US Foreign Policy In A Tailspin

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The weak and inadequate leadership displayed by the occupant of the Oval Office, over the last 5 years, is responsible for, and has created the worldwide political destabilization we are witnessing. When Obama came into office, he felt the United States prior inordinate stature in the international community was an undeserved stature and a result of unfairly acquired advantage, Obama now believes that the US underserved stature has been reset by “changes” he instilled in US policies, and Obama is bent on continuing to bring the Republic down in its military and economic strength. Obama sees US foreign policy as antithetical to domestic spending, since military readiness would be retained only at the expense of public entitlement. There is no Obama Foreign Policy or Obama Doctrine; just an intent to be sure that the United States will not be the only Superpower in the world.

Hillary Clinton’s naïve “RESET” with Russia obviously didn’t work, and was wrecked by Putin’s aggression in Crimea. Putin invaded Crimea because he has been watching Obama lead from behind for 5 years. The situation in Ukraine is rapidly deteriorating with Ukraine on the brink of war with Russia, yet Obama takes feeble action that has the Russians laughing and the world community shaking their collective heads. Obama should encourage NATO to join with the US in taking a number of actions that will send an strong signals to Putin that may get him to stop. Obama should halt his unilateral disarming of the US military, should support the development of energy resources on federal lands that he has restricted from domestic exploration for the last 5 years, provide the missile defenses systems for Poland and Czechoslovakia that Obama cancelled as soon as he was inaugurated in 2008, send humanitarian supplies to the people of Ukraine on a nonstop Military airlift bridge, deploy US Navy destroyers into the Black Sea, move a carrier battle group to the eastern Mediterranean, commence NATO exercises with the former Eastern member nations, and provide the Ukrainian Defense Force with the small arms they have been desperately asked the US for. The “Red Line” in Syria only empowered Putin; Putin has been supporting Assad’s suppression of the Syrian people, and he hoodwinked Obama into thinking Assad would turn in his chemical weapons which has come to a halt. Putin has given whistleblower Edward Snowden political asylum to demonstrate to the world that he has obvious disrespect for Obama. Obama’s now empty “Red Line” in Syria, then his empty “Red Line” in Crimea, has encouraged Putin’s to consider future land grabs in Eastern Ukraine, Moldova, more of Georgia, and he will probably takes bites out of the Baltic States.

Obama’s employment of standoff aerial drones to attack Al Qaeda’s leadership over the last 5 years has been ineffective, because leader are just replaced by the next in line. Instead of employing Special Operations Forces on the ground to decimate rank and file terrorists & capture others to develop operational intelligence for future strikes, he used drones and is solely responsible for the massive expansion of a depleted Al Q’ieda when President Bush left office—Al Q’ieda terrorists have no fear of attacks or capture by Special Operational Forces. The proliferation of Al Qaeda has manifested itself with the Black Flag of Al Qaeda flying over much of Libya, flying over the northeastern region of Syria, flying in Fallujah and the western regions of Iraq, flying throughout Somalia, and the Black Flag will soon be flying over Afghanistan once again, because Obama has been signaling Al Q’ieda for over 3 years that he will definitely pull out all US military forces from Afghanistan in about 8 months—–does anyone believe Obama’s false pronouncements in his last Presidential campaign that “Al Qaeda has been defeated and is on the run.” Military casualties in Afghanistan have increased by 358%/year over the last 5 years, over the annual casualty rate during the previous 8 years, because of Obama’s new and very dangerous Rules Of Engagement forced upon the US Armed Forces by Admiral Mullen. Mullen’s legacy has created unheard of casualty rates and Killed In Action rates in Afghanistan.

All efforts to achieve an effective Iranian boycott to stop a nuclear Iran have been abandoned by Obama, and without concessions. Iran is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power and has been providing Republican Guard ground troops in Syria to kill freedom loving Syrians. The support for Israel has been be relegated to the trash heap of history, and Israel knows it is on its own. A nuclear confrontation is in the making in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey seeking nuclear weapons from Pakistan in self-defense. The heroic effort to stabilize Iraq by US Combatant Forces was thrown away when Obama yanked all US troops out of Iraq after the success of the “Surge,”; US military forces were abruptly pulled out without the negotiation of a Status of Forces Agreement (Iraq is the only country in the world, that the US saved from a dictator, that the US hasn’t entered into a Status of Forces Agreement with). Iran has filled in the void in Iraq left by the abrupt removal of US military forces from Iraq by Obama, and is now repeating the benefits of an alliance with Iraq as a result of the sacrifice the finest sons of America who removed the despot, Saddam Hussein, from power.

Relationships in the Middle East are in shambles. Obama’s unwise initiative to develop diplomatic relations with Iran at a time when it is threatening old US friends in the Middle East, killing freedom fighters in Iran, destabilizing Lebanon, Iraq, & Bahrain, is threatening the destruction of Israel, has fractured US relations with US diverse friends such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. When the US commenced negotiating to normalize diplomatic relations with Iran, in its defense, Saudi Arabia established an independent coalition with the Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Jordan, and is now developing close relations with Putin. Libya whose ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, was turned from being hostile to be more supportive of the US, was deposed by military strikes led by the US, the attack on Gaddafi unleashed Al Qaeda that built 10 training camps in eastern Libya, and those training camps provided the commandos that attacked the US Mission in Benghazi that resulted in the death of 4 Americans because Obama refused to authorize “Cross Border Authority” required to send in military support; now a destabilized Libya has become Somalia on the Mediterranean, and is another failed state created by ineptness of the Obama administration.

Egypt’s Pro-US Prime Minister, Hosni Mubarak, was deposed by Obama, so the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi could come to power, Morsi permitted the Muslim Brotherhood to start murdering Christians throughout Egypt, and for over a year the Obama administration has had proof from Egyptian intelligence that Morsi was complicit in having his followers participate in the attack on the US Mission in Benghazi; when Morsi was deposed by the US trained & US friendly Military Junta, Obama had all arms shipments and financial aid to Egypt promptly cancelled. Saudi Arabia was infuriated when Mubarak was deposed by Obama in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood leader Morsi, the Saudis helped undermine Morsi, and provided 10 times more financial aid to the pro us Junta than Obama cancelled. Putin jumped in to replace the military arms shipment Obama cancelled, and now for the first time in 35 years Egypt has moved away from the US and is more friendly to Putin’s Russia.

China, Russia, and Iran are building and modernizing their very powerful military armed forces, while Obama continues to degrade the US Military to pre-World War II levels. The US unilateral reduction of its nuclear arsenal with no concessions from anyone, together with our Hamlet-like stance toward China, has terrified our Pacific allies. The US Navy had more ships in the Pacific when Jimmy Carter was President than the US has in the entire US Navy today, and President Reagan’s 660 ship Navy is headed to a less than 200 ship Obama Navy (less ships than the US Navy had before WWI). China is expanding its navy with its first aircraft carrier and many missile firing submarines; it is getting ready to forcibly annex the 5 tiny Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands that Japan purchased many years ago. China Like Russia and Iran viewed Obama’s follow thru when his “Red Lines” were crossed in Syria and Crimea. In the next three years, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (and perhaps the Philippines and Australia as well) will either make concessions to China or threaten to go nuclear—especially if their suspicions continue to grow that they are no longer under the US strategic umbrella.

Obama’s outreach to Latin America’s Marxist regimes has been a colossal failure. Bolivia has now become a Marxist state; Communist Cuba, Ecuador and Argentina are more anti-American than ever. Ortega of Nicaragua humiliated the US with his long public dressing down of Obama. To make matters worse, on November 19, 2013 Secretary of State John Kerry declared the 200 year old policy that was adopted by the US Congress in 1823, The Monroe Doctrine, is “dead!” Obama’s strongly support for Hugo Chavez’s Marxist Venezuela, while he ignored the pro US demonstrators in the streets voicing their opposition to Marxist regime of Chavez, they were seeking a democratic form of government. It is interesting to know that Obama did support demonstrators in the streets during the Arab Spring who were trying to destabilized governments allied with the US in the Middle East; Chavez prevailed against the freedom seeking demonstrators in the streets, destroyed the economy of Venezuela, and now Venezuela is another failed Marxist state.

Obama feels his foreign policy towards China, Russia, and Iran has been a smashing success, and because the left of center liberal media establishment is deeply invested in Obama’s success, they obviate, obscure, mislead, and outright lie to confuse the American people about the truth on issues. However, for the past 5 years, despite the attempt by the media and the Obama administration to mislead the American people, clear thinking Patriots understand how completely Obama has failed the United States, leaving the Republic less secure, gave them a weaker military establishment, financially weakened the Republic, and the nation is now less respected in the eyes of the international community. The long and the short of it is that, Putin is a dynamic leader who is maximizing what little military power he has and is rapidly rebuilding his military, while the United States is virtually leaderless on the international stage with a strong military establishment that is rapidly being degraded by Obama. More likely over the next 3 years, we will see a doubling down by Obama on reducing US influence, going into a project debt of $24 trillion, reducing the US military strength in the world, and ensuring the US no longer has, a too-prominent global profile.

The only thing the American voters can do is elect Senators and Congressmen in less than seven months who will put a stop to Obama’s failed foreign policy, and his out of control spending. The thirty-four endorsed Combat Veterans For Congress are some of the Patriotic Americans who will support the principles upon which our Forefathers based the US Bill of Rights and the US Constitution—elect them in November to protect and defend the US Constitution and The Free Enterprise System.

EDITORS NOTE: The flag used as the featured image is that of the United States Secretary of State.

