many national talk show programs and is author of the book Harvard Hates America. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

John LeBoutillier can be reached at: johnlebout@johnlebout.com

He keeps an archive of his articles at: JohnLeBout.com

Published originally at EtherZone.com
Photo: sean808080

Why should Congress enact comprehensive immigration reform in the current economy? Is legalizing undocumented immigrants really the best solution? How will legalizing undocumented immigrants affect native workers in the United States? Angela Maria Kelley, The Center for American Progress’ VP for Immigration Policy and Advocacy argues that the current weak economy makes it all the more vital for the United States to enact comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes undocumented workers.

Transcript:

Why should Congress enact comprehensive immigration reform in the current economy?

Frankly, because of today’s weak economy, it’s exactly why we should enact comprehensive immigration reform. If we take the 7-8 million workers that are here without status, and we require them to requester, to pay taxes, and to work, then what we will have is 1.5 trillion dollars in economic growth over 10 years. CAP has released a paper with the Immigration Policy Center that’s been put together by an economist from UCLA that shows that we’ve got these workers here that are already here, that are already working, and they’re getting legal status will enable them to earn more money. It will lift both native-born and immigrant workers’ wages. And frankly, it will help out the economy back on track.

Is legalizing undocumented immigrants really the best solution?

The reality is that we have 12 million people living here without status; 7-8 million of them are workers. Their presence, without legal status, means that an unscrupulous employer can hire them, can pay them less, and not hire a person who is here legally, not hire a U.S. citizen, not hire an authorized worker. So what are our options? One option is we could try to deport everybody, and CAP’s research on this shows that that would cost over 40 billion dollars a year for five years, for a total of over 200 billion dollars–not a wise use of our dollars. It’s not realistic to deport that many people. What makes a lot more sense is to require these people to register, to come forward, and work. And through their work, they will make more money, they’ll make investments in the community, and there won’t be this pool of workers that bad guy employers can turn to and not hire a U.S. worker. Simply, it will level the playing field in a way that currently doesn’t exist right now.

How will legalizing undocumented immigrants affect native workers in the United States?

Legalizing undocumented immigrants is a win for native workers and for immigrant workers. It puts immigrant and native workers on a level playing field. Right now, native workers are disadvantaged by the fact that there are so many people working here without papers and unscrupulous employers who take advantage of them and pay everybody less than they deserve. Look, in today’s economy what we need to do is pull out al the stops. We need to do everything we can to stimulate economic growth. If we legalize the people who are already working; if we require them to register, pay taxes, make sure that we know they’re playing by the rules, we will generate 1.5 trillion dollars in economic growth over 10 years. That’s not chump change. That’s money that our country needs. What’s the alternative? If we deport 12 million people; if we deport all of those workers, then what we have is a cost to the economy of 2.5 trillion dollars. We can’t afford to lose that money. What we need to do is to legalize workers to make sure that they benefit our country, our economy; that they pay taxes; and that there’s an even playing field for U.S. workers that are trying to get back on their feet.

Source: Center for American Progress

By Chuck Baldwin

According to an obscure report in the European Union Times (EUTimes.net), “Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued an order to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to ‘begin immediately’ increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

“According to these reports, Obama has had over these past weeks ‘numerous’ meetings with his war council abut how best to manage the expected implosion of his Nation’s banking system while at the same time attempting to keep the United States military hegemony over the World in what Russian Military Analysts state is a ‘last ditch gambit’ whose success is ‘far from certain.’”

The EU Times article continues by saying, “To the fears of Obama over the United States erupting into civil war once the full extent of the rape and pillaging of these peoples by their banks and government becomes known to them, grim evidence now shows the likelihood of this occurring much sooner than later.”

The Times story goes on to say that there are “over 220 million American people armed to the teeth and ready to explode.”

The Times article concludes by saying, “Though the coming civil war in the United States is being virtually ignored by their propaganda media, the same cannot be said of Russia, where leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin has long warned that the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the US is heading for collapse.”

Many of us would be inclined to pooh-pooh such a story, but then there is this column from Bloomberg.com entitled “Arming Goldman With Pistols Against Public,” written by Alice Schroeder. According to Ms Schroeder:

“‘I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,’ said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.”

