If you thought you had heard all the bad news coming from the Obama administration and a Democrat packed congress, you were wrong.
Two weeks ago, Representatives John Conyers (D-MI) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) quietly re-introduced the so-called hate crimes bill--H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. It is now expected that on Wednesday April 22, the full US House Judiciary Committee will vote on H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
Crimes already illegal will be considered “hate crimes” depending on the intent of the criminal. Therefore we must only hire psychologists as policemen or we have to assume all policemen are trained psychologists. Penalties for “hate crimes” will be greater than for the same crime not considered based on hate of the victim. Does this make any sense to a reasonable person? The criminal act is the same only the impossible assessment of the motivation is supposed to be different. It is one thing to deplore acts of violence against innocent victims or bias-motivated violent crimes directed at anyone including lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (gender confused) (LGBT) persons, it is another thing to try to get into the criminal’s mind to ascertain his motivation. The law should not provide extra legal protection for someone simply because of the way he/she engages in sex.
The so-called hate crimes bill will be used to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute and persecute pastors, business owners, Bible teachers, Sunday School teachers, youth leaders, Christian counselors, religious broadcasters and anyone else who the law deems capable of committing a crime motivated by hate of the victim. The problem is that innocent people like those just mentioned who believe in the Bible teachings will come under the rubric of committing a hate crime if they express their religious beliefs.
H.R. 1913 broadly defines “intimidation. A pastor’s sermon could be considered “hate speech” under this legislation if heard by an individual who then acts aggressively against persons based on any “sexual orientation.” The pastor could be prosecuted for “conspiracy to commit a hate crime.” During congressional committee markup in 2007, Representative Arthur Davis (D-AL) admitted that the legislation will not protect a pastor from prosecution. (So-Called hate crime bill threatens religious freedom)
The main purpose of this “hate crime” legislation is to add the categories of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” “either actual or perceived,” as new classes of individuals receiving special protection by federal law. Sexual orientation includes heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality on an ever-expanding number of categories deemed worthy of special treatment. Will Congress also protect other sexual orientations - such as pedophilia or polygamy?
Gender discrimination as a basis of a hate crime produces some interesting results. Gender identity includes such classes of people as cross-dressers, she-male, drag queens, transvestites and transsexuals. Under the Act, neither “sexual orientation” nor “gender identity” are really defined. How can a law be enforced if the new classes receiving special protection remain undefined? The sexual behaviors considered sinful and immoral by most major religions will be elevated to a protected “minority” class under federal law.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender activists (the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) have aggressively promoted the idea that any speech, including Bible oriented speech and anything in opposition to the gay agenda, will lead inevitability to violent “hate” crimes. This really enables them to demand restrictions of such speech as a way of protecting homosexuals from violence. What they’re really targeting is speech against LGBT behaviors that is based upon an understanding of what the Bible says about this behavior. In short, they’re targeting Bible Speech — not actual “hate speech.”
The ILGA have a broad definition of “hate crime: “Hate crimes are criminal acts (such as violent crime, hate speech or vandalism motivated by feelings of hostility against any identifiable group of people within a society.” The ILGA defines hate crime to include so-called hate speech and wants to limit the First Amendment freedom of expression to distinguish homosexuals and their cousins from criticism of any sort.
On the website “hatecrime.org,” LGBT activists claim that pro-family organizations are engaging in hate speech when they criticize homosexual conduct and his “hate speech” allegedly leads to hate crimes that must be suppressed.
The Hate Crime law, HR-1913, will make 30 sexual orientations federally-protected. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has published 30 such sexual orientations that, because of Congress’s failure to define “sexual orientation,” will arguably be protected under this legislation. These 30 orientations are listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which is used by physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and psychiatrists throughout the U.S. It is considered the dictionary of mental disorders. Those 30 sexual orientations include behaviors that are felonies or misdemeanors in most states or can result in death.
Among those sexual orientations are (Protecting 30 Bizarre “Sexual Orientations” And “Gender Identity” -- Ever-Expanding Definitions):
Fronteurism -- which involves a man approaching an unknown woman and rubbing up against her buttocks; this is already criminal behavior.
Incest -- which is a crime (sex with a daughter or son).
Necrophilia -- a crime (sex with a corpse).
Pedophilia -- a crime (sex with an underage child).
Prostitution -- a crime in most states.
Zoophilia -- (beastiality) which is a crime in numerous states.
Voyeurism -- which is a criminal offense in most states.
Non-criminal sexual orientations include such behaviors as:
Autogeynephilia -- the perception of a man as being a woman;
Apotemnophilia -- sexual arousal from the stumps of an amputee;
Coprophilia -- sexual arousal from feces;
Urophilia -- sexual arousal from urine
Transvestic Fetishism -- intense sexually-arousing fantasies, sexual urges, and behaviors involving cross-dressing.
To protect a “sexual orientation” under H.R. 1913 – while leaving that term undefined -- is to protect this whole range of bizarre sexual behaviors. It is to normalize by federal law what are still considered to be mental disorders (paraphilias) by the American Psychiatric Association.
On the website “hatecrime.org,” LGBT activists claim that pro-family organizations are engaging in hate speech when they criticize homosexual conduct and his “hate speech” allegedly leads to hate crimes and must be suppressed. This site compares opposition to homosexuality as equal to Adolph Hitler’s slaughter of six million Jews in Europe before and during World War II.
This homosexual militant group has a lot of supporters and they flex their muscles all over the country.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution blaming religious groups for so-called “hate crimes” such as the murder of Mathew Shepard. In addition, the Board approved a resolution urging the local media not to carry advertisements by pro-family organizations that addressed hope for homosexuals to change.
In New York, a billboard with a Bible verse on it was taken down under pressure from city officials, who cited it as "hate speech.”
In Massachusetts in 2005, parent David Parker was arrested for protesting his elementary school child having to listen to pro-LGBT propaganda! He eventually removed his child from the school. He was in court for two years and lost all of his appeals.
Slavic students in Sacramento wore anti-gay agenda T-shirts to protest the gay-inspired Day of Silence on campus. They were punished for their views. The claim that hate crime laws against violence do not affect free speech or freedom of religion is bogus.
One of the most serious attacks on free speech and religious freedom came in Philadelphia in 2004.
Eleven Christians were arrested on felony charges for preaching the Word of God at a gay pride rally. Eight charges were filed against them: three felony charges and five misdemeanors. Charges were eventually dropped against six of the Christians, but the five left faced potential prison sentences of 47 years in jail and fines up to $90,000!
They were charged under Pennsylvania’s hate crime law, which had recently added “sexual orientation” to their statute. The Christians were charged with: criminal conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime, reckless endangerment of another person, ethnic intimidation, riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and obstructing highways. The “instruments of crime” were bull horns for witnessing.
The “ethnic intimidation” section of the hate crime statute was used against the Christians for having preached to the homosexuals in the parade and rally. Their “speech” was considered ethnic intimidation. The charges were eventually dropped against the Christians for having no basis in fact – but their free speech and religious freedom were violated and they had to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees.
The far-left 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco has attacked freedom of speech and religion for the Christian employees of the city of Oakland, California.
The court issued a memo declaring that it sided with the city of Oakland in censoring the emails and posters of the Good News Employee Association that used words like “Natural Family,” “Marriage” and “Family Values” in their materials. The 9th Circuit said the city had the right to censor those words because it made LGBT employees uncomfortable and violated the city’s sexual orientation ordinance! These words were considered “statements of a homophobic nature” and “sexual-orientation-based harassment.”
These are only a few examples that show how sexual orientation and hate crime laws can be used to suppress religious freedom and free speech.
This legislation provides hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund so-called anti-hate programs. This includes a series of $100,000 grants to organizations allegedly fighting “hate” in their communities. If signed into law, this so-called hate crimes bill will be used to fund pro-LGBT teaching materials for our nation’s public schools.
Here are a series of articles on hate crime legislation that go into great detail about the dangers of these laws.
So-Called hate crime bill threatens religious freedom
Protecting 30 Bizarre "Sexual Orientations" And "Gender Identity" -- Ever-Expanding Definitions
Religious Freedom Is Threatened By H.R. 1913
H.R. 1913 Will Inevitably Fund Anti-Christian Bigotry — And Attack Bible Speech
Misleading 'Hate Crime' Statistics
One tactic that is often used by homosexuals is to employ percentages in reporting on increases in hate crimes against LBGT persons instead of actual numbers or defining what those numbers mean. For example, a LBGT group could claim that hate crimes jumped 50% from one year to the next. This could only mean that there were 10 crimes last year and an additional 5 this year. The 50% figure sounds much worse than just honestly reporting that crime went from 10 to 15. (Misleading ‘Hate Crime’ Statistics)
LBGT claims that every 6 hours of every day, a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender person is “violently” attacked by a bigot. If this were true, there would be 1,460 such violent attacks each year, yet the group fails to define what “violent” is.
Here are the facts about examples of hate crimes.
FBI statistics on “hate crimes” against a person’s sexual orientation from 2007 (the latest available) reveal the following: In 2007 there were 1,521 victims of “sexual orientation” bias. However, the breakdown of these crimes is listed as:
335 were crimes of intimidation (shouting or name-calling)
448 were crimes of simple assault (defined as pushing or shoving without physical injury) 242 were crimes of aggravated assault (defined as bodily harm) -
(source: FBI statistics 2007).
From FBI collected data (same source as stated above) we can see there were only 242 crimes against a person’s sexual orientation that could be considered “violent.” And, twenty-seven of these bias crimes were directed against heterosexuals! All together, there were 9,535 victims of bias crimes in 2007. This includes bias against race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, disability, or multiple-bias incidents.