CYBER WARFARE: Muslim Twitter Attack forces ABC to Cancel “Alice in Arabia”

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The problematic ABC Family pilot of “Alice in Arabia” that we posted on yesterday has been cancelled by the Disney-owned cable TV channel.  CAIR launched a Twitter campaign on Tuesday inundating the ABC Family channel with tweets and a letter to the channel’s  President demanding control over the production.  According to a report in Variety, the social media campaign worked; the pilot has been cancelled.  This is yet another example of how the Hamas- Muslim Brotherhood affiliate engages in intimidation tactics to ensure that the media adheres to an airbrushed Hallmarkian view of Islam in America.  Moreover, with the threat of Lawfare menacing free speech CAIR strived to avoid any mention that Sharia sanctions abduction of American children of Saudi parents to the Royal Kingdom.  See our NER article and Iconoclast post; “ An American Child Kidnapped in Accordance with Shariah” and  “Rescue from an Abduction to Saudi Arabia: Interview with Floridian Yasmeen A. Davis”.

Here is the Variety report,  “ABC Family Pulls Plug on ‘Alice in Arabia’ After Muslim Org Backlash”:

Just days after the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) expressed concerns over potential stereotyping in the pilot for ABC Family’s “Alice in Arabia” and requested a meeting with execs, the network has decided not to pursue the show that had been announced Monday.

An ABC Family spokesperson said Friday, “The current conversation surrounding our pilot was not what we had envisioned and is certainly not conducive to the creative process, so we’ve decided not to move forward with this project.”

The show’s premise centered on an American teen kidnapped by her Saudi Arabian family after tragedy befalls her parents.

The pilot was penned by Brooke Eikmeier, who served in the U.S. Army as a Cryptologic linguist in the Arabic language and trained to support NSA missions in the Middle East.

CAIR previously challenged actual and potential anti-Muslim stereotypes in “Executive Decision,” “24,” “The Siege,” “True Lies,” “Rules of Engagement,” “Obsession,” “The Third Jihad,” “Jihad in America” and “The Sum of All Fears.” The org has also acted as a consultant on films including DreamWorks Animation’s “The Prince of Egypt.”

This amounts to CAIR using Mafia –like tactics to suggest that major TV and film studios might be forced out of business if they comply.   Once again, Taqiyya , religiously sanctioned dissimilitude or lying for Allah,  trumps truth.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review. The featured photo is by I.Barrios & J.Ligero. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Jeb Bush: Willing to Emotionally Damage Your Child for a Higher Test Score

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Former Florida Governor (and likely 2016 presidential hopeful) Jeb Bush made the following comment, recorded in The Miami Herald, on March 21, 2014. It’s Bush’s undeniably callous perspective on attempting to force American public education to fit a mold that benefits American education corporations such as Pearson (and here, and here):

Let me tell you something. In Asia today, they don’t care about children’s self esteem. They care about math, whether they can read – in English – whether they understand why science is important, whether they have the grit and determination to be successful,” Bush said.

You tell me which society is going to be the winner in this 21st Century: The one that worries about how they feel, or the one that worries about making sure the next generation has the capacity to eat everybody’s lunch? [Emphasis added.]

Think about this, folks: Do we really want this guy in the White House? Do we want him (and the corporations in his pocket) pushing his damaging, perpetually failing education reforms from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Ahh, but Bush is in good company. Call it Common Core Callousness. Bush’s statement reeks of David Coleman’s sentiment regarding his vision of “Bringing the Common Core to Life.” From blogger Christel Swasey (Swasey’s entire article is worth a read):

The absolutely least lovely comment I’ve ever heard from any educator, ever, came from David Coleman:

As you grow up in this world you realize that people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think… it is rare in a working environment that someone says, “Johnson I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.”

There you have it, in case there was any doubt:

The Common Core Brought to Life.

Jeb Bush and David Coleman offer the same sociopathio-pedagogical vision for American education: Death to emotional health, joy of learning, empathy, and good will to man.

The country able to step on the faces of other countries via the highest test scores “wins.”

You can hear Coleman for yourself in this brief video clip (my thanks to Tim Furman). Keep in mind that Coleman believes he is selling the Common Core to his listeners:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Pu6lin88YXU[/youtube]

Coleman and Bush: Serrated Education Partners.

Back to Bush’s assertion that Asia does not care for the well being of its students. Bush is wrong:

Chinese educational experts are taking a more somber view in the face of the stellar achievements by their students, saying the results are at most partial and covering up shortcomings in creating well-rounded, critical thinking individuals.

“This should not be considered a pride for us, because overall it still measures one’s test-taking ability. You can have the best answer for a theoretical model, but can you build a factory on a test paper?” asked Xiong Bingqi, a Shanghai-based scholar on education.

“The biggest criticism is that China’s education has sacrificed everything else for test scores, such as life skills, character building, mental health, and physical health,” Xiong said.

Even the party-run People’s Daily noted the burden on Shanghai students. “While many countries have been urged to increase more study time and more homework for their students, Shanghai clearly needs some alleviation,” the editorial reads.

Japan’s education minister, Hakubun Shimomura, pointed to the test results as evidence of success in reforms aimed at reducing class sizes — despite continued criticism of the pressure-filled university entrance examination system. Many Japanese students also attend cram schools to get an extra edge.

“Asian countries do better than European and American schools because we are ‘examination hell’ countries,” said Koji Kato, a professor emeritus of education at Tokyo’s Sophia University. “There is more pressure to teach to the test. In my experience in working with teachers the situation is becoming worse and worse.” [Emphasis added.]

In his January 2014 address to a parents congress, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan lauded South Korean test scores.

Duncan failed to mention South Korea’s high unemployment for those with college degrees (in 2011, 40 percent of college grads were unemployed four months following graduation)– and the associated designation of South Korea as “the most suicidal society” despite a drop in South Korean suicides in 2013.

In order to curb the suicide rate, the government banned pesticides– a cheap and easily accessible means of suicide.

One Korean’s response to the pesticide ban:

But we still have bridges and charcoal briquettes.

What is driving South Koreans to kill themselves in unprecedented numbers?

They want their government to care about them:

Jang Chong-yoon, who almost committed suicide 12 years ago, agrees with the pesticide ban, but thinks more could be done to address the mental well-being of South Koreans:

“Old and young people have their own pain from either quick economic development or unemployment,” he said, adding: “I hope the government will care more about people’s health.” [Emphasis added.]

What a sobering realization to think that Presidential Hopeful Jeb Bush has no qualms about pushing America down this despairing path.

RELATED STORIES:

Is Common Core Intentionally Designed to Make America’s Children Mentally Ill?

Bush Foundation is stepping it up a notch through the media

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of Gage Skidmore. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Will Marc Rich rise from the grave to topple Hillary?

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On the very day that  tax evader and renegade oil speculator Marc Rich died  on June 26, 2013 in Lucerne, Switzerland, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act  (FOIA) request. Rich was pardoned on the very last day of former President Clinton’s second term in January 2001 in a series of pardons shepherded  by current US Attorney General Eric Holder. President Clinton had been entreated by Rich’s, ex-wife, Denise, a major Democrat fundraiser, aided by representations from ADL director, Abe Foxman, who was reported to have earned a large fee for facilitating the pardon. Despite Marc Rich engaging in back door oil deals with the late Saddam Hussein, the apartheid South African government and the Palestinian Authority, President Clinton had signed off. He has subsequently rued granting Rich’s pardon.

Judicial Watch finally received the results of the FOIA request and published the redacted copy on its website, yesterday.  Reading it, one can only surmise whether this  might prove to be a problem for several people; former US Ambassador to Israel during the Clinton era, Martin Indyk and then Israeli Foreign Minister, now President , Shimon Peres.and possibly ex-Mossad head, Efraim Halevy.

Peres assumed  the Israeli Premiership after PM Rabin’s tragic assassination by an Israeli extremist in November 1995.The period referenced in the Judicial Watch post followed  the arrival back of the PLO-Fatah under the late Yassir Arafat  in furtherance of the ill-fated Oslo Accords signed in September 1993 at the  White House under Clinton’s auspices. Arafat became the first President of the PA and, in 1996 began a series of attacks on Israeli joint patrols in the disputed territories the period of a near decade long  Palestinian violence against Israel. Indyk is currently  Secretary Kerry’s Special Envoy facilitating negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on a purported final status agreement. This redacted cable could be problematic for Hillary Clinton’s possible candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2016?

Here is the Judicial Watch report:

Clinton’s Marc Rich Pardon – the Tell-Tale Cable

For years, there has been conjecture as to why Bill Clinton, in the waning moments of his presidency, suddenly and unexpectedly granted a full pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich. Even the New York Times, normally a shameless cheerleader for the Clintons, excoriated the president, saying “Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardon of Marc Rich … was a shocking abuse of presidential power … Mr. Clinton’s irresponsible use of his pardoning authority has undermined the pursuit of justice.” And Clinton himself later described the pardon as “terrible politics. It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation.”

Questions about the scandal are resurfacing in light of Judicial Watch’s obtaining a confidential cable from the U.S. Department of State that had been under tight wraps since 1995. The cable – from Clinton’s ambassador to Israel to his high-ups at State – reveals high-level Israeli efforts to persuade State Department officials to intercede with Department of Justice (DOJ) to enable Rich to conduct Israeli business affairs worldwide directly relating to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

Specifically, the cable, obtained through a Judicial Watch June 2013 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, provides details of 1995 efforts by apparently top Israeli officials to pressure their counterparts at the State Department to intervene with the DOJ to withdraw outstanding arrest warrants against Rich on charges he had violated America’s 1981 domestic oil-price along with 64 other crimes, including racketeering and “trading with the enemy.” Israel, it turns out, had recruited Rich, then living in Switzerland, to travel internationally in order to raise funds to finance economic deals between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Rich died on June, 26, 2013, and Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about him with the Department of State on the same day.

