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What They've Thought
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What They Thought April 9, 2006 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
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John Adams, our second President, cautioned, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” When the United States Congress raised the current debt limit to $9 trillion, it was an act of suicide. When Richard M. Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, he let the printing presses churn out dollars backed by nothing more than the promise that the U.S. would honor our treasury bills and other debts. After World War II, America emerged as the most powerful nation on earth, economically and militarily. Challenging us was the Soviet Union, a house of cards built on the utterly flawed system called communism. Eventually, it fell apart in 1989. Aspiring to empire, the Soviets discovered how costly it is to have to maintain a huge military to ensure its subject nations paid tribute. Rome discovered this long ago. Now it is the turn of the United States of America, a nation that traditionally has shrunk from imperialism, from the maintenance of colonies, to discover that, like the former Soviet Union, it is just too easy to spend yourself into a deep hole chasing the illusion of empire. The British Empire is no more. The dream of empire embraced by the French is no more. Why, then, does America maintain a military force spread throughout the world at a cost more than the combined military spending of all other nations? Who is the new enemy? The United States has declared war on a tactic, not a nation state. We are at war with “terrorism.” Feel free to define it any way you want. Since the attack on 9-11, there has been no further attack on the United States. There have been minor attacks in Spain and Great Britain, both produced by indigenous terrorists no doubt inspired by al Qaeda. Having driven the Taliban out of Afghanistan, we turned our attention to Iraq. The United States is spending a billion dollars a month to create a democratic nation there. This adds to our constantly mounting debt. We are borrowing $80 million an hour. Past empires received tribute in return for providing security. We receive none. Having “contained” the former Soviet Union at considerable cost, we now offer a Pax Americana in which we pay the bills and other nations receive the benefits. This is particularly true of past and present United Nations peacekeeping missions. What every empire needs is an enemy. The new one is an evil ideology call Islam. The President talks of fighting “terror.” If he were honest, he would stop saying Islam is a religion of peace and identify it as the enemy. The problem with that are the more than one billion Muslims in the world. It is now the turn of some Muslims to aspire to empire or, in their case, a new caliphate with which to rule the world. It is worth checking the map to see where our combat troops are these days. The United States is militarily engaged in a region on which we depend to provide the oil we require to maintain our vast economic system. That system depends on hundreds of thousands of trucks that pick up imported goods from our ports and distributes them for sale at the local mall. Americans get in their cars and drive to those malls. We drive everywhere. Or we fly and then drive everywhere. At night our cities are ablaze with light. For that you need lots of energy. All nations require
energy. There is nothing inherently wrong in that. However, our dependency
on oil creates vulnerabilities for an empire that must maintain a huge
military to protect its access to it, keeping the sea lanes open, and
extending protection To put it another way, had Saddam Hussein been content to simply sell us oil and live in his many palaces, the United States would have left him alone. Freedom was not a priority when we purchased oil from Saddam’s Iraq. Freedom was not a priority when we did business with the Shah of Iran prior to the Islamic Revolution. We purchase oil from lots of nations where freedom is not a priority or even a reality. The mistake the Iranian leadership is making is essentially the same one Saddam Hussein made. They are threatening the American Empire’s need for oil and natural gas, the stability of the U.S. dollar, and most stupidly, its client states in the region. At home, while we fret about Iraq, Americans continue their spending binge. The housing market remains strong. Indeed, the economy appears to be growing, and unemployment is low. The catch is that Americans, in general, have very low rates of personal savings. So they refinance their homes as if they were piggybanks. They run up debt on credit cards. Only now, it’s harder to declare bankruptcy and walk away from that debt. The American Empire exists only because nations around the world continue to buy our Treasury bills. Our debt. Awash in our dollars, they purchase our assets even though we tend not to notice or care unless it is Dubai and we get scared about “port security.” Never mind that communist China runs the largest U.S. port on the West Coast or that 80% of U.S. ports are foreign owned, primarily by shipping lines. Indeed, never mind that much of what we consider “American” companies are frequently owned by foreign companies. Joseph E. Seagram & Sons is foreign owned. So is Brown & Williamson Tobacco. There’s Glaxo Wellcome Inc, MCA Inc, Zeneca Inc, and SmithKline Beecham. Japan’s Sony has large investments here. If it weren’t for the cheap goods it imports from China, Wal-Mart wouldn’t even exist and Wal-Mart is a retailer, not a manufacturer. At the end of 2004, direct foreign investment in America amounted to $1.53 trillion, an increase of 8.2 percent more than in 2003. It provides jobs for Americans. It sends tax dollars to the federal government. While Americans get jittery and scared about “port security”, they are oblivious to the fact that foreign investors own and operate U.S. power plants, chemical facilities, and one out of every five oil refineries and natural gas facilities. The American Empire exists because many foreign nations and people in those nations believe that this is a good place to do business. Snubbing them as we did with Dubai Ports is probably a very bad idea. No, they’re not all angels, but neither are we. Nor can we continue to borrow and spend at the present rate. We can’t continue to look to the federal government to provide us cradle-to-grave insurance against bad things happening or to pick up the tab for hospitalization, prescription drugs, college loans, guarantee home mortgages, and the myriad other politically “earmarked” programs that shake the American money tree every hour of every day. Despite much about America that foreigners find alluring, there are many nations led by those who harbor a deep resentment and even a hatred of America. They want the Euro to replace the Dollar. They want to raise the price of the oil and natural gas we need to function. They harbor those who want to keep sending the billions in illegal narcotics we consume. And they know that the more money we have to spend on armies, navies and air power, the more parts of America we will have to sell to pay for them. Since 9-11 Americans have had a bad case of the jitters. An attack on the homeland may be the least of their worries. In fabled New Orleans, the motto was “Laissez les bon temps rouller” translated as “let the good times roll.” And then their neglected levees broke. |
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R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Charlie Sheen likes prostitutes. On March 20th, the aforementioned actor appeared on the Alex Jones radio show to discuss his thoughts on 9/11. He said he didn’t believe that a plane hit the Pentagon, and added the Twin Towers looked like they were imploded. And the best response anyone could come up with was to say he was nuts and likes prostitutes. Interesting. Not that I’m arguing the guy’s predilection for hookers here. I have no doubt that the man who once played Wild Thing Vaughn likes paying for sex from time to time. It’s just that that’s totally irrelevant to his 9/11 theories. Bringing it up seems like a specious way of proving a plane ever hit the Pentagon. So why is that? Could it be because there’s no other way to prove it? As crazy as I’m sure this will sound, a number of Americans — and people all over the world — believe, on the basis of questions such as the one I just posed, that 9/11 wasn’t the work of Arab terrorists, but rather an inside job by the U.S. government. The motive? Amongst other things, to swindle us into invading Iraq. Now, I’m not saying you should believe this theory. And I’m not even saying I believe it myself. But just consider it for a moment. Think a few things over before ruling the whole theory out. First off, Americans have never seen footage of a plane hitting the Pentagon. Security cameras supposedly captured it on film, but nobody’s seen it, because the feds have kept it to themselves. All we’ve ever seen is the aftermath: just a giant, smoldering crater… with no tracks on the ground… and no visible signs of an airplane… Some people believe a missile caused the damage. You might think this is nuts, but absent the footage, who could disprove it? Then there’s Charlie Sheen’s implosion theory. This one’s tougher to swallow. After all, we’ve seen the footage for this one — we know planes hit the Twin Towers. Yet, as skeptics point out, if you watch the footage closely, you’ll notice a series of small explosions causing structural damage down the sides of the buildings — right when the debris starts to fall. This is consistent with controlled demolitions. And a number of folks in New York reported bombs going off that day. Could it be the Twin Towers were wired to crumble? Could it be the planes we saw only told us half the story? Again, I’m not saying you should believe that’s the case. Nor am I saying you should believe 9/11 was an inside job. But there are reasonable questions that haven’t been answered yet. And at this point, you shouldn’t really know what to believe. All things considered, it’s easy to see why folks would suspect the worst here. A number of men in the Bush administration pushed for war in Iraq before 9/11, and pushed for it afterwards — in spite of Iraq not attacking us. This alone doesn’t prove a conspiracy. But the fact that the White House likes secrecy as much as Charlie Sheen likes hookers doesn’t exactly help. Since 9/11, the Bush team has implemented