The FBI statistics do not indicate how many of these “violent hate crimes” were committed by homosexuals against other homosexuals – or what provoked the violence.
Out of a total number of 855,856 cases of aggravated assault in 2007, only 242 were directed at LGBT individuals. This is only 0.02827578411446785% of all aggravated assaults! This is not an epidemic of hate against LGBT individuals. So, in a nation of 300 million people, there were only 242 “violent” crimes against homosexuals, bisexuals or drag queens in 2007. This is no epidemic of hate and local law enforcement does not need intrusive federal intervention to deal with such a miniscule number of crimes.
No Epidemic Of Hate Crimes Exists. H.R. 1913 falsely claims in Section 2, without any evidence, that “the incidence of violence motivated by the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability of the victim poses a serious national problem.”
FBI statistics, 2007, show that out of a nation of 300 million, there were only 1,521 hate crimes directed against a person’s sexual orientation in 2007. The majority of these “crimes” involved name-calling and pushing or shoving a person. It is clear from FBI statistics that there is no epidemic of hate against homosexuals that needs federal involvement in local law enforcement.
In fact, in analyzing FBI statistics, it is clear that anti-religious bias and racial bias are more serious issues than sexual orientation bias. Here’s a comparison of statistics on race, religion, and sexual orientation:
Out of 4,956 racial incidents, 908 were anti-white; 3,424 were anti-African American; and the rest were bias crimes against other races.
Out of 1,628 anti-religious bias crimes, 1,127 were against Jews; 142 against Muslims; 70 against Catholics; 67 against Protestants. The rest were against other religions.
Homosexual activists are well-known for having staged a number of fake hate crimes throughout the years.
For example, homosexual activists have claimed that a 72-year-old homosexual named Andrew Anthos of Detroit was attacked by an African-American man who called him a “faggot” and struck him in the head with a metal pipe, killing him. Police later learned that Anthos had not been the victim of a hate crime. He had fallen because of a severe arthritic condition in his neck. He was also mentally ill.
In January, 2007, a homosexual student at Boise State University told police that a man had beaten him in the back of the head and swore at him. He later admitted to police that he’d faked the crime by using a stick and his fists to beat himself.
The faking of hate crimes by homosexuals goes back years. In 2000, U.S. News & World Report columnist John Leo documented case after case of faked hate crimes by homosexuals. One involved Jerry Kennedy, a homosexual student at the University of Georgia. Kennedy reported to police that he’d been the victim of nine hate crimes over a three-year period – including three acts of arson. He later admitted faking these.
The objective of LGBT activists is to gain sympathy for their gay agenda or the passage of pro-LGBT legislation such as H.R. 1913. If H.R. 1913 passes, we can expect a further flood of these phony hate crimes.
Homosexual groups will provide false or misleading information to reporters on the extent of this alleged epidemic of hate – and they’ll organize candle-light vigils, put on plays and use other street theater antics to push their agenda. What is this agenda? It’s getting LGBT conduct to be given minority status protection under federal law – and to use this legislation to persecute anyone who criticizes LGBT behaviors.
It is imperative that all people who know and understand the gravity of HR-1913 should call their Congressman and tell them to vote against this bill. If they don’t understand what the consequences of passing HR-1913 into law, send them a copy of this article or extract portions for a letter or fax to your representatives.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Obama flip-flops on Durban II
On April 20-24, 2009, in Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations will host the “Durban Review Conference,” – a follow-up to the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR). As mandated by the UN General Assembly, the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UNHRC) is responsible for organizing and convening the event “towards the effective and comprehensive implementation” of the conclusions and recommendations of WCAR, and to continue the “global drive for the total elimination of racism.”
Sounds good doesn’t it; after all who is not in favor of ending racism? However the truth is that the conference has nothing to do with racism; it is, like its predecessor conference (Durban I), part of a campaign to coordinate the diplomatic and legal war against Israel, an attempt to outlaw any criticism of Islam and a complete fraud having nothing to do with human rights.
The conference to be held in April is better known as Durban II, the sequel to the first such conference held in South Africa in September, 2001. That conference became an anti-Semitic diatribe reminiscent of Nazi Germany. America under George Bush honorably refused to participate; but not this time around under B. Hussein Obama.
The conference, which starts on April 20 - notably Hitler's birthday -, is strongly opposed by Israel and Jewish groups who say the first Durban conference in South Africa in 2001 amounted to an Israel-bashing session. The U.S. and Israel delegations walked out of that conference in protest over a draft resolution that likened Zionism -- the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state -- to racism.
In contrast to the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration is objecting to an automatic boycott and says it is attempting to change the event's tone via negotiations. Moreover the Obama administration actually sent representatives to participate in the so-called “planning” for the Durban II conference in February. However since the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to review and implement the declarations adopted at the UN's anti-Israel decisions that were made in Durban I, there was no possibility that the US representatives could have had any affect on the conference preparations or conference outcome.
With the naivety characteristic of the Obama administration, his administration’s State Department seemingly expected the US could cause the conference to address what the US views as genuine problems of racism worldwide without regard to the anti-Israel and anti-First Amendment nature of the Durban I proceedings. This is obvious since Libya, Cuba and Iran (all members of the UN Human Rights council) have achieved unanimity with all Islamic countries to condemn Israel and silence criticism of Islam. Is any Islamic country noted for its human rights; any belief that they will solve "problems of racism worldwide" is idiotic.
Among the provisions sought to become international law as a result of Durban I are clauses that aim to make any attack on Islam a criminal offense and calls "on states to develop, and where appropriate, to incorporate permissible limitations on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression into national legislation." Yes, you read that right. The transparent purpose is to criminalize all criticism of Islam which the tyrannical Islamic States consider to be "Islamophobia”.
At Durban I, both the UN-sponsored NGO group and the UN's governmental conference passed declarations denouncing Israel as a racist state. The NGO conference called for a coordinated international campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel and the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, and belittling the Holocaust.
The NGO conference also called for curbs on freedom of expression throughout the world in order to prevent critical discussion of Islam. As far as the world's leading NGOs - including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - were concerned, critical discussions of Islam are inherently racist.
In defending US participation in the Durban II planning sessions, Gordon Duguid, the State Department's spokesman, argued, "If you are not engaged, you don't have a voice. We wanted to put forward our view and see if there is some way we can make the document [which sets the agenda and dictates the outcome of the Durban II conference] a better document than it appears it is going to be."
However, this naïve expectation is absurd for two reasons.
First, since the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to oversee the implementation of the first Durban conference's decisions, and since those decisions include anti-freedom of expression and the anti-Israel assertion that Israel is a racist state, it is clear that the Durban II conference is inherently, and necessarily, anti-freedom and anti-Israel.
The second reason is that both the State Department and the White House should have realized that they are powerless to affect the conference's agenda because that agenda was already set in previous planning sessions chaired by the likes of Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan; and that agenda includes multiple assertions of the basic illegitimacy of the Jewish people's right to self-determination. The conference agenda also largely adopted the language of the Durban I conference that called for the criminalization of critical discussion of Islam as a form of hate speech and racism. The Durban II conference's agenda is not only openly anti-Israel, it is also openly pro-tyranny, and antithetical to US constitutional First Amendment right of free expression.
In any case, the Islamic bloc, supported by the Third World bloc, has an automatic voting majority. Beyond insignificant wording changes, the US has no ability whatsoever to change the conference's agenda or expected outcome.
Recently Professor Anne Bayefsky, the senior editor of the EyeontheUN Web site, said that by participating in the planning sessions the US is accepting the conference's anti-Israel agenda. Bayefsky reported that at the planning session in Geneva, the Palestinian delegation proposed that a paragraph be added to the conference's agenda. Their draft "calls for implementation of... the advisory opinion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] on the wall, [i.e., Israel's security fence], and the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory." The American delegation raised no objection to the Palestinian draft.
By not objecting to this Palestinian draft, not only did the US effectively accept the ICJ's authority, for practical purposes it granted the anti-Israel claim that whatever Israel does is a violation of human rights (and not for self defense).
This assertion aligns with the language already in the Durban II agenda that calls Israel's Law of Return racist. Israeli law, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew who wishes to live there, is the embodiment of Jewish nation and the vehicle through which the Jewish people has built a nation-state. In alleging that the Law of Return is racist, the Durban II conference asserts that the Jews have no right to self-determination in their homeland.
As Bayefsky and others argued recently, by entering into the Durban preparatory process, the US did two things. First, it made it all but impossible for European countries like France, Britain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, which were all considering boycotting the conference, to do so. They cannot afford to be seen as more opposed to its anti-Israel and anti-freedom agenda than Israel's closest ally. So just by participating in the planning sessions the US has legitimized a clearly bigoted, morally illegitimate process, making it impossible for Europe to disengage.
Second, through its behavior at the Geneva planning sessions the US demonstrated that the administration has no interest in changing the agenda in any serious way. The US delegation's decision not to object to the Palestinian draft, as well its silence in the face of Iran's rejection of a clause in the conference declaration that mentioned the Holocaust, shows the US did not join the planning session to change the tenor of the conference but that the US is participating in the planning sessions because it wishes to participate in the conference.
All this was confirmed when the administration despite being unceremoniously rebuffed by preparatory session attendees who rejected U.S. proposed changes to the Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA), is intent on attending Durban II. The documents of Durban I are expected to be adopted at the April 2009 Durban II Conference.