While the Israeli official who interceded on Rich’s behalf is not identified in the cable obtained by Judicial Watch, he or she was in a sufficiently high-level position to confer directly with then-U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk and Clinton administration Middle East envoy Dennis Ross. The official was also able to persuade Indyk to meet with Rich’s lawyer, Isaac Herzog, just three days after requesting that he do so. The confidential classification of the cable was extended by the State Department on February 10, 2014 for an additional 15 years, following the Judicial Watch FOIA request, in an apparent effort by the State Department to keep the names of the Israeli official confidential. Ambassador Indyk is now President Obama’s Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations.

In the cable, entitled “[REDACTED] REQUEST FOR INTERVENTION WITH DOJ ON BEHALF OF MARK [SIC] RICH,” Indyk writes:

•    During August 29 [1995] meeting with Dennis Ross and I, [REDACTED] raised the issue of Mark Rich, a wealthy businessman now resident in Switzerland, whom [REDACTED] has recruited to head up an effort to promote private sector involvement in Palestinian economic development. [REDACTED] asked me to see Rich’s lawyer, Isaac Herzog, to be briefed on the subject. He further requested that Dennis and I follow up in Washington to try to resolve the problem.

•    Rich paid a large fine and according to Herzog, DOJ is no longer pursuing the matter … Nevertheless, there are still international warrants outstanding for Rich’s arrest. This severely restricts his travel … [REDACTED] request is that State consider the project and, if it is regarded as worthwhile, contact DOJ and communicate its interests in enabling Rich to engage in these activities – specifically that:  … The GOI [Government of Israel] has notified State that it is in the GOI’s interest to facilitate the travel on behalf of Marc Rich to advance the ‘Economic Solution’ … The U.S. has a legitimate interest in fostering these objectives.

Interestingly, the Indyk confidential memo claims that the U.S. ambassador, who at the time had been a key figure in American-Israeli affairs for more than a decade, had no knowledge of Rich or the activities that had led to the commodities trader’s 1983 indictment. According to Indyk’s confidential memo, “We have never heard of Mark [sic] Rich and have no way of evaluating his ability to contribute to this effort by bringing in foreign investors.” The ambassador added, “However, [REDACTED] is pushing him hard.”

On January 20, 2001, just hours before leaving office, President Clinton granted Rich a highly controversial presidential pardon. It was widely alleged at the time that Rich’s pardon had been the result of Denise Rich having given more than $1 million to the Democratic Party, including more than $100,000 to the Senate campaign of Hillary Clinton and $450,000 to the Clinton Library foundation. As far back as 2009, journalist Joe Conason, writing in Salon had conjectured, “Winning the pardon was a top priority for Israeli officials because Rich had long been a financial and intelligence asset of the Jewish state …” But the confidential cable obtained by Judicial Watch is the first solid evidence of close ties between the Israeli government and the fugitive financier.

The bottom line is that the cable raises salient new questions about the depth and breadth of the relationship between Marc Rich and the Israeli government. And they suggest possible new insights into the motivations behind the scandalous last-minute pardon granted by Bill Clinton. Ambassador Indyk should now disclose what he knows about the Rich pardon. As should John Podesta, Eric Holder, and Hillary Clinton – all high-level Obama appointees embroiled in the Rich pardon scandal.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review. The featured photo is courtesy of Ionel141. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Downfall of a Country by Fernando J. Milanes. M.D.

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It was not easy. With many diverse factors, interests and ideology at play, our forefathers were able to unanimously agree on a beautiful and simple manuscript, the Declaration of Independence. The words that began the second paragraph of this document became the basis upon which the philosophy of a new country would be built.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

After defeating the English empire under the brilliant direction of George Washington, and the signing of the Constitution, an experiment consisting of a different form of Democracy was started. The success of the United States of America was dependent on the strength of four ideological pillars.

Our Constitution; when the first ten of the twelve proposed amendments of this document, known as the Bill of Rights, were drafted by James Madison its main purpose was to avoid a takeover of individual rights by a central power. This idea of limiting central authority and concentrating it on the citizen was crucial to the success of the system. Power to the States, and separation of federal governance by three equal branches, legislative, judicial and executive would provide checks and balances to the structure. Human folly, including personal ambition was supposed, paraphrasing Madison, to neutralize each other. The success of the US and its democratic approach was highly dependent, explained Alec De Tocqueville, on the wisdom and education of its citizens.

The community; our population was and is based on immigrants. The attraction to come to the U.S. was rooted on the search for freedom and opportunity. Most of the newcomers shared the Judeo-Christian values of the original pilgrims. Freedom to worship, to labor, and to raise a family was central to these original inhabitants. With the initial success of the country, the idea of opportunity for liberty and the pursuit of happiness attracted many that were unable to achieve those in their nation of origin. Our nation’s accomplishments increased with these new arrivals. In addition to a strong family unit, religious support, and schooling, the people were educated by what was supposed to be a fourth power, the press.

Education; the earlier and most important education, came from the family unit, religious advisors and schools. These institutions were in agreement of the importance of love for one another, for our land, work, sacrifice, and helping those in need. As adults the free press gave us facts, many diverse opinions, and demonstrated impartiality in order to help us form an independent opinion, not to manipulate our thoughts. People that achieved, worked hard, and had some luck and entrepreneurship abilities, were able to accumulate riches in our capitalistic economic approach.

Free markets; the economy grew based on free market principles with limited regulations, competition, and incentives for individuals to come up with new and original ideas. There was no limit for achievement, and those who made it were praised and admired and became a source of inspiration as written in the popular Horatio Alger stories of rags to riches.

As described in the Chinese torture of one thousand cuts, our way of life was attacked in a thousand ways, causing inexorable erosion to the four pillars previously described. Our Constitution became old, before our times, needing revision. The separation of powers became a farce, with the legislative branch weak, the judicial dependent and subservient to the executive that appointed them, and a presidency more and more resembling the strong voice that our forefathers feared. Persons with ambition united, instead of cancelling each other as Madison had hoped. Individual liberty has increasingly been defined by the bias of the leaders, thus curtailing the ability to voice an independent opinion.

The family nucleus has been eroded to the extent that marriage, in its symbolic definition, has been eliminated; couples remain together in dwindling numbers, religion beliefs, especially Judeo-Christian, are not respected, and God is eliminated from our teachings.

The press has become, for the most part, a propaganda apparatus in the service of the establishment. The ones that dare to oppose the governing machinery are surreptitiously being attacked by branches of the same government that we elected to represent us.

Our schools and institutions of higher learning are led by teachers that spouse a particular point of view, thus intellectually forming a new youth, with preconceived notions of reality.

Our citizens are mostly uninterested in the electoral process, more and more ignorant, and attracted less by the opportunity to pursuit happiness than the guarantee of receiving it.

A symbiotic relationship between capitalists and politicians has changed our free market system into one where regulations kill initiative, and favors the crony allies of the rulers.

What was decades ago the majority of the population that revered our nation, constitution and way of life, are now defined as extreme, selfish, uneducated and racist. As in Europe, both political parties are of a liberal philosophy, the less extreme called conservatives. Whether this erosion of our way of life has been caused by many diverse circumstances, and/or an inevitable cycle of the rise and falls of civilizations, or, as some belief, under the direction of a single evil force, is debatable.

What are not are the facts, and these are clear, and demonstrate our continuing decline and eventual downfall.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Bear Witness Central.

China is engaged in a Currency War with the US by Frank de Varona

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Currency war, also known as competitive devaluation, is a situation where countries compete against each other to achieve a relatively low exchange rate for their own currency. As the price to buy a particularly currency goes down so does the real price of exports from the country. Imports become more expensive and that helps the domestic industry increase sales. Of course, a currency war triggered by one nation could bring retaliatory action by other countries which in turn can lead to a general decline in international trade, harming all countries.

Guido Mantega, the Minister of Finance of Brazil, announced on September 27, 2010, that the world is “in the midst of an international currency war.”  His view was accepted by numerous other government officials and financial journalist from around the world. During this time the United States complained over the evaluation of the yuan in China. The United States accused China of keeping the price its currency artificially low in order to keep United States and other nations exports out of China, thus creating an enormous trade imbalance against the United States and other countries. Of course, the United States was not an innocent bystander since it engaged in massive quantitative easing (QE).

federal reserve printing pressQuantitative easing is the practice in which a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, tries to fight a recession or to stimulate a slow-growing economy by increasing the money supply of the nation. The enormous annual deficits of the federal government in excess of $1 trillion over several years have increased the federal debt to more than $17.3 trillion. Sadly, the real debt of the United States, when one includes the enormous debts of the states, counties, and municipalities as well as the unfunded entitlements of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care, is estimated to be in excess of $150 trillion.

James Rickards, an advisor to the CIA and the Pentagon, wrote Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis (2011) describing the dangerous battlefield of global finance. He pointed out how China is purchasing secretly up to 4,000 tons of gold. Some believe that China has already over 5,000 tons of gold since it is acquiring gold mines throughout the world and continue to purchase secretly more gold. Rickards also wrote on the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds of nations that hate us which may attack the United States financially. Rickards is convinced these two situations are a very real threat to the collapse of the dollar.

