June 2006 Archives
The Bridge Is Out

A train is careening down the railroad tracks toward a damaged bridge over a deep mountain gorge. This bridge is in terrible disrepair caused by years of neglect and incapable of transporting the weight of the train and passengers to the safety of the far side. The finest minds have documented years ago that the bridge will fail under the load. Yet, Congress has directed the train’s engineer to continue with assurances that everything will be all right.
What would it take to convince you that this is a very serious crisis? What if there were millions of people on this train? What if some of them were your friends and neighbors? With so many passengers, this train wreck will be the worst the country has ever seen. Why not awaken your friends and neighbors? You don’t want them to miss an accident like this one is going to be. Think of this as Congress, pretending to be Evel Knievel trying to jump the Snake River Canyon, but behind the controls of a train instead of a motorcycle. Come to think of it, you’re probably on the train yourself and entrusting your life and your family’s financial welfare (on faith, which is no longer permitted in a public venue) to the wise, unselfish and patriotic Americans you elected to Congress. There’s nothing to worry about. As Bill O’Reilly would say, surely Congress is “watching out for you?” Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. Go back to sleep.
Read More »Some of the nastiest conflicts in America's domestic future have already begun in an attempt to remake the United States into a socialist union. You saw the initial skirmishes when President Bush attempted to cajole Congress into resolving funding shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare. Congress smacked down any suggestion of reform, rebuked the President and raised its prodigious middle digit to all American citizens. There will be more skirmishes in other Administrations. Eventually the skirmishes will morph into battles and finally into a domestic war between the American public and Congress – similar to illegal immigration. These political wars, necessary because most Congressmen, Governors and state legislators are "in it for themselves," will be fought on a wide range of battlefields, involving not just workers and their employers but also governments at all levels, regulators, accountants and taxpayers. And the coming wars will be bitter - because victims of the combatants, the American people, will become desperate.
It should be noted that Congress has carefully insulated itself from any retirement risk by voting for a sweetheart benefit package for themselves that includes an annual income and cost of living adjustment that would qualify as a king’s ransom, not to mention every imaginable perk, and the world's finest medical care. Many Americans, to this point, have been left to literally suffer and die in financial desperation - with what will be close to nothing the longer Congress delays action on behalf of the American people. Congressmen know you will suffer without their action. Do you sense any concern to intercede or obligation to protect the welfare of elderly Americans? After all, they've got theirs. For now, things are relatively peaceful. But that won't last long, especially as more Baby Boomers reach retirement age and find the greatest pension entitlement of them all, Social Security, teetering on the brink, or maybe over the edge, of insolvency.
Some Americans are already receiving Social Security, such that it is, and personally don’t have a big horse in this race. Many who are currently receiving Social Security will not be alive by the time the train reaches the bridge. However, your future is easy to foretell.
What will it take to make you believe that Social Security is your very own personal financial catastrophe in the making? It doesn’t take J. Edgar Casey, a renowned 20th Century seer, to accurately predict that this will be the worst train wreck in the country's history. Unseen and not far behind, approaching at breakneck speed, is another train headed for the same non-existent bridge, loaded with millions more people. The second train is called the Medicare Express. It would appear this is going to get ugly.
We’ve all listened to media accounts about the looming retirement of 76 million “baby boomers.” 76 million! When they begin drawing benefits in ever increasing numbers, the benefits paid out will quickly exceed the FICA taxes collected – and the disparity between taxes and benefits will grow. What are the government’s most obvious choices? Increase taxes, reduce benefits, and privatize portions of Social Security, or some combination. Lacking action, Social Security insolvency is guaranteed. Lacking action soon, the cost in taxes to American citizens who eventually expect to receive benefits will grow exponentially. So, you tell me, who is looking out for you?
To fix the problem now through the bluntest methods, Congress would have to either raise Social Security taxes 16 percent or cut benefits 13 percent. The longer we wait, or the more incremental we make the fix, the more drastic must be the fix. Unless benefits are cut sharply, which isn't expected, today’s workers will lose a bigger chunk of their paycheck to support retirees. People who are now in their 20s and 30s will be most affected.
Who are these “baby boomers,” and why isn’t Congress doing anything about a train wreck of epic proportions clearly visible and years in the making? In the United States, demographers have put the Baby Boomer's birth years between 1946 and 1965. In 2006, Baby Boomers are between 41 and 60 years of age. As is often the case with a large war, the elation of victory and large numbers of victorious males returning to the United States after World War II triggered a baby boom, and not just in the United States but in many countries around the globe.