Obama has now reversed his position on attending Durban II despite previously stating on Friday, Feb. 27, 2009, that administration efforts to change the Durban II documents were a failure. He stated that the “document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse, and the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable.
The Obama administration has flip-flopped and the United States is reconsidering its boycott of the upcoming United Nations “Durban II” racism conference.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood explained in an announcement Monday, “The United States welcomes the recent progress [?] that has been made through the efforts of many delegations, governments and officials in the formulation of the draft outcome document for the Durban Review Conference on April 20.” [Wood said this with a straight face despite previous State Department statements that “the document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse.”]
Wood then said “We hope [US] concerns will be addressed so that the United States can reengage the conference process.” But remember the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to review and implement the declarations adopted at Durban I.
Obama still insists that the power of his oratory and personality will get rogue states like Iran to change their ways and embrace peace with Israel. The fact that Ahmadinejad will be attending the Durban II conference gave the Obama administration a reason to also attend Durban II. Interestingly, the U.S. announcement it is reconsidering attending the conference is consistent with a general change in its policy on dealing with Iran. The Obama administration has said it will open negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear development program, within the context of talks with the Group of Six world powers, including the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
The U.S. also decided not to set a time limit within which the talks must either bear fruit or be deemed useless. In addition, both the U.S. and European nations are preparing proposals to drop the American demand that Iran shut down its nuclear facilities during the negotiations, said sources quoted in The New York Times.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Monday that he personally would attend the gathering, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Obama should heed a resolution passed by Congress but Obama has a history in his just three months in office of disregarding the will of the people, and sometimes of Congress which is dominated by his fellow Democrats.
On September 23, 2008, the US Congress adopted House of Representatives Resolution 1361 in anticipation of the Durban Review Conference (scheduled for April 20-24, 2009). This resolution calls on the US government to "lead a high-level diplomatic effort" aimed "to defeat any effort by states to use the forum to promote anti-Semitism or hatred against members of any group or to call into question the legitimacy of any state." In adopting this resolution Congress noted the enormous damage to human rights that resulted from the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, and particularly at the NGO Forum, which "misused human rights language to promote hate, anti-Semitism, incitement, and divert the focus of the conference from problems within their own countries to a focus on Israel."
The resolution, which was based on a draft written in the Foreign Affairs committee, is a clear congressional expression of wide political consensus on 'Durban II.’ Democrat representative Howard Berman, the leader of Democratic majority on the committee and the Republican Ranking Member, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and a total of 24 co-sponsors signed their names to the text. This broad-based approach reflects opposition not only to the attacks against Israel that are embodied in the Durban process, but also the disastrous impact on genuine human rights concerns and freedom of expression that results from these activities.
Obama once again shows his support of things Muslim at the sacrifice of traditional American values. Is this what he was elected to do?
Sounds good doesn’t it; after all who is not in favor of ending racism? However the truth is that the conference has nothing to do with racism; it is, like its predecessor conference (Durban I), part of a campaign to coordinate the diplomatic and legal war against Israel, an attempt to outlaw any criticism of Islam and a complete fraud having nothing to do with human rights.
The conference to be held in April is better known as Durban II, the sequel to the first such conference held in South Africa in September, 2001. That conference became an anti-Semitic diatribe reminiscent of Nazi Germany. America under George Bush honorably refused to participate; but not this time around under B. Hussein Obama.
The conference, which starts on April 20 - notably Hitler's birthday -, is strongly opposed by Israel and Jewish groups who say the first Durban conference in South Africa in 2001 amounted to an Israel-bashing session. The U.S. and Israel delegations walked out of that conference in protest over a draft resolution that likened Zionism -- the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state -- to racism.
In contrast to the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration is objecting to an automatic boycott and says it is attempting to change the event's tone via negotiations. Moreover the Obama administration actually sent representatives to participate in the so-called “planning” for the Durban II conference in February. However since the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to review and implement the declarations adopted at the UN's anti-Israel decisions that were made in Durban I, there was no possibility that the US representatives could have had any affect on the conference preparations or conference outcome.
With the naivety characteristic of the Obama administration, his administration’s State Department seemingly expected the US could cause the conference to address what the US views as genuine problems of racism worldwide without regard to the anti-Israel and anti-First Amendment nature of the Durban I proceedings. This is obvious since Libya, Cuba and Iran (all members of the UN Human Rights council) have achieved unanimity with all Islamic countries to condemn Israel and silence criticism of Islam. Is any Islamic country noted for its human rights; any belief that they will solve "problems of racism worldwide" is idiotic.
Among the provisions sought to become international law as a result of Durban I are clauses that aim to make any attack on Islam a criminal offense and calls "on states to develop, and where appropriate, to incorporate permissible limitations on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression into national legislation." Yes, you read that right. The transparent purpose is to criminalize all criticism of Islam which the tyrannical Islamic States consider to be "Islamophobia”.
At Durban I, both the UN-sponsored NGO group and the UN's governmental conference passed declarations denouncing Israel as a racist state. The NGO conference called for a coordinated international campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel and the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, and belittling the Holocaust.
The NGO conference also called for curbs on freedom of expression throughout the world in order to prevent critical discussion of Islam. As far as the world's leading NGOs - including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - were concerned, critical discussions of Islam are inherently racist.
In defending US participation in the Durban II planning sessions, Gordon Duguid, the State Department's spokesman, argued, "If you are not engaged, you don't have a voice. We wanted to put forward our view and see if there is some way we can make the document [which sets the agenda and dictates the outcome of the Durban II conference] a better document than it appears it is going to be."
However, this naïve expectation is absurd for two reasons.
First, since the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to oversee the implementation of the first Durban conference's decisions, and since those decisions include anti-freedom of expression and the anti-Israel assertion that Israel is a racist state, it is clear that the Durban II conference is inherently, and necessarily, anti-freedom and anti-Israel.
The second reason is that both the State Department and the White House should have realized that they are powerless to affect the conference's agenda because that agenda was already set in previous planning sessions chaired by the likes of Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan; and that agenda includes multiple assertions of the basic illegitimacy of the Jewish people's right to self-determination. The conference agenda also largely adopted the language of the Durban I conference that called for the criminalization of critical discussion of Islam as a form of hate speech and racism. The Durban II conference's agenda is not only openly anti-Israel, it is also openly pro-tyranny, and antithetical to US constitutional First Amendment right of free expression.
In any case, the Islamic bloc, supported by the Third World bloc, has an automatic voting majority. Beyond insignificant wording changes, the US has no ability whatsoever to change the conference's agenda or expected outcome.
Recently Professor Anne Bayefsky, the senior editor of the EyeontheUN Web site, said that by participating in the planning sessions the US is accepting the conference's anti-Israel agenda. Bayefsky reported that at the planning session in Geneva, the Palestinian delegation proposed that a paragraph be added to the conference's agenda. Their draft "calls for implementation of... the advisory opinion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] on the wall, [i.e., Israel's security fence], and the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory." The American delegation raised no objection to the Palestinian draft.
By not objecting to this Palestinian draft, not only did the US effectively accept the ICJ's authority, for practical purposes it granted the anti-Israel claim that whatever Israel does is a violation of human rights (and not for self defense).
This assertion aligns with the language already in the Durban II agenda that calls Israel's Law of Return racist. Israeli law, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew who wishes to live there, is the embodiment of Jewish nation and the vehicle through which the Jewish people has built a nation-state. In alleging that the Law of Return is racist, the Durban II conference asserts that the Jews have no right to self-determination in their homeland.
As Bayefsky and others argued recently, by entering into the Durban preparatory process, the US did two things. First, it made it all but impossible for European countries like France, Britain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, which were all considering boycotting the conference, to do so. They cannot afford to be seen as more opposed to its anti-Israel and anti-freedom agenda than Israel's closest ally. So just by participating in the planning sessions the US has legitimized a clearly bigoted, morally illegitimate process, making it impossible for Europe to disengage.
Second, through its behavior at the Geneva planning sessions the US demonstrated that the administration has no interest in changing the agenda in any serious way. The US delegation's decision not to object to the Palestinian draft, as well its silence in the face of Iran's rejection of a clause in the conference declaration that mentioned the Holocaust, shows the US did not join the planning session to change the tenor of the conference but that the US is participating in the planning sessions because it wishes to participate in the conference.
All this was confirmed when the administration despite being unceremoniously rebuffed by preparatory session attendees who rejected U.S. proposed changes to the Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA), is intent on attending Durban II. The documents of Durban I are expected to be adopted at the April 2009 Durban II Conference.
Obama has now reversed his position on attending Durban II despite previously stating on Friday, Feb. 27, 2009, that administration efforts to change the Durban II documents were a failure. He stated that the “document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse, and the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable.
The Obama administration has flip-flopped and the United States is reconsidering its boycott of the upcoming United Nations “Durban II” racism conference.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood explained in an announcement Monday, “The United States welcomes the recent progress [?] that has been made through the efforts of many delegations, governments and officials in the formulation of the draft outcome document for the Durban Review Conference on April 20.” [Wood said this with a straight face despite previous State Department statements that “the document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse.”]
Wood then said “We hope [US] concerns will be addressed so that the United States can reengage the conference process.” But remember the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to review and implement the declarations adopted at Durban I.