James Rickards wrote that the Federal Reserve attempts to prop up economic growth could be devastating for our national security. He argues that a financial attack against the United States could destroy the confidence in the dollar. He believes that the policy of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve would lead to a lack confidence in the dollar which could create chaos in the global financer markets. Rickards argues that we are currently going through a third currency war based on competitive devaluations. He believes that competitive devaluations are in race to the bottom, and those instruments are a sort of warfare. He argues that the continued depreciation and devaluation of the dollar will ultimately lead to a collapse, which will come about through a widespread abandonment of the U.S. dollar.

Rickards explained that the two previous currency wars  ended badly. The first one brought about  the Great Depression and World War II.  It was started when Germany, unable to pay back the enormous war reparations to Great Britain, France and other countries after being defeated in World War I, decided to seriously devalue the German mark. The other countries did the same with their currencies  as well as the United States. Soon high tariffs were imposed and world trade collapsed. The world-wide Great Depression resulted in Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini coming to power in Germany and Italy.

The second currency war of 1971 was started by Charles De Gaulle in France. President Richard Nixon was forced to abandon the gold standard and imposed for a while price controls in order to protect the value of the  dollar. While the outcome of the current currency war is still uncertain, our nation needs to prepare to make certain that our economy and our currency are not destroyed by nations that wish us harm.

Geoff Dyer wrote a book entitled The Contest of the Century: the New Era of Competition with China– and How America Can Win (2014). Dyer is a former British Financial Times newspaper bureau chief in Beijing and who lived in China for many years. He argued that the real currency war for the next few decades is the contest between China and the United States over which currency will prevail as the global currency.

Dyer described in detail the ambitious plan to allow the Chinese currency to play a larger role in the global economy. A HSBC’s Chinese economist stated the following: “We could be on the verge of a financial revolution of truly epic proportions. The world is slowly, but surely, moving from greenbacks to redbacks.” Another Washington-based economist said that the Chinese renminbi could become “the premier reserve currency by the end of this decade, or early next decade.” China has designated Hong Kong and the international place for the world’s new global currency, the renminbi. HSBC predicts that by 2015 at least half of China’s trade with the developing world, approximately $2 trillion, will be in renminbi.

Dyer, explained that the issue of whether the renminbi will supplant the dollar is one of the central contest that will determine the shift of power from the United States to China over the course of the next few decades, a combination of high finance and geopolitics. He wrote that the National Intelligence Council, which publishes the United States government’s official intelligence estimate stated the following: “The fall of the dollar as the global reserve currency… Would be one of the sharpest indication of the loss of the United States global economic position, strongly undermining Washington’s political influence.”

Both China and Russia have announced that they want to destroy the dollar as the global reserve currency. If they were to succeed in displacing the dollar with the Chinese currency, America will no longer be a superpower. Both China and Russia believe that the United States under the Obama administration has become “a paper tiger” and that the United States is a superpower in retreat and decline.

640px-Barack_Obama_Cabinet_Sebelius_Hillary_Clinton_Swine_Flu_5-1Hillary Clinton shortly after she became Secretary of State stated “how do you deal toughly with your banker?” China has the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world, at around $3.3 trillion. It is estimated that China owns around $2 trillion of United States government’s debt. Never before has the United States depended on a single country’s government for so much financing. Obama’s irresponsible annual deficits and his refusal to reform the entitlements have put our national security in serious danger. Our nation is facing a fiscal abysm.

When the United States announced in 2010 that it wanted to sell more weapons to Taiwan, three generals of the People Liberation Army said that China should retaliate by selling U.S. government debt, which could lead to a sharp rise in the United States interest rates. Reporters have written in Chinese newspaper what they call “the nuclear option”, which is a threat to dump dollar bonds in order to change American policy.

There is no question that China wants to destroy the dollar as an international currency. China’s President Hu Jintao said in 2008 that he wants a “new international financial order that is fair, just, inclusive and orderly.” Dyer explained that by the end of 2012, around 15% of China’s trade was being conducted in renminbi. He wrote that one Chinese academic said that ending the dominance of the dollar is as important for China’s ability to project power as was China become a nuclear power.

During the 2007 war games in Russia, with the leaders of the military alliance the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member nations in attendance, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russian strategic bombers were going to resume regular long-range patrols for the first time since the Cold War. Putin said the following: “Our pilots have been grounded for too long. They are happy to start a new life.”  Iran is not yet a member of this alliance. It is an observer nation. An Iranian official said at the meeting that “the SCO is a good venue for designating a new banking system which is independent from the international banking systems.” The Russian leader stated the following: “We now clearly see the defectiveness of the monopoly in world finance and the policy of economic selfishness. To solve the current problem, Russia will take part in changing the global financial structure so that it will be able to guarantee stability and prosperity in the world and to ensure progress. The world is seeing the emergence of a qualitatively different geopolitical situation, with the emergence of new centers of economic growth and political influence.”

Geoff Dyer wrote the following: “There certainly is no shortage of reasons for thinking that the United States could be heading for the sort of crisis that would shake the foundation of the dollar era. The litany is a familiar one– high debt levels, chronic budget deficits, political gridlock, spiraling entitlement spending, and crumbling infrastructure… It is not completely out of the question that the United States will suffer a financial convulsion. The downgrading of the United States government debt by Standard and Poor’s was a stark warning about the potential erosion of the confidence in the dollar. Ever since then, Washington has been living from one budget crisis to another.”

Conclusion

President Barack Obama and Congress need to put rapidly our financial house in order. Failure to do so will create hyperinflation, increased unemployment and a possible economic recession. Our nation needs to move aggressively to reduce government spending and our federal debt in order to protect the value of the dollar. China will surpass the U.S. economy in the next few years and China will continue working together with Russia to replace the dollar as the world’s international currency. Our nation needs to act now and reform all entitlement programs since all of them are unsustainable in the long-term. The United States  needs start living within its means.

One of 3 articles on China:

2. How China and America See Each Other

3. Is China a Gathering Threat to our National Security?

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the banner of the Wuchang uprising (zh:武昌起义) of October 10, 1911, subsequently used as the flag of the army of the Republic of China, ca. 1913-1928. It appears on many varieties of Chinese currency issued during the 1910’s and 1920’s.  This image shows a variant of the flag with 18 yellow dots. This column originally appeared on Bear Witness Central.

Blue State Blues

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Two headlines on Tuesday, March 18, are bound to give Democrats across the country a really bad case of heartburn. The Washington Free Beacon headline read: “Born to Run Away From High Taxes,” while a New York Times headline read, “Businessman Wins Republican Primary for Governor in Illinois.”

The Free Beacon story details the extent to which “New Jersey’s high taxes may be costing the state billions of dollars a year in lost revenue as high earning residents flee (the state).” According to the Free Beacon story, the study,” titled Exodus on the Parkway, was completed last year by Regent Atlantic, of Morristown, New Jersey, but held for publication until after the 2013 elections. The study stated it intentionally withheld its results because 2014 is not an election year for state legislators… and the dire findings of the study would “hopefully encourage a serious and objective dialogue aimed at addressing and solving the challenges that New Jersey currently faces.”

The study found that, since the Democrat-controlled legislature passed the “millionaire’s tax” in 2004, signed into law by Democratic Governor Jim McGreevey, New Jersey has been steadily losing high-net-worth residents. That ill-advised and counter-productive approach to revenue enhancement, which presupposes that the rich will just sit still forever and allow themselves to be taxed back into the middle class, or worse, imposed a 41 percent increase in the state income tax on those with annual incomes of $500,000, or more.

Lacking the capacity to understand basic economic principles, and having no ability to learn from their mistakes, New Jersey Democrats have continued to push for even higher taxes on the wealthy. Under threat of veto by a tough-minded Republican governor, Chris Christie, they have failed on three successive attempts.

According to the Regent Atlantic study, New Jersey collects $10 billion annually in personal income taxes, $4.2 billion of which is paid in by just one percent of the population. Before the millionaire’s tax was enacted, the aggregate net worth of New Jersey residents increased by $98 billion over a four year period. However, in the four year period following the tax increase, 70 percent of that aggregate increase in net worth has fled the state. Because New Jersey residents have learned how to vote with their feet, the state lost taxable income of $5.5 billion in 2010 alone because residents moved to more tax-friendly states.

However, it’s not just the wealthy that New Jersey Democrats wish to bilk in their never-ending quest to buy enough votes to maintain themselves in power. Democrats in the legislature have also proposed a five-cent-per-gallon increase in the gasoline tax, a tax on water consumption, a tax on plastic bags, a tax on plastic water bottles, and yet another increase in the income tax. These are increases that would damage everyone who lives in or drives through the Garden State.

Apparently New Jersey Democrats believe that they have reached nirvana when a majority of the people are on food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, and workman’s compensation, while the state confiscates 100 percent of the incomes and assets of those foolish enough to continue working… those for whom a job offer in Detroit would look like the opportunity of a lifetime.

Some 800 miles to the west, in Illinois, the state that currently resembles Detroit more than any other, wealthy private equity manager, Bruce Rauner, has won the Republican nomination for governor. Rauner, who spent $6 million of his own money in a four-way race for the GOP nomination, won 40.1% of the vote in defeating three better known GOP candidates, all long-time GOP officials in Springfield.

If Rauner is elected… and it looks as if he has the right stuff to get the job done… he will be taking on the toughest job of any Republican governor in the nation. Illinois is, after all, an economic basket-case, the worst run, most corrupt state in the nation.

On January 12, 2011, Investors Business Journal reported that the State of Illinois faced a budget deficit of $15 billion, “equivalent to more than half the state’s general fund.” According to the report, “(Illinois) officials warned that state government might not be able to pay its employees. It certainly would fall further behind in paying the businesses, charities, and schools that provide services on the state’s behalf.”