To understand how all this happened socially, not biologically, one only has to imagine three events of social significance: soldiers returning triumphantly from World War II, soldiers on leave during the war, and the economic prosperity that followed World War II. Add to this euphoric social environment the key biological factor that a woman is fertile only into her mid-forties. Austerity and restraint, both physical and financial, were the norms during the stress of the war years, which if you remember was preceded by the Great Depression. When the men came home, many of those women who were heroically supporting the war effort left their jobs in the factories and returned to their marriage and families. Marriage once again became the cultural and career norm for most women. The obvious result was babies, millions of babies, a boom which continued into the economic glow of the fifties, and was dampened only slightly by a recession around 1958. The birthing boom petered out (figuratively speaking) as the biological capacity of the boomer parents took their natural course. Simple mathematics always governs and a woman who married in her mid-to-late twenties after the war ended in August 1945, became infertile twenty-or-so years later (1965). The peak birth rate (births per 1,000 population) occurred around 1957.
And then there was Social Security, created by Congress in 1935 and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Let’s add Social Security to the mix.
Social Security, by unanimous agreement, is expected to “start running out of money in 11 years.” We almost joke about senior citizens eating dog food, but by nearly every expert's forecast, half to three-fourths of the next few generations of retirees will live "on the edge" financially, or in desolate poverty. Today's children and most of today's workers will almost certainly pay steeply higher taxes to cover promises to current retirees. Taxes will rise while workers are told they need to save more and work into their 70s to avoid a similar retirement plight. Choices will be few. Many people will have no choice but to delay retirement and tap home equity. For obvious reasons, politicians don't want you to think about it.
By most estimates, about 25% of future retirees will be in good financial shape. Another 25% face an impossible future because of little savings, no home, and no insurance. No spouse in many cases further complicates the situation. The remaining half will be "on the edge.” Best case: Many will struggle. Worst case: Many will collapse financially.
Study after study shows roughly the same bleak outlook. An analysis by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that under the best assumptions, 43 percent of echo-boomer households (children and grand children of Baby Boomers) will have trouble making it in retirement. Their analysis assumed people worked until at least 65 and lived partly off the value of their homes utilizing some form of reverse mortgage. And the analysis didn't add in health-care costs, which researchers said were too unpredictable to even estimate.
Worst case, some experts predict that parts of America will become Third World and many citizens will need their extended family just to survive. Most Americans will come to the realization too late that the only way to have survived comfortably was to begin methodically saving very, very young. You can’t become wealthy by contemporary standards by beginning to save at age 30. Last year Americans spent more than they brought in -- meaning no savings -- for the first time since the Great Depression. Among workers 55 and older today, 52 percent have less than $50,000 saved for retirement. (You will need $350,000 to $400,000 at retirement to have an income of $30,000 a year.) Only a fourth of workers 55 and older have $250,000 or more. If that much money sounds good, stomach this: It's projected that a 65-year-old needs $210,000 in savings just to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses and supplemental insurance. Do you have enough savings?
But wait: The typical man who makes it to 65 in 2005 has a 50 percent chance of living until age 85. A 65-year-old woman has the same chance of living until age 88. Maybe dying early doesn't sound bad about now?
Social Security is on course to start paying out more than it takes in by 2017. The money built up before then will be gone in 34 years, just about the time today's 30-somethings start reaching in their mailboxes for a benefit check. Even now, Social Security pays an average of only about $12,000 a year to a retiree, before taxes. Yes, unless you are among the nation's most destitute, a portion of your Social Security stipend will be taxed as ordinary income. The Medicare system that retirees rely on for health coverage starts to run out of money this year. It'll go broke in 12 years.
"We may have already committed more physical resources to the baby boom generation in its retirement years than our economy has the capacity to deliver," Alan Greenspan said in 2005 when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Social Security is 40 percent of the income of today's retirees and the only income for one in five retirees today. Here are some facts you should consider:
1. Between now and 2030, the number of people over 65 will double.
2. The number of new workers paying into Social Security and Medicare will increase only 20 percent.
3. Life expectancy is about 13 years longer for children today than when current retirees were born.
4. The stock market has lost significant valuation for three straight years -- a first since the Great Depression.
5. Congress and numerous administrations saw the warning signs in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s, but political leaders in Congress procrastinated for their own self-interest.