Obama still insists that the power of his oratory and personality will get rogue states like Iran to change their ways and embrace peace with Israel. The fact that Ahmadinejad will be attending the Durban II conference gave the Obama administration a reason to also attend Durban II. Interestingly, the U.S. announcement it is reconsidering attending the conference is consistent with a general change in its policy on dealing with Iran. The Obama administration has said it will open negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear development program, within the context of talks with the Group of Six world powers, including the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
The U.S. also decided not to set a time limit within which the talks must either bear fruit or be deemed useless. In addition, both the U.S. and European nations are preparing proposals to drop the American demand that Iran shut down its nuclear facilities during the negotiations, said sources quoted in The New York Times.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Monday that he personally would attend the gathering, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Obama should heed a resolution passed by Congress but Obama has a history in his just three months in office of disregarding the will of the people, and sometimes of Congress which is dominated by his fellow Democrats.
On September 23, 2008, the US Congress adopted House of Representatives Resolution 1361 in anticipation of the Durban Review Conference (scheduled for April 20-24, 2009). This resolution calls on the US government to "lead a high-level diplomatic effort" aimed "to defeat any effort by states to use the forum to promote anti-Semitism or hatred against members of any group or to call into question the legitimacy of any state." In adopting this resolution Congress noted the enormous damage to human rights that resulted from the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, and particularly at the NGO Forum, which "misused human rights language to promote hate, anti-Semitism, incitement, and divert the focus of the conference from problems within their own countries to a focus on Israel."
The resolution, which was based on a draft written in the Foreign Affairs committee, is a clear congressional expression of wide political consensus on 'Durban II.’ Democrat representative Howard Berman, the leader of Democratic majority on the committee and the Republican Ranking Member, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and a total of 24 co-sponsors signed their names to the text. This broad-based approach reflects opposition not only to the attacks against Israel that are embodied in the Durban process, but also the disastrous impact on genuine human rights concerns and freedom of expression that results from these activities.
Obama once again shows his support of things Muslim at the sacrifice of traditional American values. Is this what he was elected to do?
Monday, April 13, 2009
The ‘GIVE ACT’ should be called the ‘TAKE ACT’ – the federal government taking more power
The bill, HR 1388: The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, otherwise known as the "GIVE Act," was passed in the House by a vote of 321-105 and then the Senate voted closure on the motion to proceed by a margin of 74-14; making ultimate passage likely since Republicans have abandoned their role as a sensible “loyal opposition.”
Let us not forget that President Obama while campaigning made the mistake of revealing his real intentions when he said in his Colorado Springs speech he wanted to create a “civilian national security force which, candidate Obama said "would be just as powerful and well-funded as the U.S. military.”
The legislation also refers to "uniforms" that would be worn by the "volunteers" and the "need" for a "public service academy, a 4-year institution" to "focus on training" future "public sector leaders." The training, apparently, would occur at "campuses."
One writer said of the bill, "This is the equivalent of brown shirts," and who can disagree?
As WorldNet Daily noted: "Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?" I for one believe Obama did say what he meant in an unguarded moment, probably without his teleprompter to tell him what he should say.
This was not the only thing Obama said without permission of his teleprompter.
The original official Obama website (Change.gov), said Obama would "require" all middle school through college students to participate in community service programs and that "President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in under served schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.”
However, after many blogs protested against children being drafted into Obama's proposed separate domestic army, the official website was reworded to soften the wording to make it seem less mandatory. The word "require" was stricken from the website and replaced with the phrase "setting a goal" and “enabling" Americans to serve, rather than” requiring" them to serve. However elsewhere on the Change.gov site, it described the plan under the heading, "Require 100 hours of service in college." (but since this article was posted, this reference on the Change.gov website was also deleted.)
If the original bill wasn’t bad enough, Democrat George Miller, (D-California) introduced an amendment to the to severely restrict the First Amendment by prohibiting youth opposed to the program from attempting to influence legislation, organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts or strikes.
Under the pending legislation AmeriCorps will distribute money even though AmeriCorps volunteers have a history of being recruited and employed by community programs with an ideological purpose supported by Democrat Party politicians, including ACORN and Planned Parenthood. (Under terms of the legislation AmeriCorps volunteers can end up counseling Planned Parenthood clients to recommend and arrange abortions.)
The Canada Free Press wrote: “‘volunteerism that kept America running since the days of its founding’ would be "wiped out with the stroke of a pen."
"It becomes forced labor and like the practice of another era, presses American citizens of all ages and creeds, unknowingly into military service. On paper, H.R. 1388 is the 'Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act'; the more innocuous sounding 'The Give Act,' for short.
"The Give Act puts the finishing touches to Public Allies New Leadership for New Times, modeled after Saul Alinsky's 'Peoples Organizations' and operating under Michelle Obama.”
"Michelle, (wife of Barack Obama), was a pioneer in the social entrepreneur movement – a group of leaders who create new approaches and organize to provide new solutions to social problems. Like most things Saul Alinsky, H.R. 1388 sounds noble in stating why wide-sweeping change is necessary."
"H.R. 1388 goes straight to the heart of volunteerism in America, impacting everything from the lemonade stands of neighborhood children, to the residents of senior citizens homes. … The Give Act puts tow-headed school children and silver-haired seniors in the official uniform of the new State, and encompasses every walk of life in main-street America. Whether you are young or old, or firmly believe that volunteering means you are offering your time to the good of community work, you will be pressed into Obama's National Civilian Community Corps."
"These 'volunteers' would be "grouped together as appropriate in campuses for operational, support, and boarding purposes. The Corps campus for a unit shall be in a facility or central location established as the operational headquarters and boarding place for the unit. … There shall be a superintendent for each camp" – just like Nazi Germany.
Michael Kinsley also wrote about Obama’s plans for enlisting America's youth in voluntary versus required volunteerism on Time's website: "Problem number one with grand schemes for universal voluntary public service is that they can't be both universal and voluntary. If everybody has to do it, then it's not voluntary, is it? And if it's truly up to the individual, then it won't be universal."
I recently pointed out how the federal government exerts control over states the Constitution sought vigorously to separate by dictating terms to states when they accept federal (read – taxpayer) money. Well this is another example of how this is done.
J.D. Tuccille of the Civil Liberties Examiner said "Most public schools depend on federal dollars. As Obama elaborated in a speech last December, 'At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities.' So, it won't be the nasty federal government forcing your kids to donate their time to government-approved service, it'll be the local schools – but that requirement will be among the strings attached to federal money.”
Obama selected as dictator for the mandatory civil service, political thug Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff. With good reason this has further worried many that Obama's plans may be more "requirement" than "encouragement."
WorldNet Daily noted that “In his book, ‘The Plan: Big Ideas for America,’ Emanuel writes: ‘It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.’” “’Emanuel and co-author Bruce Reed insist 'this is not a draft,' but goes on to write of young men and women, 'the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service.' They also warn, 'Some Republicans will squeal about individual freedom,' ruling out any likelihood that they would let people opt out of universal citizen service.’"
The problem is Republicans won’t “squeal” enough.
Let us not forget that President Obama while campaigning made the mistake of revealing his real intentions when he said in his Colorado Springs speech he wanted to create a “civilian national security force which, candidate Obama said "would be just as powerful and well-funded as the U.S. military.”
The legislation also refers to "uniforms" that would be worn by the "volunteers" and the "need" for a "public service academy, a 4-year institution" to "focus on training" future "public sector leaders." The training, apparently, would occur at "campuses."
One writer said of the bill, "This is the equivalent of brown shirts," and who can disagree?
As WorldNet Daily noted: "Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?" I for one believe Obama did say what he meant in an unguarded moment, probably without his teleprompter to tell him what he should say.
This was not the only thing Obama said without permission of his teleprompter.
The original official Obama website (Change.gov), said Obama would "require" all middle school through college students to participate in community service programs and that "President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in under served schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.”
However, after many blogs protested against children being drafted into Obama's proposed separate domestic army, the official website was reworded to soften the wording to make it seem less mandatory. The word "require" was stricken from the website and replaced with the phrase "setting a goal" and “enabling" Americans to serve, rather than” requiring" them to serve. However elsewhere on the Change.gov site, it described the plan under the heading, "Require 100 hours of service in college." (but since this article was posted, this reference on the Change.gov website was also deleted.)
If the original bill wasn’t bad enough, Democrat George Miller, (D-California) introduced an amendment to the to severely restrict the First Amendment by prohibiting youth opposed to the program from attempting to influence legislation, organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts or strikes.
Under the pending legislation AmeriCorps will distribute money even though AmeriCorps volunteers have a history of being recruited and employed by community programs with an ideological purpose supported by Democrat Party politicians, including ACORN and Planned Parenthood. (Under terms of the legislation AmeriCorps volunteers can end up counseling Planned Parenthood clients to recommend and arrange abortions.)
The Canada Free Press wrote: “‘volunteerism that kept America running since the days of its founding’ would be "wiped out with the stroke of a pen."
"It becomes forced labor and like the practice of another era, presses American citizens of all ages and creeds, unknowingly into military service. On paper, H.R. 1388 is the 'Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act'; the more innocuous sounding 'The Give Act,' for short.
"The Give Act puts the finishing touches to Public Allies New Leadership for New Times, modeled after Saul Alinsky's 'Peoples Organizations' and operating under Michelle Obama.”
"Michelle, (wife of Barack Obama), was a pioneer in the social entrepreneur movement – a group of leaders who create new approaches and organize to provide new solutions to social problems. Like most things Saul Alinsky, H.R. 1388 sounds noble in stating why wide-sweeping change is necessary."
"H.R. 1388 goes straight to the heart of volunteerism in America, impacting everything from the lemonade stands of neighborhood children, to the residents of senior citizens homes. … The Give Act puts tow-headed school children and silver-haired seniors in the official uniform of the new State, and encompasses every walk of life in main-street America. Whether you are young or old, or firmly believe that volunteering means you are offering your time to the good of community work, you will be pressed into Obama's National Civilian Community Corps."