In response to that economic tsunami, the Governor of Illinois, Democrat Pat Quinn, and the Illinois legislature, controlled by Democrats (35-24 in the Senate and 64-54 in the House), developed a response that only a bunch of Democrats would see as a viable solution. In the midst of a major national recession they increased personal income taxes by 66% and corporate taxes by 46%, increases that were expected to produce an additional $6.8 billion per year… assuming, of course, that every employer then in Illinois, would remain in Illinois.

A year later, the Illinois Comptroller’s Office estimated that the backlog of unpaid bills was nearly $8 billion… and this after Democrats in Springfield placed a crushing load of new taxes on the shoulders of taxpayers and corporations.

Reactions were predictable. According to the Journal, neighboring states immediately began plotting to “lure business away from Illinois.” Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) said, “Years ago, Wisconsin had a tourism advertising campaign targeted to Illinois with the motto, ‘Escape to Wisconsin.’ Today we renew that call to Illinois businesses, ‘Escape to Wisconsin.’ You are welcome here.”

Then-Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN) said, “It’s like living next door to the ‘Simpsons’ – you know, the dysfunctional family down the block.” Gov. Daniels may have mixed a metaphor. To say that living next door to Illinois is like living next door to the Adams Family may have been a more apt comparison.

But now it appears that Republicans are about to field a candidate with some business sense who is not afraid to tell the people of Illinois what they need to hear, while Democrats continue to insist on telling them whatever is necessary to get their votes on Election Day. And while union leaders in Illinois could not have failed to notice that their state is now surrounded by states where right-to-work was once thought to be impossible… Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin… right-to-work is probably not something that will happen in Illinois until a hard-nosed Republican governor can make Republicanism respectable everywhere in the state except in America’s most corrupt city… Chicago.

Bruce Rauner may be that man. According to the Times story, Rauner has already angered the public sector unions. He has criticized union leaders, advocated charter schools, and suggested that recent reforms in the public employee pension system… with unfunded liabilities of about $80 billion… were far too timid.

Never in American history has a political party been as vulnerable to resounding defeat as is the Democrat Party in 2014. The only thing the Republican Party needs is leadership. With John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker of the House, with Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as Minority Leader of the Senate, and with Eric Cantor (R-VA) as House Majority Leader, the GOP is in great danger of wasting the opportunity to literally devastate the Democratic Party. Never before have there been three political leaders more capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Although most pundits agree that Republicans will maintain their majority in the House of Representatives, many hedge their bets by saying that the party could actually lose a few seats in the House. I believe the Republicans will maintain their majority in the House, picking up an additional five to ten seats in the process.

In the Senate, most pundits hedge their bets by predicting that Republicans have a shot at taking control, but with a slim majority of only one or two seats. I believe that those predictions are far too conservative and fail to take into account the foul mood of the American people and the intense unpopularity of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.

Republicans have 15 Senate seats at stake. I believe Republicans will retain all of those seats. On the other hand, the Democrats have 21 seats at stake, only eight of which are all but certain to remain in Democrat hands. The remaining 13 seats are either leaning heavily Republican or are vulnerable to Republican takeover. A net gain of 10 seats by the GOP is not outside the realm of possibility.

All we need are leaders and candidates who are willing to take the battle to the enemy in a most forceful and straightforward way. At a recent rally in Illinois, Bruce Rauner shouted, “Let’s shake up Springfield! Let’s go get ‘em!” Republicans should never doubt that we have the people and the issues on our side. And if we can get Republicans across the country to adopt that same rallying cry, to say, “Let’s shake up America! Let’s go get ‘em!” we can win a victory in November that will make the Republican Revolution of 1994 pale by comparison.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured map is courtesy of Theshibboleth. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

COMMON CORE ACTION ALERT: Making Phone Calls Does “Make a Difference”!

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I can tell you first hand that making these calls makes a huge difference as I just spent a good 15 minutes on the phone speaking to Robert Schulte (Assistant to Kim McDougal – Governor Rick Scott’s Education Policy Coordinator).

Call the Governor’s office at: (850) 717-9376 and you can speak directly to Robert, like I just did.

Robert Schulte was as professional, helpful and congenial as anyone could ask for. I picked his brain. I told him what I have done to fight Common Core these past 10 months; asked him some very pertinent questions about Common Core – with the most important one being: “Do phone calls like the one I am making to you, really matter and are they being recorded?” Robert answered my question by telling me: “Willy, every single call that we get in this office is tracked. We make notes as to what the call was about; what the topic was; and if it was a negative or positive call – in terms of an issue…such as Common Core”.

In case of phone calls about Common Core – which is the most talked about issue in Tallahassee right now – Robert told me that every single comment from callers are tracked and forwarded to Kim McDougal then, compiled and forwarded to the governor, himself. So, every call that we make, matters. Especially when they are “Calls Complaining about Common Core” – the “4 C’s. Those calls are tracked, counted and accounted for. So, PLEASE MAKE THESE PHONE CALLS!!! The more “negative” calls that the governor’s office receives about Common Core – the more of a chance we have in “reversing the Curse“. That is one reason why Governor Scott threw PARCC out of Florida several months ago. If we can put enough pressure on Governor Scott – he may just throw out Common Core once and for all…and he’s got a good throwing arm.

The most important topic that Robert and I spoke about was the “Elections in November”, as we all know that Governor Scott needs every single vote that he can muster. And, cutting to the chase, I asked Robert a simple question: “How important is Governor Scott’s decision to either implement Common Core in the state of Florida or to drop Common Core, altogether in regards to him being re-elected?” Knowing that we constituents hold Governor’s Scott’s votes, Robert told me that this controversy of Common Core weighs very heavy on whether Rick Scott will be re-elected. Friends: I know for a fact that this Common Core issue will either make or break Governor Scott and will be the determining factor of whether he gets another term as our governor of Florida.

So, please make these phone calls because they count…just like every one of our votes.

ACTION ITEM: HOW MUCH WILL COMMON CORE COST YOU?

Posted by Vic Cirillo

There has never been a fiscal study of how much it will cost to implement Common Core. No one really knows how much it will cost your local school district to implement CC. A few years ago the feds bribed Florida with “Race to the Top” money to get our politicians to agree to implement Common Core, but guess what? The Race to the Top money is almost gone so Common Core costs will have to be covered with new money. Is Tallahassee going to start giving more money to the schools? Maybe, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. Most likely new expenses will be unfunded mandates that your local school district will have to cover and they probably don’t have the money to do so. That means they will have to cut something else or get more taxes from you, all to implement an education curriculum whose merits have been shrouded in secrecy. Good public policy is done in the sunlight, not in secrecy. Florida has been conned, we need to tell our elected officials to back out of Common Core. The mood in Tallahassee is that many of our legislators are on the fence and they need to know that we the citizens don’t want liberal, ham-fisted, D.C. central planner’s data mining our kids and gaming the lesson plans to teach them to be good little servants of the state. These are OUR schools, the schools WE pay for, the schools WE elect school board members to govern, the schools WE and our neighbors send our children to, the FLORIDA schools, not the federal schools.

Legislative Subterfuge

Common Core Opponents just returning from Tallahassee report that after meetings with members of the House and Senate Education Committees on the issue of Common Core those legislators and their staff were all working off the same talking points to sidetrack and confuse those opposing Common Core, including the Governor’s office. The Florida Department of Education recently made minor adjustments to Common Core and Rep. Janet Adkins and the K-12 Subcommittee passed a bill (PCB TKS 14-01) , that removes references to Common Core and changes the name to the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards or Florida Standards. Remember that last year our Florida legislators redefined the term Next Generation Sunshine State Standards to include Common Core. This is just a change in semantics with no change in implementation. After just a couple of meetings, it would have been laughable if weren’t so sad that they actually think we will be fooled by their subterfuge. Despite minor changes to the standards and a new name, Common Core Standards are still moving forward in Florida.

SB 864 and HB 921 are end around bills designed to make the public believe they oppose Federal intrusion and Common Core standards (see below). If all the textbooks we have to choose from are aligned to Common Core, and the students’ tests will be based on Common Core, and schools and teachers will be graded on their students’ tests, there is still no choice for school districts but Common Core aligned curriculum, most of which is produced by Pearson PLC and the College Board.

Senate President Don Gaetz and Speaker Will Weatherford told us in person that these are the bills they support and they will not allow SB 1316 and HB 25 to be heard in Committee: Why Not? Because, Debby Mayfield’s bill HB 25, is the only bill that actually will stop Common Core, and they know it.

HB 25 is Representative Debbie Mayfield’s Stop Common Core bill. Its first committee stop is the House Education Appropriations Subcommittee chaired by Representative Eric Fresen. So far he is refusing to schedule the bill for a committee hearing. Call him at 850-717-5114 and demand that he schedule the bill for a hearing.

Representative Marlene O’Toole is Chair of the House Education committee. Call her at 850-717-5033 and tell her you support HB25 and want it heard in her committee.

SB1316 by Senator Evers is the Senate companion bill to HB25. Senator John Legg is the Chairman of the Senate Education Committee. Call Senator Legg at 850-487-5017 and tell him you support SB1316 and want it scheduled for a hearing in his committee.

Finally, call the Governor’s Education Policy Coordinator, Kim McDougal at 850-717-9376. You will get her assistant, Robert Schulte. Tell him you want to speak to Kim McDougal. He will want to take a message for her. Tell him to tell his boss, that her boss, the Governor, will pay a high price at the polls in November if he continues with the implementation of Common Core.

We must not go quietly! We must not go down without a fight! CALL TODAY!