There is no doubt that the American people have good reason to despise these international banksters epitomized by Goldman Sachs. Even one of Goldman’s poster-boys, Henry Paulson, US Treasury secretary and former Goldman CEO, admitted that the American people were fed up. Schroeder quotes Paulson as saying, during testimony to Congress last summer, “[People] were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

“… senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.”

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

Schroeder correctly opines, “There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.”

Schroeder concludes her column by saying, “And if the proles [proletariat: plebs, working class, peasants] really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms.”

So, do Wall Street and Russian analysts know something that we don’t know? Is this why George W. Bush initiated USNORTHCOM to begin with? Is this why Barack Obama is beefing up USNORTHCOM? This would help explain the reports of all those potential detention camps that have been constructed (including the abandoned military installations that have refurbished security fences, guard towers, etc., around them). Has the American people’s disgust with these crooks and thieves within the federal government and Wall Street reached a boiling point?

There is no question that people are angry, and for good reason.

The fraudulent financial policies of the Federal Reserve and its lackeys in the White House and Congress have literally bankrupted the country. Real unemployment is most likely over 20%. Taxes (along with costly fees, regulations, restrictions, penalties, mandates, etc.) at every level are going through the ceiling. America’s jobs have been outsourced. Barack Obama continues G.W. Bush’s irresponsibility, digging America deeper and deeper into foreign entanglements, at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. The IRS continues to harass and harangue honest citizens, squeezing them like the proverbial turnip. And now, add the insanity of a global climate treaty being hammered out in Copenhagen, and a universal health care bill being rammed through Congress, and the outlook is even gloomier.

I feel very comfortable in saying that the usurpations of power, the encroachments upon liberty, and the arrogant tax-and-spend policies emanating from Washington, D.C., and Wall Street these days are far more egregious than what George Washington and the boys were enduring in 1775-76 at the hands of the British Crown. There is no doubt in my mind that if Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Sam Adams were alive today, they would have given cause for the Goldman Sachs banksters to retreat to their bunkers years ago!

The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists

The fact is, we do need a revolution! But not a revolution of anarchy and pitchforks. (The history of France should be ample evidence of the futility of this strategy.) We need a revolution of the individual states: to reclaim their sovereignty and fight for the liberties of their sovereigns (We the People). That is exactly what our forefathers did in ’76.

America’s founding document (the Declaration of Independence) declares that our states are “free and independent.” And so they are. We are not “one nation” with one all-powerful central government. We are a confederation of nation-states, united in a voluntary union, with each State reserving to itself the power and authority of self-determination, and ceding to the federal government limited, specifically delineated duties and limitations — limitations that have been totally ignored to the point that, for all intents and purposes, our once-great constitutional republic has been thoroughly expunged. Therefore, it is NOW time for the states to stand up to this meddlesome, every-growing tyranny that is known as Washington, D.C., and defend the rights and liberties of their citizens!

What Dr. Ed Vieira (an attorney with four earned degrees from Harvard, who has successfully argued cases before the US Supreme Court) wrote a few weeks ago should serve as a template for every State governor and legislature that truly cares about liberty. See Ed’s column at:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin201.htm

As Vieira says, the states should resurrect their militias. Many — if not all — states have the legal authority for such entities in their constitutions. In some states they are called the State Guard. Some plainly use the word “militia.” Whatever they are called, they need to be activated. And all that is necessary for this to be accomplished is the order of the governor. It’s that simple!

And as Vieira said, states need to adopt an alternative currency–including, and most especially, gold and silver. In other words, they need to develop their own private economies, complete with their own banks and exchange mediums. They also need to reject the multinational agribusiness and develop their own in-State agricultural and energy businesses.

I would dare say that the first State that determines to follow Vieira’s sagacious counsel (and rumblings of this have already begun in states such as Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, New Hampshire, Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, etc.) would have so many liberty-loving patriots flock there that its economy would explode with prosperity — resulting in a domino effect of many other states following suit — and the revolution that this country so desperately needs would indeed take place. Furthermore, such a revolution would be constitutional, lawful, moral, and, yes, in compliance with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.

In the meantime, is Barack Obama really worried about civil war? He might be. It is my observation that Washington politicians and bureaucrats are the most paranoid people on the planet. The problem is–as with most power-hungry Machiavellians–their paranoia often translates into more oppression and less liberty for the citizenry. And if this is true, it simply means that the states need to hurry up and do what needs to be done.