"These 'volunteers' would be "grouped together as appropriate in campuses for operational, support, and boarding purposes. The Corps campus for a unit shall be in a facility or central location established as the operational headquarters and boarding place for the unit. … There shall be a superintendent for each camp" – just like Nazi Germany.
Michael Kinsley also wrote about Obama’s plans for enlisting America's youth in voluntary versus required volunteerism on Time's website: "Problem number one with grand schemes for universal voluntary public service is that they can't be both universal and voluntary. If everybody has to do it, then it's not voluntary, is it? And if it's truly up to the individual, then it won't be universal."
I recently pointed out how the federal government exerts control over states the Constitution sought vigorously to separate by dictating terms to states when they accept federal (read – taxpayer) money. Well this is another example of how this is done.
J.D. Tuccille of the Civil Liberties Examiner said "Most public schools depend on federal dollars. As Obama elaborated in a speech last December, 'At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities.' So, it won't be the nasty federal government forcing your kids to donate their time to government-approved service, it'll be the local schools – but that requirement will be among the strings attached to federal money.”
Obama selected as dictator for the mandatory civil service, political thug Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff. With good reason this has further worried many that Obama's plans may be more "requirement" than "encouragement."
WorldNet Daily noted that “In his book, ‘The Plan: Big Ideas for America,’ Emanuel writes: ‘It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.’” “’Emanuel and co-author Bruce Reed insist 'this is not a draft,' but goes on to write of young men and women, 'the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service.' They also warn, 'Some Republicans will squeal about individual freedom,' ruling out any likelihood that they would let people opt out of universal citizen service.’"
The problem is Republicans won’t “squeal” enough.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Amendment XX of the Constitution says Barack Obama is not president because he doesn't qualify - and what to do about it
Some people regard questioning Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility to be akin to tilting at wind mills; but I don’t. If Obama does not meet the constitutional requirement to be a natural born citizen and is therefore ineligible to be president, the consequences are enormous. If the constitution which is paramount in assuring the kind of government we have and our individual rights and liberty is ignored, the future of the United States is at risk – and Obama could settle all this by producing evidence he was born in the United States but he doesn’t; which raises the obvious question – can he?
Recently the Supreme Court decided not to hear the Donofrio case concerning whether Barack Obama is a natural born citizen and therefore qualified to be President [the case brought by Leo Donofrio who alleged Obama does not meet the Constitution's Article 2, Section 1 "natural-born citizen" requirement for president]. Shockingly, David Horowitz said of those who claim Obama is not natural born as being afflicted with "Obama Derangement Syndrome." Horowitz told people to "shut up about the birth certificate." He asked, "What difference does it make to the future of this country whether Obama was born on U.S. soil?" This is the wrong response to the decision by the Supreme Court. [It should be also remembered that a challenge to Obama's eligibility was brought in court before the Electoral College voted and Congress accepted the results but the issues were not decided.]
When the U.S. Constitution is clear on a matter, are we not supposed to make an effort to have the country re-think "what difference does it make to the future of this country?" If we don’t then what good is the Constitution if it can be ignored whenever it suits?
There is no doubt that the Constitution is very clear on this point and even the Obama apologists agree with that. Article II, Section 1 states: "no person except a natural born citizen ... shall be eligible to the Office of President." This is not ambiguous; if a person is not a natural born citizen, that person is ineligible to be president.
It’s true that Barack Obama received the required number of electoral votes to be elected president and received more popular votes than his opponent; but does that mean that the issue of eligibility should be disregarded? Is it too late to do anything about having an ineligible person occupying the White House and signing legislation into law; no, it is not too late?
Actually the U.S. Constitution addresses such a circumstance and tells us exactly what to do in the current situation. The election is not some kind of deadline. Even the true election by Electors is not the deadline. There is no deadline.
Here is the 20th Amendment of the Constitution in its entirety with selected portions highlighted:
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.
Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission [the 20th Amendment was ratified in 1933].
If it is found that Obama is not natural born, then the Constitution says Joe Biden shall be President until the President thing gets sorted out. This may be a horrible consequence but it is exactly what the Constitution says we shall do. It does not "suggest"; it says "shall."
Are we to apply the Constitution only in cases where it is convenient to do so?
The Constitution even suggests that there is a qualification process: "if the President elect shall have failed to qualify;" it says "…the Vice President shall act as president until a president shall have qualified."
What happens in the event Barack Obama is not president? That means he cannot be validly elected. The people and the Electoral College cannot overcome this and the House of Representatives can't make him president. He takes the oath of office, and assuming he's aware he's not a citizen, then it's a perjured oath. Any appointments made by an ineligible president would have to be recalled, and their decisions would be invalidated and all laws signed by him would not be enforceable.
Terrible you say; not to freedom loving people who believe in the Constitution.
So what can be done about this since the Supreme Court has refused to hear many cases raising the issue?
Under the common law such as is the basis of our system of jurisprudence, there is something called a writ of quo warranto. "What is quo warranto? It is a right under the Ninth Amendment* which was understood and presumed by the Founders, and which affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents.
Here is a writing on the subject. Revival of the writs must be combined with reviving standing for private prosecution of public rights, subverted by the decision in Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923), which is discussed in an article by Steve Winter, The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance.
Frothingham is sometimes cited for opposition to quo warranto but the majority opinion (Chief Justice Earl Warren) Frothingham v. Mellon did not recognize a constitutional barrier against federal taxpayer lawsuits. Rather, it denied standing because the petitioner did not allege "a breach by Congress of the specific constitutional limitations imposed upon an exercise of the taxing and spending power." Because the purpose of standing is to avoid burdening the court with situations in which there is no real controversy, standing is used to ensure that the parties in the suit are properly adversarial, "not whether the issue itself is justiciable." Clearly in the Obama eligibility issue there is "a breach of constitutional limitations" and federal "taxpayer lawsuits" are appropriate.
No doubt the consequences of removing Obama from the presidency are great and could require suppressing civil disorder which may arise from segments of the population but the alternative is equally grim – a destruction of the Constitution and the freedom and liberty for Americans it provides.
*Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Recently the Supreme Court decided not to hear the Donofrio case concerning whether Barack Obama is a natural born citizen and therefore qualified to be President [the case brought by Leo Donofrio who alleged Obama does not meet the Constitution's Article 2, Section 1 "natural-born citizen" requirement for president]. Shockingly, David Horowitz said of those who claim Obama is not natural born as being afflicted with "Obama Derangement Syndrome." Horowitz told people to "shut up about the birth certificate." He asked, "What difference does it make to the future of this country whether Obama was born on U.S. soil?" This is the wrong response to the decision by the Supreme Court. [It should be also remembered that a challenge to Obama's eligibility was brought in court before the Electoral College voted and Congress accepted the results but the issues were not decided.]
When the U.S. Constitution is clear on a matter, are we not supposed to make an effort to have the country re-think "what difference does it make to the future of this country?" If we don’t then what good is the Constitution if it can be ignored whenever it suits?
There is no doubt that the Constitution is very clear on this point and even the Obama apologists agree with that. Article II, Section 1 states: "no person except a natural born citizen ... shall be eligible to the Office of President." This is not ambiguous; if a person is not a natural born citizen, that person is ineligible to be president.
It’s true that Barack Obama received the required number of electoral votes to be elected president and received more popular votes than his opponent; but does that mean that the issue of eligibility should be disregarded? Is it too late to do anything about having an ineligible person occupying the White House and signing legislation into law; no, it is not too late?
Actually the U.S. Constitution addresses such a circumstance and tells us exactly what to do in the current situation. The election is not some kind of deadline. Even the true election by Electors is not the deadline. There is no deadline.
Here is the 20th Amendment of the Constitution in its entirety with selected portions highlighted:
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.
Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission [the 20th Amendment was ratified in 1933].
If it is found that Obama is not natural born, then the Constitution says Joe Biden shall be President until the President thing gets sorted out. This may be a horrible consequence but it is exactly what the Constitution says we shall do. It does not "suggest"; it says "shall."
Are we to apply the Constitution only in cases where it is convenient to do so?
The Constitution even suggests that there is a qualification process: "if the President elect shall have failed to qualify;" it says "…the Vice President shall act as president until a president shall have qualified."
What happens in the event Barack Obama is not president? That means he cannot be validly elected. The people and the Electoral College cannot overcome this and the House of Representatives can't make him president. He takes the oath of office, and assuming he's aware he's not a citizen, then it's a perjured oath. Any appointments made by an ineligible president would have to be recalled, and their decisions would be invalidated and all laws signed by him would not be enforceable.
Terrible you say; not to freedom loving people who believe in the Constitution.
So what can be done about this since the Supreme Court has refused to hear many cases raising the issue?
Under the common law such as is the basis of our system of jurisprudence, there is something called a writ of quo warranto. "What is quo warranto? It is a right under the Ninth Amendment* which was understood and presumed by the Founders, and which affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents.
Here is a writing on the subject. Revival of the writs must be combined with reviving standing for private prosecution of public rights, subverted by the decision in Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923), which is discussed in an article by Steve Winter, The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance.
Frothingham is sometimes cited for opposition to quo warranto but the majority opinion (Chief Justice Earl Warren) Frothingham v. Mellon did not recognize a constitutional barrier against federal taxpayer lawsuits. Rather, it denied standing because the petitioner did not allege "a breach by Congress of the specific constitutional limitations imposed upon an exercise of the taxing and spending power." Because the purpose of standing is to avoid burdening the court with situations in which there is no real controversy, standing is used to ensure that the parties in the suit are properly adversarial, "not whether the issue itself is justiciable." Clearly in the Obama eligibility issue there is "a breach of constitutional limitations" and federal "taxpayer lawsuits" are appropriate.