a number of policies — such as torture, domestic spying, and the capture of enemy combatants — all from behind closed doors. Toss in two controversial elections, and tie it all together with the “Unitary Executive” theory (which effectively gives the president power to rewrite laws during wartime), and it’s no wonder people have their suspicions about 9/11. Our government’s undergoing fundamental changes. It’s not nutty to notice this. It’s nuttier not to. Which, again, doesn’t prove that the fix was in here. Personally, I think staging 9/11 would’ve been too big an ordeal, organizationally speaking. It would’ve been much easier just to drop our guard and let a couple of irrational, America-hating Muslims pull the damn thing off themselves. All the same, you can’t see what’s happening in Washington and deny our government’s morphing into a new kind of creature. Whether that’s good or bad is beside the point here. How can you even decide? The news media won’t connect the dots. And politicians do nothing but whitewash the issue. The conspiracy theorists may come off as wacky, but they’re also the only ones willing to expand the parameters of the debate. They raise questions that need to be asked, and it doesn’t make sense to rule anything out before those questions are answered. America was built upon being skeptical of the government. If you’re interested in preserving this country, you should be stubborn, spiteful, and skeptical, too. I would suggest that every American head over to Google Video and look up a 9/11 documentary called Loose Change. At times, the narrator treats the conspiracy theories as a given. You’re permitted to ignore this. But just keep watching for factual purposes, and then decide if enough questions have been answered on this issue. The goal here isn’t to prove 9/11 was a conspiracy. It’s to help you decide just how badly your government failed — and continues to fail — you. Doing this won’t tarnish your memories of 9/11’s victims. It won’t make you a traitor, and it won’t undermine the troops. If you care about your country, its people, and its history, you owe it to yourself and everything you believe in to determine the full story. It’s the most patriotic thing you can do. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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April 15th, our national tax day, comes this year just as Congress prepares to pass the 2007 federal budget. If you think paying taxes was painful this year, I’ve got some bad news: the new budget is a grotesque illustration of everything wrong with the federal government. At $2.7 trillion, it’s the largest budget in U.S. history by a long shot. Like it or not, the pressure to raise your taxes will be enormous in coming years no matter who controls Congress. The amount of money government spends, borrows, and prints simply cannot be sustained. For most people, their income tax return represents their most meaningful interaction with the federal government. It requires them to confess their actions over the past year to the IRS in excruciating detail. It's an annual ritual guaranteed to elicit strong feelings of disgust. Thanks to the deception of income tax withholding, however, some people actually look forward to tax time and a much-anticipated refund. Imagine how quickly Americans would demand lower taxes and spending if they had to write the federal government a check each month. Most people understandably want a simpler income tax system, but it’s useless to discuss tax reform without spending reform. Who wants a 40% flat tax? Who wants a national sales tax if it adds 50% to the retail price of everything we buy? In other words, why change the tax structure if spending stays the same? Once we accept that Congress needs $2.7 trillion from us, the only question is how it will be collected. The current answer is the labyrinthine tax code, which pits taxpayers against each other in a political scramble to make sure the other guy pays. The truth is that Congress does not need $2.7 trillion, or anything close to it, to fund the proper constitutional functions of the federal government. The only tax reform needed is to lower or abolish existing taxes. When reform proposals seem complicated, the reason is simple: they obscure their true nature as schemes to shift the tax burden around. It’s not who pays or how we pay; it’s how much we pay. The real enemy of tax reform is the spending culture in Washington. Let me repeat: we will never have tax reform in this country until Congress changes its spending habits. The reform rhetoric, regardless of which party it comes from, never changes the reality that federal spending grows every year. Congress spent $2.4 trillion in the last Bush budget; the new budget proposes to spend $2.7 trillion. The same unconstitutional agencies are funded, the same unwise programs are perpetuated, but at higher levels than last year. The previous budget serves merely as a baseline; the only question in any given year is how much spending will increase. Once created, no spending program is ever eliminated. The cycle goes on and on, with different administrations and different people in Congress. But could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history. Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck. Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion-- a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000! Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all. It’s something to think about this week as we approach April 15th. Rep. Ron Paul Web Site Back to Top |