© Chuck Baldwin

Courtesy: www.chuckbaldwinlive.com

Obama meets Bush at 2006 signing of legislation

by Chuck Baldwin

Now it’s Barack Obama’s war. After campaigning against “George Bush’s War” in the Middle East, Obama has escalated that war. By transferring thousands of America’s forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, and by sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, the liberal Democrat has demonstrated that his administration is not so different from that of his “conservative” Republican predecessor.

While I was crisscrossing America during the campaign season last year, I repeatedly predicted that no matter who won the White House, John McCain or Barack Obama, neither would end the war in the Middle East. Many Democrats tried to argue with me, saying they knew Obama would end the war. Now they know I told the truth.

During his speech at West Point in which he announced the war’s escalation, he said, “[T]he Taliban [is] a ruthless, repressive and radical movement.” What he (or John McCain or George W. Bush) never bothers to tell you is that this is the same Taliban that the US government SUPPORTED, back when it was fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Desperate Lands: The War on Terror Through the Eyes of a Special Forces Soldier

Obama also said, “We are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end.” That is a lie! US forces will stay in Iraq indefinitely. Obama has no more intention of bringing all US troops out of Iraq than he does bringing them home from Afghanistan. Beyond that, there are more private contractors (read “mercenaries”) operating in Iraq than US troops. And this will likely be the case in Afghanistan, as well.

But not only did Obama escalate the war in Afghanistan, he made it clear that he is prepared to extend the war into Pakistan. Obama’s speech was laced with references to Pakistan. Examples:

“Our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

“Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” (Note: the latest reports state that there are no more than 100 al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.)

“We need a strategy that works on both sides of the [Afghanistan-Pakistan] border.”

Obama even intimated that he was prepared to extend the war well beyond Pakistan. He told the West Point cadets, “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends WELL BEYOND Afghanistan and Pakistan.” (Emphasis added.)

Just how far beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan Obama intends to extend the war he did not say, but there is no question he is fully prepared to broaden the war even further.

Obama even had the unmitigated gall to criticize the Afghan government for being “hampered by corruption, the drug trade.” Need I remind readers that for all its faults, when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, there was virtually NO DRUG TRADE coming out of Afghanistan? For all intents and purposes, the Taliban destroyed the drug business in Afghanistan. Opium and drug production only returned to Afghanistan after US forces displaced the Taliban. In fact, drug production in Afghanistan takes place right under the noses (no pun intended) and with the passive compliance of US forces.

But there is an even more evil and sinister motive for perpetual war than drug smuggling: perpetual war is a tool of globalists to enslave us!

Under the rubric of the “war on terror,” Big Government elitists are able to dismantle the constitutional safeguards of our freedom. Without 9/11 and the “war on terror” there would be no Patriot Act, for example.

Remember, the Patriot Act was first proposed during the Clinton administration, but a recalcitrant Republican Congress refused to approve it. But with a Republican in the White House (G.W. Bush), those same Republicans easily passed the Patriot Act into law. And to show you how this partisanship stuff works, those same Democrats who tried to pass the Patriot Act in the 90s (called by a different name, of course), voted AGAINST the Patriot Act when proposed by Republicans in the early 2000s. And since we’re on the Patriot Act, don’t hold your breath waiting for a Democratic Congress or the Democrat Barack Obama to expunge it.

Now think it through: first, the Democrats tried to pass the Patriot Act (under a different name) and Republicans opposed it. Next, Republicans (who once opposed it) passed the Patriot Act and Democrats (who once proposed it) opposed it. Now, both Democrats and Republicans (who have both opposed and proposed it) accept and embrace the Patriot Act. And with all that political posturing and grandstanding aside, the Patriot Act is only law today because WE ARE AT WAR.

Without war, we would not have the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)–which cannot even keep uninvited people out of the White House–the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and thousands of laws and regulations that trample constitutionally protected liberties.

In the name of “War,” our government can record our phone calls, read our emails, monitor our financial transactions and movements, and even place an Army combat division (USNORTHCOM) on American soil to WATCH–OR EVEN FIGHT AGAINST–US! And some of you don’t even give it a second thought. Why? WE ARE AT WAR!