No doubt the consequences of removing Obama from the presidency are great and could require suppressing civil disorder which may arise from segments of the population but the alternative is equally grim – a destruction of the Constitution and the freedom and liberty for Americans it provides.
*Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Obama ready to give away the store, (meaning the country)
It’s bad enough that despite the clear wording of the Constitution that only Congress has the authority to “coin money”, this power was given to a national bank never intended or conceived by the country’s founders. The Federal Reserve Bank is a national bank with private ownership never actually overseen or even audited by Congress on behalf of American citizens. Now under the most socialist-minded president in our history control of the country’s banking system will be delegated to an international authority if President Obama has his way.
With a great deal of fanfare Obama’s first foreign trip as president was to participate in an international conference by the “G-20” group of first world countries to discuss the global financial disaster. As a public relations escapade Obama’s journey abroad may have been a personal triumph but as a representative of American national interests it was a total failure. Even his personal triumph came at the expense of national interest since he was the first president in history to bow before a foreign leader, the Saudi King at that, continually criticize his own country to the delight of our enemies and establish a new American foreign policy as one of appeasement of those who would destroy America if they could. Obama says we are not at war with Islam, takes his shoes off to visit a mosque and equates Islam whose written tenets in its version of the bible, the Koran, is filled with hate and destruction of all people who don’t accept Islam as a way of life.
The 20 countries did not agree on everything and certainly none of what President Obama was advocating but they did agree, along with Obama, to establish a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States. They agreed on the establishment of a “Financial Stability Board” (FSB) that will be composed of a group of central bankers from each of the G-20 countries and the European Union. In essence, Obama agreed to accept the idea that this international group of bankers who do not have the national interest of the United States to dictate how American agencies like the SEC, Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board and others regulating our business and finance will operate.
The authority and power willingly delegated by our president to this international body, FSB, is enormous and virtually open-ended. It prescribes the "framework of internationally agreed high standards that a global financial system requires." These standards are to include the extension of "regulation and oversight to all (not just some) systemically important financial institutions, instruments, and markets [including] systemically important hedge funds." If the FSB deems some financial business or institution “systemically important”, it can regulate it in any of the G-20 countries.
As part of its mandate, the FSB will be implementing “… tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms." In this Obama is ahead of the curve inasmuch as the power to dictate terms of employment and compensation of chief executives has already been assumed by Obama’s Treasury Secretary.
We know what the FSB has in mind to do with the imprimatur of our American President by considering what Mario Draghi, Italy's central bank president had to say about how the world’s financial institutions should be regulated. He said that "every financial institution capable of creating systemic risk will be subject to supervision." He adds that "it is envisaged that, at international level, the governance of financial institutions, executive compensation, and the special duties of intermediaries to protect retail investors will be subject to explicit supervision."
Not only does Draghi think the institutions mentioned should be subject to “explicit supervision,” but FSB should also set standards and assure application of those standards to all countries. Draghi told the press before the G-20 meeting that while "I don't see the FSF [now the FSB] as a global regulator at the present time . . . it should be a standard setter that coordinates national agencies." This "coordination of national agencies" and the "setting" of "standards" is an explicit statement of the mandate the FSB will have over our national regulatory agencies.
Obama apologized to the world for the role America played in the international financial crisis because of inadequate regulation so in his best sack cloth and ashes costume Obama has deliberately subverted our countries interests to a group of countries who don’t give a whit about us and that include many that would like to take America down to their level. This is one way Obama can achieve his goal of establishing European Socialism in the United States.
No longer will presidential appointees make policy for the economy of the United States’ these decisions will be made by an international body. In the future we can expect those appointed to run Federal Departments and agencies to take their orders not from the president or the American people but from the FSB which is currently composed of the central bankers of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States plus representatives of the World Bank, the European Union, the IMF, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Note that Europe has six of the 12 national members. Eventually the G-20 will enlarge the FSB to include all its member nations but will retain the bias of the European socialists. Imagine, the United States with a GDP three times that of the next largest G-20 member (Japan) will have one vote along with basket-case countries like France and Italy.
Obama has promised “change” and he fully intends to deliver on that promise. But is this the kind of change those who elected him to high office expected or had in mind; I don’t think so for most of them. A socialist or fascist state (however you define these terms) is not what patriotic Americans want.
With a great deal of fanfare Obama’s first foreign trip as president was to participate in an international conference by the “G-20” group of first world countries to discuss the global financial disaster. As a public relations escapade Obama’s journey abroad may have been a personal triumph but as a representative of American national interests it was a total failure. Even his personal triumph came at the expense of national interest since he was the first president in history to bow before a foreign leader, the Saudi King at that, continually criticize his own country to the delight of our enemies and establish a new American foreign policy as one of appeasement of those who would destroy America if they could. Obama says we are not at war with Islam, takes his shoes off to visit a mosque and equates Islam whose written tenets in its version of the bible, the Koran, is filled with hate and destruction of all people who don’t accept Islam as a way of life.
The 20 countries did not agree on everything and certainly none of what President Obama was advocating but they did agree, along with Obama, to establish a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States. They agreed on the establishment of a “Financial Stability Board” (FSB) that will be composed of a group of central bankers from each of the G-20 countries and the European Union. In essence, Obama agreed to accept the idea that this international group of bankers who do not have the national interest of the United States to dictate how American agencies like the SEC, Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board and others regulating our business and finance will operate.
The authority and power willingly delegated by our president to this international body, FSB, is enormous and virtually open-ended. It prescribes the "framework of internationally agreed high standards that a global financial system requires." These standards are to include the extension of "regulation and oversight to all (not just some) systemically important financial institutions, instruments, and markets [including] systemically important hedge funds." If the FSB deems some financial business or institution “systemically important”, it can regulate it in any of the G-20 countries.
As part of its mandate, the FSB will be implementing “… tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms." In this Obama is ahead of the curve inasmuch as the power to dictate terms of employment and compensation of chief executives has already been assumed by Obama’s Treasury Secretary.
We know what the FSB has in mind to do with the imprimatur of our American President by considering what Mario Draghi, Italy's central bank president had to say about how the world’s financial institutions should be regulated. He said that "every financial institution capable of creating systemic risk will be subject to supervision." He adds that "it is envisaged that, at international level, the governance of financial institutions, executive compensation, and the special duties of intermediaries to protect retail investors will be subject to explicit supervision."
Not only does Draghi think the institutions mentioned should be subject to “explicit supervision,” but FSB should also set standards and assure application of those standards to all countries. Draghi told the press before the G-20 meeting that while "I don't see the FSF [now the FSB] as a global regulator at the present time . . . it should be a standard setter that coordinates national agencies." This "coordination of national agencies" and the "setting" of "standards" is an explicit statement of the mandate the FSB will have over our national regulatory agencies.
Obama apologized to the world for the role America played in the international financial crisis because of inadequate regulation so in his best sack cloth and ashes costume Obama has deliberately subverted our countries interests to a group of countries who don’t give a whit about us and that include many that would like to take America down to their level. This is one way Obama can achieve his goal of establishing European Socialism in the United States.
No longer will presidential appointees make policy for the economy of the United States’ these decisions will be made by an international body. In the future we can expect those appointed to run Federal Departments and agencies to take their orders not from the president or the American people but from the FSB which is currently composed of the central bankers of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States plus representatives of the World Bank, the European Union, the IMF, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Note that Europe has six of the 12 national members. Eventually the G-20 will enlarge the FSB to include all its member nations but will retain the bias of the European socialists. Imagine, the United States with a GDP three times that of the next largest G-20 member (Japan) will have one vote along with basket-case countries like France and Italy.
Obama has promised “change” and he fully intends to deliver on that promise. But is this the kind of change those who elected him to high office expected or had in mind; I don’t think so for most of them. A socialist or fascist state (however you define these terms) is not what patriotic Americans want.
Friday, April 3, 2009
The real story of AIG
AIG has been in the news a lot these days. At the beginning of the AIG saga the Fed said it was too big to allow it to fail and so billions were given to “save” the company. Of course this failed and still more money was thrown their way. When it was “discovered” that AIG had contractual obligations to give serious bonuses to key employees, congress was irate. Even after it became known that a Democrat, Senator Chris Dodd, inserted a provision in the Stimulus bill to protect these bonuses at the request of the Treasury Department, the jackals that passed, but didn’t read, the bill were still furious.
With all the attention given to AIG I think it is interesting to learn a little more about the company.
First of all, some may be surprised to learn that AIG is a subsidiary of American International Corporation (AIC) and the parent has a most interesting history. AIC has succeeded in remaining invisible and does that by relying on secrecy because that’s how its founders liked it. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., of Robber Baron fame, started the company in 1910. Other Barons of industry joined John D.; Andrew Mellon, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie. Other American industrialists and bankers also joined the AIC venture. The reason such an illustrious group of giants came together was that knew the financial clout they could exert together would bring them even more wealth, but more importantly, power; at a time when there were few government restrictions interfering with business.
Rockefeller, the oil man, knew that Russia would become of major importance because of the discovery of oil in Baku near the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan. The oil field was the largest known oil strike in the world at the time. However, the Baku oil field was controlled entirely by the Swiss munitions manufacturers Alfred and Robert Nobel and Tsar Nicholas II's banker, Baron Alphonse Rothschild, who had gotten there earlier. As early as 1884 Rothschild and Nobel were pumping as much oil from the Baku Oil Fields as Rockefeller was from all of his holdings in the United States and Rockefeller wanted to get in on the action. By 1870 Rockefeller’s Standard Oil controlled 85% of the refining and distribution of oil in the entire world but by 1880 he lost most of his distribution rights in Europe to Rothschild.