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of Holger.Ellgaard. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

Common Core opponents under attack by big business

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Recently we reported about Common Core and shared this enlightening video regarding the government’s attempt to mandate education standards.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/PprP5TCZBRI[/youtube]

Common Core has run into very strong grassroots opposition and has become a focal issue for the conservative grassroots Tea Party. However, Common Core supporters, backed by big business special interests, aren’t going down without a fight. And they’ll fight in the manner they know best — with big money.

According to Politico, a coalition including the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will launch a national advertising blitz Sunday targeted at Republicans skeptical about the standards. Spots promoting the Common Core will air on Fox News and other conservative outlets.

The campaign — a major ad buy that could last months — aims to undercut dire tea party warnings that the standards amount to a federal power grab, akin to Obamacare. The TV spots and online ads will project a positive tone, featuring teachers praising the Common Core.

I spent a year teaching American and world history as well as honors government in high school after my retirement from the Army. I can attest that what is happening in our schools is not teaching but rather instructing on test-taking strategies. We are not preparing young people to be productive participants in our communities, developing their critical thinking skills or making education relevant.

It’s all because bureaucrats and those who profit from them are developing standards — national standards — that seem to forget one integral aspect of education: it is local. We have school boards for a reason and that’s to set standards and guidelines that educate children in coordination with the local community.

For example, you might think that since South Florida is home to maritime heavy industry, education would focus on preparing our children here for that industry. And why wouldn’t the Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce support more private sector involvement in practical application of education to support the theory taught? Evaluations should be based on skill set development, not nebulous and arbitrary standards developed by folks just peddling their wares, textbooks and such.

The bottom line is that big business has been recruited by Common Core proponents to destroy the grassroots, everyday Americans. And they intend to use their financial might to meet that end.

Dane Linn, vice president of the Business Roundtable and one of the architects of the Common Core says “State leaders, and the general public, need to understand why employers care about the Common Core.” The Business Roundtable, he said, is urging members to work their connections with “governors, committee chairs, House speakers, presidents of Senates” to stop any bills that could undercut the standards.

Mr. Linn needs to understand why parents care about Common Core.

And so it begins folks, the fight between big business and the grassroots. As I’ve said before, progressivism has nothing to do with party affiliation. It’s all about a philosophy of governance and the relation between government and the individual.

It is not the purview of the federal government to nationalize education standards. Nor is it proper for the federal government to blackmail states into accepting their terms of education. And it’s certainly not proper for big business to seek to financially crush the voices of concerned parents and teachers.

Neither I, nor my wife, Dr. Angela Graham-West, PhD, support common core. And I offer a word of advice to Republican candidates: listen to the people, and resist the temptation to betray them over the 30 pieces of silver these special interest groups promise. You will lose. I for one am more than willing and ready to stand up to Big Business as a champion for the American people.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. The featured photo is of The United States Chamber of Commerce headquarters at 1615 H Street, NW in Washington, D.C. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: AgnosticPreachersKid at en.wikipedia.

ABC Pilot “Alice in Arabia”: The Truth more Damning than Fiction

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Creeping Sharia (CS) has featured our NER articles and Iconoclast posts on kidnapping of American children by Saudi Fathers. See An American Child Kidnapped in Accordance with Sharia and An American’s Rescue from Abduction to Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday, CS posted on an InsideTV/ Entertainment Weekly story about CAIR’s demand to control an ABC Family pilot about a fictional abduction by Saudi relatives of an American girl and her eventual escape. That pales by comparison with the truth about real episodes of such kidnappings.

We wonder what both Professor Margaret McClain and Yasmeen Alexandria Davis would say regarding this latest attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood front. They are  seeking to intimidate the  pilot’s producers and the cable TV channel for daring to unveil Sharia intrusion on the fundamental Constitution rights of American citizens, women and children.  We believe that Professor McClain’s story portrays Sharia Islamic law practiced by Saudi men denying basic liberties under our Constitution in violation of state and federal laws, as well as, international conventions against parental kidnapping.  As portrayed in our interview with Ms. Davis, our State Department did little to rescue her.  Instead, it was left to the resourcefulness of her mother and grandmother to accomplish that feat.   Ms. Davis’ resistance to physical abuse by her Saudi Father for her refusal to convert to Islam was a living nightmare.  A nightmare that is still very real and palpable.  Her Saudi father, who made threats to kill her, still keeps tabs on her via lawyers’ letters and attempts to visit her by an ex-FBI agent. They continually ask her if she would refrain from invoking an outstanding Interpol warrant for her father’s arrest for his abduction of her.  He is seeking  to bring  children by another marriage from Saudi Arabia on a visit to Disney World.

That is the ultimate chutzpah of Sharia, practiced by fundamentalist Muslims both here and abroad.  Sharia, when intrudes on our laws, should be deterred from recognition in state legal systems, including Florida.   American Law for American Courts legislation is currently making its fourth attempt at passage in the Florida legislature.  Perhaps this latest attempt by CAIR to muzzle free thought, coupled with stories of Sharia’s war on American women and children, can aid in  securing passage in the 2014 session of the  Florida state legislature. We shall see.

Our thanks to the team at CS for pointing out this related story and the cases of both Professor McClain and Ms. Davis.  Sending those stories to the ABC Family producers of the fictional pilot might embolden them to tell the truth about what lies behind the medieval barbarity of Sharia.  If so inclined you might Tweet at hashtag #AliceinArabia to protest CAIR’s move or call   ABC Family President Tom Ascheim at  818- 460-7477.  818-460-747   Let him know that the pilot needs to rebut CAIR’s intimidation by revealing the truth of these cautionary testimonies by Professor McClain and Ms. Davis.

Here is the CS post: Terror-linked CAIR wants to control ABC Family’s pilot on Saudi kidnapping of American girl

Real life Saudi-Muslim abduction dramas are playing out in the U.S. daily…while terror-linked CAIR is busy fighting for Sharia law across the U.S. via ABC Family’s ‘Alice in Arabia’ sparks outrage | Inside TV | EW.com.

ABC Family’s recently announced drama pilot Alice in Arabia is inciting significant backlash on Twitter and from a Muslim civil liberties organization. The pilot follows an American teen who is kidnapped by her Saudi Arabian extended family and must “find a way to return home while surviving life behind the veil.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, called for the cable network to meet with Muslim and Arab-American community leaders to discuss their grievances with the potential series. CAIR sent a letter to ABC Family president Tom Ascheim on Tuesday requesting a meeting with its organization and other groups.

“We want ABC to sit down and to meet with us and have a dialogue,” spokeswoman Yasmin Nouh told EW. “[And] to recognize that the portrayal of [this story has] real consequences on Muslims and especially on Muslim youth, not only how others treat them, but in terms of how they see themselves.”

The organization has not yet received a response from ABC Family, which is owned by Disney, but a spokesperson for the cable network  issued the following statement: “We hope people will wait to judge this show on its actual merits once it is filmed. The writer is an incredible storyteller and we expect “Alice” to be a nuanced and character driven show.”

Here is the full ABC Family description of the pilot:

“Alice in Arabia” is a high-stakes drama series about a rebellious American teenage girl who, after tragedy befalls her parents, is unknowingly kidnapped by her extended family, who are Saudi Arabian. Alice finds herself a stranger in a new world but is intrigued by its offerings and people, whom she finds surprisingly diverse in their views on the world and her situation. Now a virtual prisoner in her grandfather’s royal compound, Alice must count on her independent spirit and wit to find a way to return home while surviving life behind the veil. The pilot was written by Brooke Eikmeier, who previously served in the US Army as a Cryptologic Linguist in the Arabic language, trained to support NSA missions in the Middle East. She left the service in September 2013 with the rank  of E-4 Specialist.”

Very troubling to several on Twitter is the reference to living life “behind the veil,” which Nouh says is just part of the bigger issue with the plot line. “The veil connotes and is equated to oppression, you are in an oppressive land with oppressive people and the veil is just a part of that,” she said.

The response on Twitter has been immense since Tuesday, with people using the Twitter hashtag #AliceinArabia to share their opinions and solicit a call to action.

Will ABC Family agree to the terror-linked, FBI-banned CAIR demands and meet with the Hamas front group? Will the unindicted co-conspirator be allowed to dictate what is shown and said on network television? 

Is Brooke Eikmeier aware of who CAIR is? Was her training whitewashed to prevent her from learning the truth about terror-linked Muslim organizations in the United States? Will she too be smeared and submitted to Hamas-CAIR litigation jihad? Will she whitewash the reality of what goes on in Saudi Arabia? Are real life Alice’s “intrigued by its [Saudi Muslim slavery] offerings and people, whom she finds surprisingly diverse in their views on the world and her situation”?

RELATED COLUMN: Islamic sharia law adopted by British legal chiefs

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Florida TV Station Exposes Voter Fraud, DOJ Sues State to Stop Purging Rolls

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“While the Obama Justice Department mounts a legal challenge against Florida for purging ineligible voters from its rolls, a television news station broadcasts an unbelievable segment that proves non U.S. citizens living in the Sunshine State vote regularly in elections,” reports Judicial Watch.

The investigative piece was aired this week by an NBC affiliate in southwest Florida that actually tracked down and interviewed non U.S. citizens who are registered to vote and have cast ballots in numerous elections. The segment focused on Lee County, which has a population of about 620,000 and Collier County with a population of around 322,000. The reporter spent about two months digging around the voter rolls in the two counties and the discoveries are dumbfounding.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/2hjmKBfrycQ[/youtube]

In that short time, more than 100 people registered to vote in those two areas were proven to be ineligible by the reporter. A Cape Coral woman, eligible to vote in elections, was tracked down through jury excusal forms that verify she’s not a U.S. citizen. A Naples woman, who is not a U.S. citizen either, voted six times in 11 years without being detected by authorities. A Jamaican man is also registered to vote though he’s not eligible. The reporter obtained his 2007 voter registration form, which shows the Jamaican man claims to be a U.S. citizen. Problem is, no one bothers checking to see if applicants are being truthful.