I know! I know! Obama promises to “begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.” Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that we are going to spend trillions of dollars on the war effort, send more than 50,000 troops plus thousands of independent contractors, and ship millions of tons of equipment half way around the world, and then turn around and bring them all back home IN EIGHTEEN MONTHS? I might have been born in the morning, but it was not yesterday morning!

Of course, that brings up another purpose globalists have in keeping us at war: the financial cost of waging war keeps the country in debt and keeps the Fed’s printing presses running.

Come on, folks, face it: there are many people who get “filthy, stinking” rich during times of war. If you have not read USMC Brigadier General Smedley Butler’s book, “War is a Racket,” you need to get it.

After winning the Marine Corps Brevet Medal, the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the French Order of the Black Star and TWO Congressional Medals of Honor, Butler said (as quoted in Common Sense magazine), “I spent 33 years and four months in active service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, do you really think things have gotten any better since General Butler wrote those words?

All in all, perpetual war serves two great interests: it helps the Machiavellians among us strip us of our liberties, and it helps the military-industrial complex make trillions of dollars. For these reasons, Barack Obama will do nothing to end the war in the Middle East. If anything, he will expand the war beyond Afghanistan, as he plainly suggested in his speech at West Point.

Once again, unless Americans recognize that both major parties in Washington, D.C., are persistent in serving the financial interests of internationalists (not to mention their own personal financial interests) and are more than eager to trample constitutional liberties in the process, nothing will change in our country–except that our liberties and way of life will continue to evaporate.

And as I’ve said before, I am absolutely convinced that the only way the evil machinations of the globalists now running things in DC can be thwarted is by State governments drawing a firm and determined line in the sand in defense of their liberties. And they need to start drawing that line NOW!

In the meantime, the Bush-Obama war (it was never America’s war, as it was never constitutionally declared by the people’s representatives) drags on and on and on.

© Chuck Baldwin

Courtesy: www.chuckbaldwinlive.com
Photo: commons.wikipedia.org

By Paul Richard Harris, Axis of Logic

In its basic concept, capitalism should be about people making things for other people, and making a decent wage for doing so. Then the people for whom the goods are made sell them for more than it cost to make them. Some of those sales will be to the people who made the stuff, and some will be to third parties unrelated to the manufacturing process.

Now, if I’m the guy who owns the company that makes the stuff, I’ve probably invested my own money; or I’m at least responsible for repaying funds loaned to me by someone else. That means I’ve taken some personal risk, and the reward I can achieve for assuming that risk is called profit.

So far, so good.

But it has never quite worked that way, for one reason and only one reason – greed. Economists have thousands of fancy charts and graphs to deflect us from this reality, and a litany of arcane explanations; but the simple reason is greed.

Hidden Agenda, Vol. 1 by G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature From Jekyll Island

The main problem for us, though, is that capitalism is the only choice we have. How do I know that? Because a world of experts tells me so – nearly every day. Typically, those experts are among the group most likely to benefit from having me believe this. They are the business class, along with their functionaries and apologists, who infest the universities, mainstream media, and politics. Capitalism is not a choice, they inform us; it is the proper natural condition of the world. And we are reassured that those who argue against capitalism are, well, bewildered, or confused, or maybe just plain crazy.

Capitalism is what we’re told we have; corporatism is what we really have. It’s predatory, it’s vicious, it’s driven by the overbearing impulse to manufacture crap we don’t need, to build obsolescence and short life into most of the stuff we buy. It’s driven not by those people who were willing to put their own hearts and souls into a business for which they accept the personal risks and rewards; instead, it’s in the thrall of soulless and morally insufficient corporations. The people who run those corporations are shielded from any personal risk, personal responsibility, or moral imperative. Their sole goals are to line the pockets of shareholders, and themselves.

And capitalism as we live it and practice it today is failing. So if this is the best we have, can the end for us all be very far behind?

Capitalism (even when wearing a corporatist hat) is incredibly productive. It produces a flood of goods, although no one questions whether that’s a good thing. But it is also a system that is fundamentally anti-democratic, unsustainable, and inhuman. What capitalism gives those of us in the arrogantly-named First World is lots of stuff, in exchange for any hope of progressive government, the possibility of a livable future for our children, and our very souls.