6. Experts have begged all of us, citizens and government, to spend less and save more.
Meanwhile, old people are living to be really, really old. The age for receiving full Social Security and Medicare benefits had always been 65. That was no big deal at first, because until 1950 the average life expectancy for male babies was less than that. Only 2% of the population was ever expected to receive benefits. Now life expectancy is 75 years for men and more than 80 for women. In 1950, Social Security had 16 workers paying in for every retiree receiving benefits. Now, the ratio is three workers for every retiree. By 2030, it will be 2-to-1.
If a 30-year-old could invest $840 a year at 12 percent, he would potentially have an income of $50,000 a year in retirement. But if the return is less, say only 8 percent, he’d have to invest $2,700 a year to get that same income. If the return is still less, what are your plans?
The same principles apply to pensions. Many employers are being caught without nearly enough money in their pension funds because of lower earnings projections. That includes the government. Standard & Poor's said federal employee pensions are short about $4.5 trillion. Taxpayers could be forced to pay that bill. Many corporate pension plans are expected to be in trouble in the next 10 to 20 years. The trail already includes IBM, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, Sears, Delta Airlines, Polaroid and Goodyear. Many pension plans could go bankrupt. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures workers whose company retirement plans go bust, could be under a "mega-threat," because it wasn't designed to bail out whole industries (such as the airline or automobile industries).
Congress deserves all the credit, particularly those who have been in Congress for 20 years or more – like Senator John McCain. Once it became obvious 20 or 30 years ago that the birth rate was slowing and life expectancies were increasing, researchers waved warning flags. Changes could have come then with minimal pain. However, Americans who are angry about Congress’ irresponsibility should look in the mirror. With one out of three people not saving anything toward retirement, and most of the rest not saving enough, we as a nation must be waiting for the retirement fairy.
What it will take for Americans to face reality? The answer appears to be that there is nothing that can make Americans face reality except a brutal dose of reality. And Congressmen are already on record as not caring about the American people having just defiantly refused to make fundamental Social Security system reforms. People think this is all just going to work out. It's now obvious it won't. The bridge is out. We've known this for decades and Congress has still sent us to our … day of reckoning.
Red State Patriot « Close It
Posted June 29, 2006 02:19 AM Permalink
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~ Social Security
Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Worse

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 12, 2006
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.
Read More »As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.
NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.
Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an “investor based organization supported by the public and private sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: “For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.”
The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road.
The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration.
A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.
Link to the above article: http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497
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Red State Patriot commentary: It makes you wonder what happened to the Constitution? Where does Congress fit into all of this? What legislation or treaty specifically authorized this action? What do the state governments have to say? What do the labor unions have to say? Who consulted with the American people to see if they wanted to become part of a North American Union? Any guess who is paying for all of this?
The best thing you can do now is become informed by reviewing each of the following linked articles:
Texas Segment of NAFTA Super Highway Nears Construction http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15682
North American Union Already Starting to Replace USA http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15233
President Quietly Creating 'NAFTA Plus' http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15059
The Plan to Replace the Dollar With the 'Amero' http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15017
North American Union to Replace USA?http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14965 « Close It
Posted June 23, 2006 07:35 PM Permalink
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~ NAU & New World Order
~ Trade and Commerce
Why Is The Market Going Down?

I'm sure you’ve heard the smart-aleck answer to the question: “Why is the market going down?” Some self-anointed expert calls out, “More sellers than buyers.”
Factually this is incorrect as are so many other things you’ve been told. Markets move not because of the quantity of buyers or sellers, but the urgency with which buyers or sellers adjust the price at which they are willing to buy or sell.
Read More »The best example of this is today’s housing market. It is not a housing bear market (yet). Prices are not significantly going down (yet). They are mostly going sideways, having leveled off after a remarkable price appreciation. There is, however, way more sellers than buyers if you believe the inventory numbers, and length of time on the market, of unsold properties. Since home owners are not motivated sellers (yet), they are staying on their offer and the price has stayed relatively unchanged – a few reductions here and there. Often such conditions can work themselves out over time if buyers gradually take up the excess supply (even if it takes years).
This is still a nightmare scenario for the homebuilding industry, but there’s no escape for them anyway. The big question for the economy is what makes people content with “hanging out” on their offer, without feeling the need to hit the “sell now button?”


As long as there is no perceived urgency to turn the house or property into cash, which can then be turned into food, or fund other perceived necessities that refinancing will no longer accomplish, most people will keep their hands away from the “sell now button.”