Incredibly, election supervisors confirmed on camera that there’s no way for them to verify the citizenship of people who register to vote. The only way to detect fraud is if the county offices that oversee elections receive a tip, they say, and only then can they follow up.  As inconceivable as this may seem, it appears to be true. Election supervisors in counties across the United States have their hands tied when it comes to this sort of voter registration fraud. They neither have the resources nor the authority to take action without knowledge of specific wrongdoing.

In an effort to remedy the situation, Florida Governor Rick Scott launched a program a few years ago to purge ineligible voters from registration rolls. The Department of Justice (DOJ) was quick to sue the state to stop the purging because the agency claims it discriminates against minorities. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has colluded with the DOJ in Florida and the head of the group’s local chapter says purging voter rolls disproportionately affects the state’s most vulnerable groups, namely minorities.

ABOUT JUDICIAL WATCH

Judicial Watch has been a leader in investigating voter fraud and in 2012 launched a special Election Integrity Project. As part of the initiative JW has examined publicly available data that indicates that voter rolls in a number of states—including Florida, Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, California, Colorado and Ohio—contain the names of individuals who are ineligible to vote. The JW investigation has shown that there appear to be more individuals on voter registration lists in these states than there are individuals eligible to vote, including dead people.

Florida House: Resident In-state Tuition for Illegal Aliens passes by vote of 81-33! Did they read the bill?

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Floridians for Immigration Enforcement (FLIMEN) states, “When immigration is viewed only racially and culturally, limits and legality will never be imposed.  The debate must focus on limitations and lawfulness, otherwise open borders will make the United States a marketplace and not a country.”

Florida resident Tad MacKie was perplexed at the overwhelming vote in the House of Representatives to grant illegal aliens resident in-state tuition to Florida’s colleges and universities. In an email to his representatives and senators MacKie states:

Rep’s Pilon, Steube and Boyd,

Thank you all for your NO votes on HB 851… You each are part of the few who actually took your fiduciary duty to the citizens of Florida, in general, and to your constituents, in particular, seriously.

It is a shame that 70% of your “colleagues” do not, including two from the Sarasota/Manatee delegation.

Rep’s Rouson and Holder,

The two of you, on the other hand, apparently believe that $700/year, from EVERY legal household in Florida, is just, somehow, not enough to give to, or spend because of, those people who have seen fit to break into our Country and our State. You have chosen to completely ignore the rights of, and your fiduciary duty to, EVERY person in your respective districts and in Florida who is either a citizen or those more-than-welcomed immigrants who have been respective of our laws… How dare you?.. You have brought both dishonor and shame on yourselves and the office with which the LEGAL citizens and voters have entrusted you.

Senators Detert and Galvano,

It is my fervent hope and desire that both of you will show the wisdom, fortitude and respect for your office, your constituents and the rule of law, as Rep’s Pilon, Steube and Boyd have, when the same question is brought before you.

For the rest of my readers,

How did YOUR “Representative”, that is, the person who, supposedly, represents YOU, vote on the issue of granting tuition waivers to ILLEGAL aliens? By the way, that “in-state tuition”…? Well… It amounts to right about $13, 500, per year, per student, out of your tax money.

See the “Summary Analysis” and “Full Analysis” of the bill.

The Summary Analysis does not even mention that illegals will be given waivers and neither the Summary nor Full Analysis states what the fiscal impact will be on the state education budget.

If the Representatives only read the Summary Analysis, they didn’t even know what they were voting on.

The Full Analysis reads:

The bill provides that students, regardless of immigration status, who attend a Florida high school for 3 consecutive years and enroll in an institution of higher education within 24 months after graduation are not required to pay out-of-state fees, provided they submit their high school transcript as documentary evidence of attendance and graduation. While these students are not classified as residents for tuition purposes, they may be reported for purposes of state funding. [Emphasis added]

MacKie points out the “Summary Analysis” exempts the following types of students from the payment of out-of-state fees:

Veterans of the United States Armed Forces, including reserve components, who physically reside in Florida while enrolled in a Florida postsecondary institution; and

Students who attend a Florida high school for 3 consecutive years and enroll in a postsecondary institution within 24 months after graduation, provided they submit their high school transcript as documentary evidence of attendance and graduation.”

“You’ll notice the Summary Analysis does NOT say “regardless of immigration status”, as does the actual bill and the Full Analysis [above]. The point being that IF the house member did not read the entire “Full Analysis”, he/she could have easily misinterpreted the meaning and intent of the bill,” writes MacKie.

Click here to view how each member of the Florida House of Representatives voted on HB 851.

FILMEN concludes, “The bottom line nationally is that illegal immigration continues to hurt American families, take away jobs and depress wages of fathers and mothers who desperately want to support their children without going on welfare. The bottom line here in Florida is HB851/SB1400 will cause an unknown number of legal students to be displaced from college by illegal alien students. There is absolutely no estimate of the fiscal cost of college tuition subsidy for illegal aliens.”

Many see this as Republicans pandering for votes among Florida’s Hispanic population. Dr. Larry Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education, wrote, “Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people. If you encourage something, you get more of it; if you discourage something, you get less of it.”

The short term effect of Republican pandering to get Hispanic votes harms all Floridians in the long run. Rewarding lawlessness will cause more lawlessness. The floodgates to our colleges and universities are now wide open to illegal aliens. People who have broken the laws of this land will be sitting next to legal students thumbing their collective illegal noses at them.

Is this vote is just one step towards a vote for amnesty? That is the question.

RELATED STORY: Jeb Bush Praises Illegal Immigrants as ‘Risk Takers,’ Defends Common Core

Beyond Crony Capitalism by Sandy Ikeda

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Some libertarians don’t like the term “crony capitalism.” They complain that cronyism—the use of political power for private gain—is incompatible with capitalism, so why conflate the two terms? While they may have a point, I’d like to look beyond the issue of terminology and focus on the underlying phenomenon: The problems with interventionism go far beyond cronyism.

On Facebook and other places, libertarians talk among themselves with a heavy, almost exclusive focus on cronyism over other forms of interventionism. It troubles me.

What Is Crony Capitalism?

The idea behind crony capitalism is what we used to call “special-interest politics” or the more technical “rent seeking.” The politically powerful, or those with connections to them, use that power to channel wealth from other people to themselves.

Examples of cronyism aren’t hard to find, of course. Here in New York, our new mayor wants to tax high-income earners to fund pre-kindergarten programs in public schools in order to reward teachers’ unions for their help in getting him elected. Erecting trade barriers to protect the textile industry has a long and dishonorable history. And aspects of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) seem to have been designed to privilege well-established insurance companies, who can afford to lobby, at the expense of smaller ones who can’t.

I don’t want to go over this well-trod ground again. I raise the issue of cronyism for two reasons.

Imputing Bad Motives

First, the charge of cronyism or political opportunism assumes that those who favor interventionism do so for narrowly selfish, even venal reasons. Painting your opponents as crony capitalists puts you on the side of virtue—a free-market good guy who really wants to promote the general welfare.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m certainly not saying that free-market advocates don’t have good intentions. What I am saying is that imputing bad intentions to your opponents from the get-go may be fitting for a street fight—and I know there sometimes are street fights—but it’s a bad idea if you want constructive dialogue or debate.

F. A. Hayek explained that he dedicated his great book The Road to Serfdom “To Socialists of All Parties” not to mock his opponents but to open a conversation with them. Like his mentor Ludwig von Mises, he typically chose to treat people with whom he disagreed as men and women of goodwill. In other words, he refrained from assuming his adversaries were intellectually dishonest, unconquerably stupid, or plain evil. I know many of you will say, “But these people are evil!” Sorry, I don’t go there because it’s unnecessary, and if you want to know why, read this and this. When you foreclose honest dialogue, bullets replace ideas.

Ideas Inform Interests

Ultimately what underlies crony capitalism is bad ideas.

A common idea is that getting very rich from voluntary trade is tantamount to getting very rich from political redistribution. If the ways in which Vladimir Putin and Bill Gates each became billionaires are morally equivalent, the former mostly through threats of violence and the latter mostly by selling stuff, then what’s wrong with using aggression to get rich? Or, if they are equivalent, then can’t political power serve as a countervailing force against “economic power”? It’s easy to see how such ideas might appear to legitimize political power for special-interest pleading.

So bad intent may not always motivate even cronyism. I believe most of us, whatever our ideology, want to do good—for ourselves, our families, our friends, and our communities—most of the time. Mises wisely pointed out that the dichotomy between “interests versus ideology” is unhelpful because “it is not sensible to declare that ideas are a product of interests. Ideas tell a man what his interests are.”

Thus, as Henry Hazlitt argued long ago, preferring short-term gains for a small group of people over long-term improvement to the general welfare is just a bad idea because it ultimately runs counter to the interests of those who favor it.

Other Forms of Interventionism Are at Least As Important

The second reason I’m raising this issue is that the study of interventionism also includes looking at the unintended consequences of interventionism. Interventions are subject, to one degree or another, to what are called knowledge problems. Because knowledge in both the private and governmental spheres is imperfect, it’s simply not possible to be aware beforehand of how people will respond to an intervention. Knowledge problems generate perverse incentives that tend to frustrate the intentions of even well-meaning interventionists.