So how is capitalism anti-democratic? Well, we have to remember that democracy’s promise is that it gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the formation of public policy, rather than a mere subsidiary role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful. But capitalism is a wealth-concentrating system, and common sense tells us that when you concentrate wealth, you concentrate power. And we all understand that the wealthy and powerful dictate public policy to politicians.

Clearly, then, capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive. Average Betty may have the same number of votes as Bill Gates, but no one seriously believes she has as much influence on public and social policy as Bill.

The unsustainability of capitalism should be obvious to anyone with more than half a brain. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is the only planet we have. And all the stuff that’s on it, and in it, will eventually run out. Despite wild-eyed dreams to the contrary, this is the only place we are ever going to live, and there is nothing much we can do about the limited resources. Oh sure, some technology improvements might squeeze a little more out of what we have; but eventually it’ll all be gone. It is completely delusional not to accept this reality.

Now, capitalism may not be the only unsustainable system that humans have developed, but it’s the most obviously unsustainable and it appears to be what we’re stuck with – because there is no other way, right? Because it’s natural, and inevitable, like the air, right?

The inhumanity of capitalism is a little harder to prove, but it is rather obvious. The theory of contemporary capitalism is that we are greedy, self-interested creatures – homo economicus. Well, are we greedy? Of course we are – all of us, to some degree. But we are also capable of selflessness, of compassion. We can engage in aggressive and passionate competition, but we also have a capacity for cooperation and solidarity. So if our own acts and actions are so widely varied, why must we have the choice only of an economic system that deliberately strengthens our most inhumane traits and undermines the most decent aspects of our nature?

No matter where you look, you’ll find greed and the pursuit of self-interest. Which leads us to accept the proposition that the greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant. But that’s because we’re forced into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behaviour. It’s a circular argument – if greed and self-interest aren’t rewarded, they don’t tend to rise to the surface; where they are rewarded, it’s like leading pigs to a trough.

We appear to have lost sight of the fact that an economic system doesn’t just produce goods and services. It also produces people, because we are all shaped by our work experiences and the goods we consume. If we spend all our time and money consuming cheap crap in a desperate effort to dull the pain of unfulfilling work, where are we going to end up?

The first step in our rehabilitation is calling the capitalist system what it is: anti-democratic, unsustainable, inhuman. Once we’ve accepted that reality, it’ll make it easier to begin a move to a system that is less predatory.

It cannot be true that the only way to run this world is with a system in which the slime rises to the top while half the world lives in abject poverty. Fighting against capitalism is not crazy; struggling for a sustainable future and democratic societies is not crazy. And it is certainly not crazy to work toward holding on to our humanity.

Courtesy: AxisofLogic.com
Photo: www.commons.wikimedia.org

The federal budget deficit is at a record high, adding over $1 trillion to the national debt. Total U.S. debt now exceeds $12 trillion—not including future liabilities—and Congress will have to vote soon to let it go higher or else the Treasury will not be able to pay the interest it owes or float new bonds to take on even more debt.

Contrast that with working-class American families, who have been working hard to whittle down their debt. Every month, Americans are doing the responsible thing by cutting costs to reduce their overall burden. In the past year, despite record unemployment and a collapse of the economy, consumers still managed to knock off $200 billion in debt, bringing down their total from an unprecedented high of $2.6 trillion in the third quarter of 2008 to just over $2.4 trillion as of September 2009, according to the latest figures provided by the Federal Reserve.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to spend what it doesn’t have. Democrats want $1 trillion for “healthcare reform.” The White House wants hundreds of millions of dollars more to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan—a bloody war that has already gone on longer than WWII and Vietnam and has cost taxpayers nearly $1 trillion.

Congress is already negligent, failing to pass seven out of the 12 major appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010, including those that determine the largest budgets in Washington—the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services and Transportation. The 2010 fiscal year for the federal government actually began on Oct. 1, 2009, so bureaucrats in those agencies have been living month to month via continuing measures passed by legislators.

Cash-strapped states are also looking to the federal government for handouts to fund transportation programs and create jobs for struggling Americans. Nowhere has there been a peep about financial responsibility or any of those promised jobs.

The federal government’s debt will soon surpass the entire U.S. gross domestic product—the sum of everything American companies produce—which totals $14.5 trillion. Never before has this country seen such irresponsibility.