In order to succeed in Russia Rockefeller realized the Tsar had to go.
Rockefeller, Morgan, Mellon and their banker friends were already well on their way to creating a central federal bank owned by them and getting the US to enact a national income tax to repay what the United States would soon owe to that privately-owned central bank. Taking over Russian oil was something else.
The Rockefeller group of business giants met in New York with Bolshevik Leon Trotsky between 1907 and 1910. Rockefeller, his banker friends, Mellon and Morgan, and steel man Andrew Carnegie, along with others of equal rank in the business world pooled their resources and put up $50 million to form the American International Corporation, AIC, which they announced was created to stimulate world trade. However the real purpose was to get the Bolsheviks to overthrow Tsar Nicholas II. They made a deal with Trotsky and his partner in crime Vladimir Ulyanov, whom the world would get to know as Lenin. In exchange for financing the Bolshevik Revolution Rockefeller and his robber Baron friends would be allowed to take over the Russian oil fields. But what actually happened is that Trotsky and Lenin double crossed AIC after they helped topple the Tsar.
It is an unfortunate reality that but for the interference of the Robber Barons the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution would not have succeeded. With the help of Rockefeller and his equally greedy merry men the Tsar was overthrown. To cement their power the Bolsheviks shot and killed the Tsar and his family enabling the well-financed Bolsheviks to depose the Romanov dynasty.
After this bit of history it may be asked who, or what, exactly, is American International Corporation? Jon Christian Ryter has written:
“AIC is one of the two largest corporations ever formed. The other is Standard Oil, which was broken apart by US District Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis on August 3, 1907. At 4 p.m. on May 15, 1911, the US Supreme Court upheld the Landis judgment, and what was one behemoth oil giant became seven behemoth oil giants—with the Rockefeller family as the primary shareholders in all of them (otherwise known as 'the seven sisters'). The government would ultimately learn from its Standard Oil mistake because when the Reagan-era Supreme Court broke up Ma Bell, AT&T was forced to sell-off the breakaway companies.”
AIC personnel comprised executives brought into the company who were trusted associates from each partner's own commercial ventures. Rockefeller, Mellon, Morgan and Carnegie masterminded the creation of AIC and built the corporation similar to Standard Oil with secrecy layers that made it very difficult to be scrutinized.
Among those brought into AIC was Frank Vanderlip from Rockefeller's National City Bank, one of the seven people who would not only help write the Federal Reserve Act legislation, but he would also be instrumental in getting congress to enact the 16th Amendment* by promising them fame and fortune, or threatening them with failure if they didn’t go along. Vanderlip was on the board of AIC along with such luminaries who served at various points of time throughout AIC's century-old life, like Thomas Vail, CEO of AT&T, Percy Rockefeller (one of John D.’s brothers), James A. Stillman (a Rockefeller in-law), Pierre DuPont, and George H. Walker, maternal grandfather of George H.W. Bush.
At one point Robert S. Lovett joined the board and became a key advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Lovett advocated ignoring the 2nd Amendment and disarming the American people as the first step in creating global government.
“Other founding directors included manufacturer Cyrus McCormick; railroad executive James J. Hill; Edwin S. Webster (Stone's partner); investment banker Otto Kahn, meat-packer Ogden Armour; Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Taft, Beekman Winthrop; Henry Smith Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Corporation; and Joseph P. Grace, then a Standard Oil chemist. He developed petrochemical products from crude oil. Also, banker Charles H. Sabin; W.E. Corey, head of US Steel; James Cash Penney, founder of J.C. Penney; and Charles A. Coffin, who replaced Thomas Edison as CEO of General Electric.” (Jon Christian Ryter)
“In 1918, Forbes published his first list of the 30 richest America. Heading the list were the invisible rich whose wealth is never supposed to be mentioned by the media. Among them, alphabetically, were J. Ogden Armour, Vincent Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Pierre DuPont, Henry Clay Frick, Daniel Guggenheim, Cyrus McCormick, John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Russell Sage, Jacob Schiff, Charles M. Schwab, and William Vanderbilt. Since all but a few of these names own shares of the Federal Reserve, it is unlikely that any of them became "less rich" over time. The business holdings of these men included oil, coal, railroads, steel, gold and silver mining, and investment banking. Rockefeller headed the Forbes list. His wealth in 1918 was conservatively estimated at $1.2 billion by Forbes in an age when a bank president who earned $5,000.00 per year and was considered to be an extremely wealthy man.”
The Robber Barons wanted a world without borders with a common currency with which to trade anywhere in the world; a global economy with a global government. Does this sound familiar?
*The 16th Amendment is the Inc0me Tax Amendment
With all the attention given to AIG I think it is interesting to learn a little more about the company.
First of all, some may be surprised to learn that AIG is a subsidiary of American International Corporation (AIC) and the parent has a most interesting history. AIC has succeeded in remaining invisible and does that by relying on secrecy because that’s how its founders liked it. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., of Robber Baron fame, started the company in 1910. Other Barons of industry joined John D.; Andrew Mellon, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie. Other American industrialists and bankers also joined the AIC venture. The reason such an illustrious group of giants came together was that knew the financial clout they could exert together would bring them even more wealth, but more importantly, power; at a time when there were few government restrictions interfering with business.
Rockefeller, the oil man, knew that Russia would become of major importance because of the discovery of oil in Baku near the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan. The oil field was the largest known oil strike in the world at the time. However, the Baku oil field was controlled entirely by the Swiss munitions manufacturers Alfred and Robert Nobel and Tsar Nicholas II's banker, Baron Alphonse Rothschild, who had gotten there earlier. As early as 1884 Rothschild and Nobel were pumping as much oil from the Baku Oil Fields as Rockefeller was from all of his holdings in the United States and Rockefeller wanted to get in on the action. By 1870 Rockefeller’s Standard Oil controlled 85% of the refining and distribution of oil in the entire world but by 1880 he lost most of his distribution rights in Europe to Rothschild.
In order to succeed in Russia Rockefeller realized the Tsar had to go.
Rockefeller, Morgan, Mellon and their banker friends were already well on their way to creating a central federal bank owned by them and getting the US to enact a national income tax to repay what the United States would soon owe to that privately-owned central bank. Taking over Russian oil was something else.
The Rockefeller group of business giants met in New York with Bolshevik Leon Trotsky between 1907 and 1910. Rockefeller, his banker friends, Mellon and Morgan, and steel man Andrew Carnegie, along with others of equal rank in the business world pooled their resources and put up $50 million to form the American International Corporation, AIC, which they announced was created to stimulate world trade. However the real purpose was to get the Bolsheviks to overthrow Tsar Nicholas II. They made a deal with Trotsky and his partner in crime Vladimir Ulyanov, whom the world would get to know as Lenin. In exchange for financing the Bolshevik Revolution Rockefeller and his robber Baron friends would be allowed to take over the Russian oil fields. But what actually happened is that Trotsky and Lenin double crossed AIC after they helped topple the Tsar.
It is an unfortunate reality that but for the interference of the Robber Barons the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution would not have succeeded. With the help of Rockefeller and his equally greedy merry men the Tsar was overthrown. To cement their power the Bolsheviks shot and killed the Tsar and his family enabling the well-financed Bolsheviks to depose the Romanov dynasty.
After this bit of history it may be asked who, or what, exactly, is American International Corporation? Jon Christian Ryter has written:
“AIC is one of the two largest corporations ever formed. The other is Standard Oil, which was broken apart by US District Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis on August 3, 1907. At 4 p.m. on May 15, 1911, the US Supreme Court upheld the Landis judgment, and what was one behemoth oil giant became seven behemoth oil giants—with the Rockefeller family as the primary shareholders in all of them (otherwise known as 'the seven sisters'). The government would ultimately learn from its Standard Oil mistake because when the Reagan-era Supreme Court broke up Ma Bell, AT&T was forced to sell-off the breakaway companies.”
AIC personnel comprised executives brought into the company who were trusted associates from each partner's own commercial ventures. Rockefeller, Mellon, Morgan and Carnegie masterminded the creation of AIC and built the corporation similar to Standard Oil with secrecy layers that made it very difficult to be scrutinized.
Among those brought into AIC was Frank Vanderlip from Rockefeller's National City Bank, one of the seven people who would not only help write the Federal Reserve Act legislation, but he would also be instrumental in getting congress to enact the 16th Amendment* by promising them fame and fortune, or threatening them with failure if they didn’t go along. Vanderlip was on the board of AIC along with such luminaries who served at various points of time throughout AIC's century-old life, like Thomas Vail, CEO of AT&T, Percy Rockefeller (one of John D.’s brothers), James A. Stillman (a Rockefeller in-law), Pierre DuPont, and George H. Walker, maternal grandfather of George H.W. Bush.
At one point Robert S. Lovett joined the board and became a key advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Lovett advocated ignoring the 2nd Amendment and disarming the American people as the first step in creating global government.