Perverse incentives refer to things such as people driving more recklessly as a result of mandating airbags in all cars, which is an example I used in a recent column. It also includes the spectacle of people losing their low-cost insurance because under Obamacare their coverage doesn’t meet the new minimum standards. (NBC news reported that the Obama administration may have known this would happen, but unlike crony capitalism it’s hard to see how this particular aspect of the ACA benefits anyone systematically, especially politically.)  Advocates of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour don’t realize the negative impact this increase would have on already disadvantaged low-wage workers, who will now be priced out of the labor market. For example, Time magazine reports that it could “lift 4–6 million out of poverty” but fails to mention that it could also increase unemployment by hundreds of thousands.

It’s hard to change the minds of hard-core proponents of interventionism (and of hard-core proponents of any ideology, including libertarianism) but there have been important examples. A recent one is the surprising change of heart by the activist/rock star Bono on the value of capitalism in developing countries. If changing minds through ideas isn’t possible, then I’m in the wrong business.

I don’t think I am.

I’m a Misesian on many issues, including this one. But here I’m also a Keynesian. In the closing paragraphs of his General Theory, Lord Keynes famously wrote:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. . . . I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

I worry that focusing so narrowly on crony capitalism feeds into the very human but very misguided tendency to feel contempt for anyone who doesn’t believe as you do. Of course, there are those who do mock and tease, or worse, in arguments. But if you’re facing serious opponents, it’s better to regard them as people with gaps in their knowledge (which we all have) than to dismiss them as invincibly ignorant. Better to patiently point out the weaknesses of their arguments and to listen to what they have to say.

That’s hard, but it’s the only way to win. And by “win” I mean maintaining respect for yourself and being able to improve your position by seeing the weaknesses, as well as the strengths, in your own ideas.

ABOUT SANDY IKEDA

Sandy Ikeda is an associate professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism. He will be speaking at the FEE summer seminars “People Aren’t Pawns” and “Are Markets Just?“

LBJ: I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years

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On March 20, 1854 the Republican Party was established in Ripon, Wisconsin. Referred to as the GOP or Grand Old Party, it established for one reason: to break the chains of slavery and ensure the unalienable rights endowed by the Creator of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would be for all Americans.

The Republican Party was created to achieve individual freedom. Then, as now, the antagonist to the Republican party has been the Democrats, the party of collective subjugation and individual enslavement — then physical, now economic.

The first black members of the US House and Senate were Republicans. The first civil rights legislation came from Republicans. Democrats gave us the KKK, Jim Crow, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and failed policies like the “Great Society.”

Republican President Eisenhower ordered troops to enforce school desegregation. Republican Senator Everett Dirksen enabled the 1964 civil rights legislation to pass, in opposition to Democrat Senators Robert Byrd (KKK Grand Wizard) and Al Gore, Sr.

As a matter of fact, it was Democrat President Lyndon Baines Johnson who stated, “I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years” as he confided with two like-minded governors on Air Force One regarding his underlying intentions for the “Great Society” programs.

Yep, and who are the real racists? So far, thanks to a Republican Party that is ignorant of its own history and gave up on the black community, Democrats have 50 of those 200 years under their belt.

The problem with today’s Republican Party is that it has forgotten its own history and raison d’ etre: individual liberty. The Party must come to realize that GOP also stands for “Growth, Opportunity, Prosperity” and articulate how it stands, as its history and founding clearly demonstrate, for the individual pursuit of happiness as opposed to the progressive socialist (Democrat) lie of a collective guarantee of happiness.

So, happy 160th birthday to my Party, the Republican Party. I am a strong Conservative and I hope Republicans recommit to those fundamental principles which established this Party — the historical antithesis of the Democrats. Do I agree with every Republican on everything? Not always, but I doggone ain’t about to join up with the other liberal socialist rascals. And I do have a word of caution to my fellow Republicans, (wo)man up, or go the way of the Whigs.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Republican Party Est. March 20, 1854: A look back and looking forward by Bob Livingston

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The following article is courtesy of Bob Livingston, Publisher of the Personal Liberty Digest. Our thanks to Bob for this insightful review of the history of the Republican Party, established one-hundred and sixty years old today.

On March 20, 1854, the Republican Party was born in Wisconsin. The party consisted of an amalgam of parties, business groups and other special interest groups, but was primarily made up of former Whigs and members of the Free Soil Party.

The Whigs believed in protectionism for industry, a national bank and currency, a large national debt, and large Federal government engaged in extensive public works. Free Soilers believed in free land and subsidies for farmers. Business leaders wanted a protectionist big government that would keep them free from competition and send them money from the Federal treasury.

Whigs favored the economic platforms of Federalist Alexander Hamilton and former Whig leader Henry Clay. These ideas formed the economic agenda of the new Republican Party. “They advocated protective tariffs for industry, a national bank, and plenty of public works and patronage,” explained the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

The Republican Party nominated its first Presidential candidate for the 1856 election. John C. Fremont won 11 of 16 Northern States. The party’s fortunes were brighter in 1860, though, with the Democrat Party divided and Southern States threatening secession if Republican candidate and railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency.

As the historian Bruce Catton wrote in The Civil War, in 1860, Lincoln wanted to be the nominee of the Republican Party — a party that consisted of an amalgam of former members of the defunct Whig Party, Free Soilers (those who believed all new territories should be slave-free), business leaders who wanted a central government that would protect industry and ordinary folk who wanted a homestead act that would provide free farms in the West. “The Republican platform, however, did represent a threat to Southern interests. It embodied the political and economic program of the North — upward revision of the tariff, free farms in the West, railroad subsidies, and all the rest.”

In his book, The Constitution in Exile, Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote: “For forty years, Clay supported the creation of an American empire through measures such as corporate welfare, (which politicians like to call ‘internal improvements’); today we call them corporate tax breaks, protectionist tariffs, and a nationwide central bank. All the things that Clay favored in essence provided for a highly centralized government. And Lincoln supported them all.”

In the early 1860s, the Republican Party’s flurry of new laws, regulations and bureaucracies created by Lincoln and the northern Republicans foreshadowed Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” for volume, scope and questionable Constitutionality of its legislation.

The term “New Deal” was only co-opted by Roosevelt. It was first coined to describe Lincoln and the Republican agenda by a Raleigh, N.C., newspaper editor in 1865.

“Lincoln’s massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led Daniel Elazar to claim, ‘ . . . one could easily call Lincoln’s presidency the “New Deal” of the 1860s.’ Republicans established a much larger, more powerful, and more destructive federal government in the 1860s,” Mises explained.

Today, Republican elites try to cast themselves as the party of small government. But during the past 40 years, the party of Lincoln has done much more to grow government than reduce it. Both Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford expanded the Great Society programs of Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1970, Nixon imposed wage and price controls throughout the economy, imposed a tax surcharge on all imports and removed the American dollar from the gold standard [August 1971] – hardly small-government policies.

Nixon’s policies sparked a rise in oil prices and caused the Great Inflation of the 1970s, according to Charles R. Morris, writing in his book, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown. Morris writes that Nixon was a Keynesian through and through, as were his supposedly conservative cabinet members.

President Ronald Reagan was a believer in limited government, and he took steps to reduce its size. His tax cuts stimulated the economy; but Democrats controlled the House, and he was vilified by them for his efforts to reduce domestic spending while he increased military spending. While he campaigned on balancing the budget, he did not accomplish it and deficits soared. His limited-government agenda was hijacked by the Democrats and the Council on Foreign Relations, the members of which dominated Reagan’s staff.

President George H.W. Bush was elected to continue Reagan’s policies but despite his “Read my lips. No new taxes” pledge, Bush 41 was neither a small-government guy nor a believer in Reagan’s low-tax policies or trickle-down economics. He was a true Republican. He immediately joined the Democrats and raised taxes and grew government.

The second President Bush, George W. (compassionate conservative), was simply a big-government [one-world government] promoter. He expanded the Federal reach into our children’s education with No Child Left Behind, along with Senator Edward Kennedy, expanded entitlement programs like the Medicare Drug benefit and embarked on a war strategy that helped push a teetering economy over the cliff.

More egregious than that was his USA PATRIOT Act [overrules 4th and 5th Amendments, thus far] — which, among other things, suspended habeas corpus — and other supposed terrorism-fighting provisions that intrude on the liberty and privacy of Americans and codified the expansive spying bureaucracy we only now learning the depth and scope of. And many Republicans claiming to be conservative went right along.

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush 43 said, in classic Bushism fashion, as he pushed his Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

So those of you who are counting on the Republican Party elites to rein in government have embarked on a fool’s errand. The GOP remains true to its roots, planted 160 years ago, today. A very unhappy birthday to the GOP.

ABOUT BOB LIVINGSTON

More than 40 years ago Bob Livingston saw where the nation and the world were headed, and he was alarmed. He knew he had to speak up, to be the warning oracle for those who would hear and heed the alarm. Now he works to expose the lies, deceit, misinformation and disinformation being spread as the “truth” by the government, the manipulated media and the controlling elite.

In the decades since, Bob Livingston—contrarian, ultraconservative, researcher and student of history—has stood as a vigilant and sometimes lonely but always steadfast and vocal sentinel against the forces both within and without our country that seek to subvert our freedoms and control our lives for their own ends.

In doing so he has always uncovered and provided for his readers the truth on a variety of subjects such as nutritional supplements and alternatives to drugs, issues of privacy, asset protection and preservation of freedom—even when that truth is uncomfortable to accept. Bob’s actual identity is kept secret so he can move freely working as a consumer watchdog in his quest to help you preserve your freedom, improve your health, boost your wealth and protect your civil liberties

Learn more about Bob at his Personal Liberty Digest.