Courtesy: www.americanfreepress.net
Photo: heatingoilcom

By Jim Traficant

“We, the Jewish people, control America and the Americans know it.” —Ariel Sharon, Oct. 3, 2001.

Yes, folks they do! The Israelis manifest their control over America through a series of powerful lobbies. Yes, a series, hundreds of them, all under the umbrella of the parent organization known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). No one ever told you this?

AIPAC controls America with money, big money, that is funneled into the campaign funds of U.S. senators, representatives and yes, even candidates for the president of the United States.

AIPAC channels money through a number of innocently named Political Action Committees (PACS) that no one (I don’t believe anybody wants to) can trace to AIPAC—Israeli money.

As an example—XYZ PAC (for example only/not real). Sounds like it could be an educational lobby, or a science lobby—but alas, it’s money from Israel, routed to political candidates of their choice.

I can’t name all these PACS, but I suspect there are 200 or more such phony lobbies whose real purpose is to elect politicians at all levels, especially state and federal offices, who will support Israel without fail. These politicians will support Israel even when Israel is caught spying on America—yes, spying on America.

To provide background as the precursor to the official AIPAC lobby I cite an infamous Israeli spy. Check this out:

Jonathan Pollard

1. Jonathan Pollard was turned down by the CIA (after leaving graduate school) for failing a polygraph test. Pollard lied about his use of illegal drugs. He later admitted to prolific illegal drug usage between 1974 and 1978.

2. Guess what: That didn’t hurt Pollard with the Navy. He was hired as an “intelligence specialist.” The CIA refused to give the Navy any information they had on Pollard.

3. Within two months, Director Richard Haver wanted him fired on suspicion, but Pollard was only transferred to Naval Investigative Service (NIS).

4. In his new position, Adm. Sumner Shapiro ordered Pollard’s official clearance be revoked for suspicious behavior. Once again, Pollard was reassigned.

5. Pollard now complained he was being abused, and, in 1984, he received “excellent performance” reviews and was returned to Naval Intelligence. How’s that for a pat on the back?

6. Shortly after, in June 1984, documents show that Pollard “started to pass classified information” to Israel. The full extent of those crimes/info, that he gave to Israel has “never been revealed.”

7. Israel claimed that Pollard was a “rogue” without Israeli authority or knowledge. If you believe that garbage, it’s no wonder America is a puppet state for Israel. And guess what? Bingo! Israel’s memory improved—10 years later Israel admitted that Pollard was indeed working for—and with—Israel as a spy.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice

8. America asked for the return of all documents and materials that Pollard had given to Israel. Israel turned over—“a few, paltry dozen of lowly classified documents” even though our government knew that “Pollard had given Israel close to a million documents,” according to U.S. informants. Uncle Sam really shows great concern over this? I wonder why? I think you can start to figure this out.

9. Israel’s contact/handler of Pollard was withheld by Israel until finally pressured. One Aviem Selvia came forward to “satisfy” America, and then stepped down.

10. America now offered Pollard a plea agreement. In May 1986, Pollard accepted a life sentence.

11. Upon sentencing, Pollard’s wife said, “My husband and I did what we were expected to do for Israel. As Jews, we had a moral obligation to Israel.” Allegiance to Israel, not America! (I get sick reporting this to you, and you should be getting sick as well.)

12. Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Olmert all asked for Pollard to be pardoned. All of these leaders are/were prime ministers of Israel. They said, “He was only spying for Israel—set him free!”

13. “After all—Israel is America’s greatest ally.” They also said “Pollard is a dear friend of both our countries.” Some friend to America!

14. Attorney Alan Dershowitz summed it up quite pointedly—“as an American and a Jew, I am outraged at Pollard’s life sentence. Pollard pleaded guilty to spying on America and should have received a lesser sentence.” Yeah, he only spied on America! I guess that’s no big deal for Dershowitz. I always thought traitors and spies were put to death. They should be.

You see folks, it’s all about power, pure power. I say that Pollard had big, powerful American power brokers behind him from the very start.

Think again about what Ariel Sharon said again: “We, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it!”

I keep reminding you of this statement because I’m the man who’s been targeted by both Israel and America for proclaiming that “Israel has a stranglehold on American government, commerce and the media.”

I also said, “Israel has involved us in foreign wars to aid Israel expansion, bankrupts our great nation and has our kids shipped back to us in body bags.”