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Among the most popular political parties is a public display of infighting. For example, the extreme left of the Democratic Party is unwilling to accommodate Joe Lieberman’s support of the current war effort. Within the Republican Party, a faction professes zero accommodations should be made toward anyone residing here through illegal immigration, while others believe in some kind of amnesty or guest worker status. Center left leaning Republicans — RINOs — are contemptively referred to as such because they have adopted more liberal leaning positions held by the Democrats. Although understandable, that not every member of a political party is going to agree with all the points on an adopted political platform, the public discourse that revolves around dissenting opinions has become reprehensible. Certainly, for anyone not understanding the nuances at play, it is confusing at best and contributes to the public mistrust of the agenda promoted by anyone in government, further resulting in voter apathy. Political parties are supposed to provide forums for deliberation about public policies; exercising civil discourse, rather than hate mongering. A dying breed, “participatory citizens” demonstrate working knowledge of how government functions and actively participate in their community; understanding which levels of governmental agencies are responsible for changing, enforcing, or developing a specific policy. A common misconception at the federal level of government is that the Executive Branch holds the purse strings. Although our president submits a budget proposal, it is the Legislative Branch of government that decides on what and how much money the government should spend. Even if the president exercises veto power, 2/3 of congress can overrule his authority. Ignorance of the division of roles and responsibilities between the three branches results in hyperbolic finger pointing, and the proper channels for change are ignored. Citizens are entitled to speak out about what the government should do with regards to problems in their state, nation, or even around the world. It is their right to influence the decisions made by people holding positions of responsibility. However, they must first understand whether policy is made at the local state or national level. They should recognize who to address with a suggestion or grievance. Multitudes of government officials involved in public policy are elected, appointed and hired to make, apply or enforce laws. Unless “participatory citizens” can “see the forest for the trees,” those trying to perform their civic duty will be caught up in rhetoric designed to deflect from the real issues and cast doubt on the integrity of those who hold public office. Superior civic education is designed with many objectives, including increased knowledge of law/legal concepts, greater understanding of the political process and government structures, increased understanding of rights, responsibilities, and the role of a citizen, increased understanding of how to influence government policy, and increased understanding of how to participate in civil society. Quality programs foster respect for rights and opinions of others by promoting civil discourse. Differentiating a first rate program from a mediocre attempt, is opportunity to actively participate in ways that influence decision making processes as opposed to just reading about them. Toward this end, innovative school districts are implementing Service-learning opportunities into Social Studies curriculum. Service-learning enhances what is taught in the school by extending student learning beyond the classroom. Authentic as well as simulated experiences offer students opportunities to apply newly acquired academic skills and knowledge in real life situations. Although many people have opportunities to volunteer, Service-learning activities integrate service experiences into and enhance the academic curriculum. Service-learning focuses on community impact and student learning. At the other end of the spectrum, school districts concerned only with elevating reading and math scores are missing a golden opportunity to integrate content learning in Social Studies, while meeting literacy objectives. This establishes a dangerous precedent because without an adequate understanding of U.S. History and our system of government, the populace will be unable to function effectively as citizens, knowledgeable voters, members of juries, and leaders in their communities. We are at a crossroads. Schools must arm our students with the knowledge and experience necessary to ensure that this experiment in democracy is allowed to continue, or as Abraham Lincoln alluded to in his “Gettysburg Address,” a government“of the people, by the people, for the people” shall perish from this earth. Nancy
Salvato
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©2004-2006 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
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