If consumers start having liquidity problems, then it could be lights out for second home prices, which in turn would be damaging to primary residence prices and slam the door on land speculation – not to mention a lot of other things associated with the “wealth effect.” I don’t know what would tip us in that direction, but I’m not excited to find out.
Keep in mind that a large portion of the current economic recovery has been funded by “found money” from mortgage refinancing - money (untaxed disposable income) that was not earned. With interest rates rising, flat-to-slightly declining real estate prices, speculators less confident of their ability to “flip” properties, and mortgage refinancing reduced to a trickle, personal consumption expenditures should begin to slow measurably by the end of the year and through 2007. There is even a chance that real estate speculators will become the first domino to fall as they hit the “sell now button” in order to cover their leveraged indebtedness.
We may be in the final three minutes of the fourth quarter of the championship game. I’m glad I’m in the bleachers and not betting on the outcome.
Red State Patriot « Close It
Posted June 21, 2006 07:55 PM Permalink
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~ Financial Market Commentary
Rampant Mental Illness

During hearings to investigate the level of care patients receive for mental illness, a delegation of U.S. Senators was visiting a mental institution (asylum) in southeast Maryland. During the obligatory “dog and pony show,” commonly staged for visiting dignitaries, Senator John McCain asked the Director what the criteria was that defined whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.
"Well," said the Director, "We conduct a number of tests, each intended to confirm the validity of the diagnosis. For example, one of the most reliable tests involves offering a patient the choice of a teaspoon, a teacup, or a bucket and asking him or her to empty the bathtub."
Read More »“Oh, I understand," said Senator McCain. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup?”
"No." said the Director, "Actually a normal person would pull the plug. I could have asked the same question using illegal immigration as your reference. For example, the choices from minimum impact to maximum effect might have been:
“(1) Open borders and blanket amnesty giving citizenship to all regardless of nationality, education, criminal record, or when they arrived or will arrive. If I’m not mistaken, I believe this to be your unstated preference.
“(2) A possible second choice might be a gradual attrition resulting from a reduction of social benefits, and denial of any forms of identification obtained in the United States. Also some have proposed that we require illegal aliens to obtain their guest worker status from an American Embassy in a foreign country within 6 months which would cause them to have to leave, if only temporarily.
“The most stringent choice would of course be:
“(3) Militarize the border for national defense; erect an impenetrable border wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico; eliminate eligibility of any and all illegal aliens for all taxpayer funded social benefits in the United States, including education; void NAFTA and CAFTA legislation; insure that felony crimes committed by illegal aliens would carry 5 times the punishment as any American citizen, without appeal; eliminate anything but emergency (life threatening) medical care; bill the Mexican government for any indigent care rendered. Surely they would be willing to divert some of their oil revenues to provide medical care to Mexican citizens; eliminate eligibility for any bank loan, car loan, revolving credit, vehicle registration, and mortgage loan, ownership of property or employment of any kind. Any illegal alien currently in the United States would be required to obtain United States-sanctioned alien guest worker identification only at a foreign American Embassy and provide DNA, fingerprints and photographs for law enforcement and national security purposes. 200,000 will be readmitted annually from a pool of applicants from those who (a) register before they leave the United States, and (b) have no United States or foreign criminal record when they attempt to return. Citizenship of offspring born in the United States will only be granted to those who obtain United States citizenship before the date of their child’s birth, retroactive to 1950.
“The “pull the plug” response, Senator, would require you to vigourously enforce existing immigration law, to the letter of the law, without pardoning millions of felons, in one fashion or another, who have been victimizing American citizens for more than a generation. Any contemplated immigration reform legislation out of Congress should only have be used to correct obvious flaws in the current immigration law, many of which were enumerated in response (3).
“So, tell me Senator, do you prefer a bed by the wall or near a window? We’ve been expecting you for some time. Do you think Senator Jon Kyl will be along soon?”
Red State Patriot « Close It
Posted June 17, 2006 06:25 PM Permalink
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~ Candidate - John McCain
~ Immigration and Border Control
What is Wrong With This Picture?
Liberals vociferously argue the assertion that socialism has not been a successful economic system because they claim it provides goods, services and benefits equally to all citizens with less disparity between individuals and special interest groups. They’re correct to a large extent, but their claim omits every chapter of the book except the first chapter. The first chapter is the ideology of socialism and reads like a fairy tale. The remaining chapters of the revered liberal Book of Socialism chronicle its consistent failure throughout recorded history.