About the author: James A. (Jim) Traficant, Jr. was born in Youngstown, Ohio on May 8, 1941. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a well-known football star. He also received a M.S. degree from Youngstown State University in 1976. For ten years he served as executive director of the Mahoning County (Ohio) Drug Program and from 1981-1985 he served as sheriff of Mahoning County, prior to his election to the U.S. Congress as a Democrat in 1984. He was re-elected by overwhelming margins every year up until 2002 when, following his conviction on trumped up corruption charges, he was expelled from the House of Representatives. Despite his conviction and expulsion and being sent to prison for a seven year term Traficant still won 15% of the vote running for re-election to the House in the 2002 election as an independent. He recently completed a seven-year prison sentence, having refused to seek a pardon or clemency, refusing to admit to or apologize for crimes he did not commit.

Source: www.americanfreepress.net

The Congressional Black Caucus got another painful reminder that President Obama is not black President Obama. In a press interview Obama bluntly said that he would not propose any special initiatives for blacks. Obama’s sharp retort was in direct response to questions about how he’d solve a glaring problem and a glaring demand from the Caucus. The problem is the astronomical high unemployment rate for blacks, especially young black males. Latest job figures show joblessness for young black males matches and in some parts of the country tops the unemployment rate at the height of the 1930s Great Depression.

The Congressional Black Caucus demanded that Obama specifically shell out more money and formulate more programs to help the black jobless and to aid cash strapped minority broadcasters and minority businesses. The Caucus lightly saber rattled Obama with the threat of delaying or even opposing his financial regulation plan if he didn’t play ball. The Caucus is about as likely to buck Obama on the financial legislation when the final House vote is taken as the American Bankers Association is to back it. But the Caucus made its point. And so did Obama when he reiterated that he won’t propose any new programs for blacks.

Who is the Real Barack Obama?: For the rising generation; by the rising generation

Obama set that in stone from the first day of his presidential campaign. In his candidate declaration speech in Springfield, Illinois in February 2007, he made only the barest mention of race. The focus was on change, change for everyone. He had little choice. The institution of the presidency, and what it takes to get it, demands that racial typecasting be scrapped. Obama would have had no hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, let alone the presidency, if there had been any hint that he embraced the race-tinged politics of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism. The month after he got in the White House he mildly chided Attorney General Eric Holder for calling Americans cowards for not candidly talking about race.

Obama got a bitter taste of the misery that race can cause a president himself when, in an unscripted moment, he spoke his mind and blasted a Cambridge cop for cuffing and manhandling Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates. The loud squeals that he was a bigot, racist and anti police for siding with Gates bounced off the Oval Office walls. A chagrined Obama back pedaled fast and asked all for forgiveness. There would no White House repeat of the Gates fiasco.

Obama has clung tightly to the centrist blueprint Bill Clinton laid out for a Democratic presidential candidate to win elections, and to govern after he won. The blueprint required that the Democratic presidential candidate tout a strong defense, the war against terrorism, a vague plan for winding down the Iraq War, tepid proposals to control greenhouse emissions, mild tax reform for the middle class, a cautious plan for affordable health care, pro business solutions to joblessness, and make only the most genteel reproach of Wall Street.

The Clinton blueprint also required a Democratic presidential candidate to formulate a moderate agenda on civil rights, poverty, failing inner city public schools, the HIV-AIDS crisis, and the racially skewed criminal justice system in written policy statements. And then say virtually nothing about any of these things on the campaign trail. Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry followed the Clinton blueprint to the letter during their campaign and if either had won, the likelihood is they would not made these problems priority items in their White House.

Obama is tugged hard by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all vie hard to get White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests. The health care reform battle and the decision to escalate in Afghanistan or near textbook examples of this. The two dozen back door meetings Obama had with the major pharmaceuticals and private insurers at the White House in February virtually guaranteed that a big chunk of the health care reform package would reflect the interests and the wishes of the health care industry. This is the price to be paid to get their backing.

It’s the same with Afghanistan. The Pentagon wanted and demanded a huge ramp up in American ground forces in the country. Given the pressure to win the war, and the power of the military and the defense industry, Obama was in no real position to say no.