“Other founding directors included manufacturer Cyrus McCormick; railroad executive James J. Hill; Edwin S. Webster (Stone's partner); investment banker Otto Kahn, meat-packer Ogden Armour; Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Taft, Beekman Winthrop; Henry Smith Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Corporation; and Joseph P. Grace, then a Standard Oil chemist. He developed petrochemical products from crude oil. Also, banker Charles H. Sabin; W.E. Corey, head of US Steel; James Cash Penney, founder of J.C. Penney; and Charles A. Coffin, who replaced Thomas Edison as CEO of General Electric.” (Jon Christian Ryter)
“In 1918, Forbes published his first list of the 30 richest America. Heading the list were the invisible rich whose wealth is never supposed to be mentioned by the media. Among them, alphabetically, were J. Ogden Armour, Vincent Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Pierre DuPont, Henry Clay Frick, Daniel Guggenheim, Cyrus McCormick, John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Russell Sage, Jacob Schiff, Charles M. Schwab, and William Vanderbilt. Since all but a few of these names own shares of the Federal Reserve, it is unlikely that any of them became "less rich" over time. The business holdings of these men included oil, coal, railroads, steel, gold and silver mining, and investment banking. Rockefeller headed the Forbes list. His wealth in 1918 was conservatively estimated at $1.2 billion by Forbes in an age when a bank president who earned $5,000.00 per year and was considered to be an extremely wealthy man.”
The Robber Barons wanted a world without borders with a common currency with which to trade anywhere in the world; a global economy with a global government. Does this sound familiar?
*The 16th Amendment is the Inc0me Tax Amendment
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Changing our form of government without amending the Constitution
It is generally agreed the U.S. Constitution is a remarkable work of political art; it created a unique form of government with three separate branches and checks and balances designed to maintain a balance of power. It specified certain powers of the federal government and reserved all others to the states and the people. The Constitution was effective for most of the country’s life and performed the function intended. For hundreds of years each of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government were properly restrained by the others – but then something began to happen that destroyed the vision of a great Republic created September 17, 1787 – congress given the constitutional authority to coin money learned how to exploit this power and the judicial branch learned it could legislate without any repercussions.
Eventually states of the union that could and did operate autonomously within Constitutional boundaries for the early part of the Republic, succumbed to human greed and began to dispense goodness on a lavish scale because there was no end to the well, and not so well, intentioned benefits that could be contrived to bestow on the electorate. A country that was built on self-reliance of individuals became a country of greedy recipients depending on the labor of others. Political leaders learned how to increase electoral support to keep them in office and retain the power inherent in such positions. The lesson learned was simple – use state money to benefit some at the expense of others. Of course this could only be done with money extracted from people through taxes because states and governments do not earn wealth, they acquire it from the citizens over whom they rule. The wonderful thing about this is that there is no end to the "good" that can be accomplished inasmuch as it limited only by political imagination. Of course some states kept to their better instincts and restrained such practices but other states, usually those with large urban centers and populations, were not so inclined.
The federal government also deviated from the founders’ expectations but it could do so on a grander scale because it had more money. Very cleverly the writers of the constitution did not originally give the national government the right to tax the population except in very limited and benign ways – a general tax on income was not authorized as one of the specific rights granted to the federal government.
Many of the early presidents understood that a national bank was harmful and strove to keep it from being created but eventually lost out to the powerful influence of bankers. As a result a national bank was created during the Woodrow Wilson administration labeled the Federal Reserve Bank and given the power to create money by instruction to the U.S. Treasury Department who had the printing presses. Curiously the Federal Reserve Bank not only could create money, it could lend the created money back to the federal government and charge interest on the money loaned (but printed by the government). When the interest charges became great and exceeded federal income, it became necessary to amend the constitution to provide for the ability of the government to impose and collect income tax to pay the interest owed to the Federal Reserve Bank. [Few people ever knew that the Federal Reserve Bank was privately owned and many of the owners were international bankers.]
The income tax proved to be very popular with congress. By simple acts of the legislative branch the income tax could be expanded and more and more money collected for public works and other acts of goodness. It did not take long for congress to dream up all sorts of things it could do with this virtually unlimited source of income. Eventually it occurred to many in congress who did not adhere to the founder’s original intent to restrain the size of the federal government that they too could lavish income from those citizens who through their efforts accumulated more wealth and dispense it to those not willing to make such efforts but who constituted large numbers of voting constituents who could keep them in power. Once again the programs to accomplish this were limited only by the imagination of the elected politicians who could go back to the well as needed and collect more taxes. Soon the idea came to mind that it was not fair to tax everyone equally; those who could afford to pay more taxes should be required to do so thereby enabling the government to distribute more benefits to those who had not made the same sacrifices to achieve a higher standard of living for themselves and their families. Actually Karl Marx originated this concept when he prescribed "from each according to their means to each according to their needs."
In the natural flow of events, now possessed of unlimited income through taxation and the ability to print money at will, the federal government learned it could avoid the restrictions of the 10th Amendment which reserved power not expressly granted to the federal government under the constitution to the states and the people. Since it is human nature to accept handouts when the imbued tendency for self reliance is extinguished, the states operated by politicians possessing a human nature accepted money from the federal government in ever greater and greater amounts and eventually became dependent on the federal government’s largesse. Of course, money from the federal government came with an entire ball of string, imposing all sorts of conditions and requirements on the state recipients. For example: federal money for highways included a federally imposed highway speed limits; money for state school programs included requirements in teaching curricula, school admission requirements and more; money for unemployment insurance included requirements in state programs for that purpose, etc.
It did not take long for the federal government to be able to exert control of a myriad of state functions and the scope of control in the future is limitless. One example; the federal government can provide funds to states for universal healthcare while dictating rights and limitations of the healthcare program. The result is that today congress can dictate to the states and to the people whatever kind of restrictions on their rights they wish by giving states money (with strings) which they will readily accept. This becomes fatal to the American way of life, individual freedom and liberty when those in congress and the White House choose to change the form of government from a free society to a controlled society without the necessity of amending the constitution.
Only the people can change this outcome; but will they?
Eventually states of the union that could and did operate autonomously within Constitutional boundaries for the early part of the Republic, succumbed to human greed and began to dispense goodness on a lavish scale because there was no end to the well, and not so well, intentioned benefits that could be contrived to bestow on the electorate. A country that was built on self-reliance of individuals became a country of greedy recipients depending on the labor of others. Political leaders learned how to increase electoral support to keep them in office and retain the power inherent in such positions. The lesson learned was simple – use state money to benefit some at the expense of others. Of course this could only be done with money extracted from people through taxes because states and governments do not earn wealth, they acquire it from the citizens over whom they rule. The wonderful thing about this is that there is no end to the "good" that can be accomplished inasmuch as it limited only by political imagination. Of course some states kept to their better instincts and restrained such practices but other states, usually those with large urban centers and populations, were not so inclined.
The federal government also deviated from the founders’ expectations but it could do so on a grander scale because it had more money. Very cleverly the writers of the constitution did not originally give the national government the right to tax the population except in very limited and benign ways – a general tax on income was not authorized as one of the specific rights granted to the federal government.
Many of the early presidents understood that a national bank was harmful and strove to keep it from being created but eventually lost out to the powerful influence of bankers. As a result a national bank was created during the Woodrow Wilson administration labeled the Federal Reserve Bank and given the power to create money by instruction to the U.S. Treasury Department who had the printing presses. Curiously the Federal Reserve Bank not only could create money, it could lend the created money back to the federal government and charge interest on the money loaned (but printed by the government). When the interest charges became great and exceeded federal income, it became necessary to amend the constitution to provide for the ability of the government to impose and collect income tax to pay the interest owed to the Federal Reserve Bank. [Few people ever knew that the Federal Reserve Bank was privately owned and many of the owners were international bankers.]
The income tax proved to be very popular with congress. By simple acts of the legislative branch the income tax could be expanded and more and more money collected for public works and other acts of goodness. It did not take long for congress to dream up all sorts of things it could do with this virtually unlimited source of income. Eventually it occurred to many in congress who did not adhere to the founder’s original intent to restrain the size of the federal government that they too could lavish income from those citizens who through their efforts accumulated more wealth and dispense it to those not willing to make such efforts but who constituted large numbers of voting constituents who could keep them in power. Once again the programs to accomplish this were limited only by the imagination of the elected politicians who could go back to the well as needed and collect more taxes. Soon the idea came to mind that it was not fair to tax everyone equally; those who could afford to pay more taxes should be required to do so thereby enabling the government to distribute more benefits to those who had not made the same sacrifices to achieve a higher standard of living for themselves and their families. Actually Karl Marx originated this concept when he prescribed "from each according to their means to each according to their needs."
In the natural flow of events, now possessed of unlimited income through taxation and the ability to print money at will, the federal government learned it could avoid the restrictions of the 10th Amendment which reserved power not expressly granted to the federal government under the constitution to the states and the people. Since it is human nature to accept handouts when the imbued tendency for self reliance is extinguished, the states operated by politicians possessing a human nature accepted money from the federal government in ever greater and greater amounts and eventually became dependent on the federal government’s largesse. Of course, money from the federal government came with an entire ball of string, imposing all sorts of conditions and requirements on the state recipients. For example: federal money for highways included a federally imposed highway speed limits; money for state school programs included requirements in teaching curricula, school admission requirements and more; money for unemployment insurance included requirements in state programs for that purpose, etc.
It did not take long for the federal government to be able to exert control of a myriad of state functions and the scope of control in the future is limitless. One example; the federal government can provide funds to states for universal healthcare while dictating rights and limitations of the healthcare program. The result is that today congress can dictate to the states and to the people whatever kind of restrictions on their rights they wish by giving states money (with strings) which they will readily accept. This becomes fatal to the American way of life, individual freedom and liberty when those in congress and the White House choose to change the form of government from a free society to a controlled society without the necessity of amending the constitution.
Only the people can change this outcome; but will they?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