Obama’s no to the Congressional Black Caucus on black joblessness and a beef up of minority businesses has everything to do with the price of White House governance. That price is a cautious, conciliatory, and above all, a race neutral presidency.

About the author: Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010. www.earlofarihutchinson.blogspot.com

Courtesy: www.opednews.com
Photo: Mr. Wright

By William Rivers Pitt
reprinted from Truthout

A Washington-based lawyer and former political director for the Log Cabin Republicans named Christopher Barron filed papers last week to launch a group called “Draft Cheney 2012.” The group now has a web site where you can sign on to try and convince the former vice president to jump into the presidential fray next time around. “We hope,” reads the banner on the site, “that you will join our effort to convince former Vice President Richard Cheney to run for president of the United States in 2012. No other Republican leader has the stature or experience of Dick Cheney. He alone can lead the Republican coalition to victory in 2012!” There’s also another site, possibly a joke, touting a Palin/Cheney ticket in 2012.

Sure. Why not? After the madness and stupidity of the last ten years, having the political version of Gilligan and the Skipper share a ticket for the highest office in the land makes a demented kind of sense. After all, once you’ve hit the bottom of the barrel, you might as well stay and enjoy the view.

Mr. Barron appears deadly serious about drafting Cheney to run in ’12, despite the fact that the former VP and his four heart attacks publicly stated he will not run. “We know that Dick Cheney doesn’t want to run for president,” said Barron in a recent interview. “This is about convincing the former vice president that we need him to run. And I think there is only one man who is capable of bringing the entire Republican coalition together and speaking with clarity about the values that have made our party great. And that is Vice President Cheney.”

Barron is not alone in his opinion, Bill Kristol, writing some months back on his Weekly Standard blog, likewise saluted the as-yet-nonexistent Cheney 2012 banner, but with a twist. “Of course,” wrote Kristol, “everyone’s first choice for president in 2012 is Dick Cheney. But Liz Cheney’s boffo performance yesterday in the lefties’ den, MSNBC, defending sensible interrogation policies in the war on terror, surely puts her in contention for the runner-up position.”

Dick Cheney's Diary

A recent Newsweek article by author Jon Meacham further fleshed out the Cheney-should-run argument. “Why?” wrote Meacham. “Because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people. The best way to settle arguments is by having what we used to call full and frank exchanges about the issues, and then voting. A contest between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama would offer us a bracing referendum on competing visions. One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction. A Cheney victory would mean that America preferred a vigorous unilateralism to President Obama’s unapologetic multilateralism, and vice versa.”

This is quite a country we live in, isn’t it? The Republican Party, once the dominant force on the political landscape, has caved in upon itself so completely that people in that party actually think this is a good idea. The unofficial front-runners for the GOP nomination in 2012 include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who would seem to be a sane choice, save for the fact that his adherence to the Mormon faith puts him at odds with the all-powerful-in-the-primaries GOP base, which considers Mormonism to be a satanic cult. There is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose prisoner-pardon policies have made him into a one-man crime spree that includes rape and the murder of four Seattle police officers. There is former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is just slightly less qualified for the job than a sack of hair.

And now, thanks to a few fringe voices, there is Dick Cheney. The former VP is, of course, the most famous living Republican aside from George W. Bush. For eight years, he ran the Bush administration on the sneak, unleashing a campaign of fear, warfare and wild spending that has caused the very viability of this American experiment to teeter on the brink of collapse. This was the man who claimed the office of the vice president was not part of the Executive Branch because he did not want to obey the law and hand his official papers over to the National Archive. This was the man who tore the country and a fair portion of the planet apart with statements like these:

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” – 8/26/2002

“Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or to individual terrorists … The war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction.” – 12/1/2002

“Let’s talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” – 3/16/2003

“There are a lot of lessons we want to learn out of this process in terms of what works. I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise.” – 9/10/2005

It is tempting to laugh this off along with the idea that Huckabee or Palin could actually be considered viable candidates in 2012, except it isn’t funny. Dick Cheney belongs in a prison cell, not in a conversation about the presidency of the United States. That we actually have people floating his name in the first place reveals just how dark some of the corners of our politics really are. Worse, these are the people whose ideals and ideology were the dominant force in government for most of this decade, so dismissing them out of hand is a truly dangerous error in judgment.

Indeed, quite a country we live in.

About the author: William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

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