For the American dream to flourish there must be both winners and losers in a capitalistic system that encapsulates a value system for winners. The American dream is to be one of the winners. The winners are most often those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, self-motivated, responsible, disciplined, educated and efficient.
Read More »Only if you knew you had no chance to be one of the winners, or refused to try, relying instead on government for a pathetic 'mere existence,' could an American possibly prefer socialism. The losers are most often those who are uneducated, shiftless, lazy, drug and alcohol impaired, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, indolent, and inefficient, typically constituents of the Democratic Party. Those few Democrats who do not fit the above description aspire to be the elites, the ruling class who regulate the lives of all others, living off the labors of those they seek to rule, believing with arrogant certainty they know better how you as an American should live your life and raise your children.
Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. This applies to business executives and the carpenter, lawyers and the factory worker. Capitalism requires human beings to deal with one another as traders, i.e., as free agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent, because the sole criterion that determines the value of anything exchanged in a free economy is the unfettered judgment and voluntary choices of the seller and buyer.
Capitalism is superior to socialism in two critical aspects, morality and justice. If you acknowledge the concept that “envy” is both the desire to possess another’s wealth and failing that, the desire to see another’s wealth lowered to the level of one’s own, then socialism is the system which institutionalizes the morality of envy.
Residents of large “inner cities,” and New Orleans in particular, come to mind. Is that what you wish for yourself or the entire nation?
Consider for a moment professional sports, any one of them. Society too is like a team sport in that everyone must perform at very high levels for the team to be successful. A professional football team “hires” only the best athletes regardless of other social criteria. The goal is to win and that wouldn’t be possible if the team were required to employ people of my athletic skills. While I was personally recruited by Otto Graham for college football, by the time I got there, my physical stature and abilities had been far surpassed by my peers on the football field. (Otto Graham graciously suggested I try a different sport.) A professional football team has no obligation to hire and compensate a person of my comparitively minimal athletic skills.
Nor does society have an obligation to hire, compensate or carry on the national payroll in the form of welfare those who refuse to educate themselves and obtain gainful employment. You can’t run a professional sports team with socialism, where everyone claims a right to play and expects to be compensated by the team if they are incapable of performing at a productive level. And you can’t run society with socialism either. America cannot afford to keep on the team payroll non-productive Americans who contribute nothing to the team, regardless of liberal emotionalism and claims of racism and disenfranchisement. The "free ride" entitlement mentality is not compatible with Team America if America is expected to be competitive in the world arena. The team is more important than any one player (patriotism). Members of the U.S. Armed Forces understand the concept, as do most professional athletes. Liberals, by contrast, serve only their own self interests - hardly a model for team success.
Furthermore, capitalism acknowledges that the degree to which man rises or falls in society (class mobility) is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind and his work ethic. Capitalism is the only system that rewards education, merit, innate ability, achievement, excellence, initiative and integrity regardless of the location of one’s birth, racial heritage or station in life.
In addition to an endless list of otherwise questionable virtues, socialism is also the system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from its productive citizens. The confiscated income is then redistributed in exchange for votes to the parasites (those who refuse to work) and cockroaches (uneducated and ill-equipped, by choice and personal neglect), in addition to those determined by communities to be needing assistance beyond what can be provided by charitable organizations, churches and families.
Central control and shared misery, or individual freedom and responsibility, which will it be? Social mobility or class boundaries, which will it be? Income redistribution and entitlement mentality, or self-government, self-discipline, excellence, initiative and integrity, which will it be? It really is our choice - your choice. You make that choice each and every time you vote. If you think the choice should not be difficult, reflect on the relative closeness of the last two presidential elections and recognize the importance of your vote. Recognize also value systems and the motivation of those who choose socialism, i.e., to rule rather than govern, a quest in which you and I are expendable.
Red State Patriot « Close It
Posted June 16, 2006 01:40 PM Permalink
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~ Political Thought
McCain & Kyl: There Is No Need To Close American Borders

Whistleblower: Immigration Penetrated, Corrupt
Kenneth R. Timmerman
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. immigration system is so broken that it can't be fixed, a former top security official at the Department of Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) told NewsMax in an exclusive interview.
"Internal corruption at CIS is so pervasive that hostile foreign governments have penetrated the agency," said Michael J. Maxwell, who was forced to resign as chief of the CIS Office of Security and Investigation earlier this year.
"Terrorists and organized crime are gaming the immigration system with impunity. Taken together, these three elements form the perfect storm," Maxwell said.
Read More »"You can't separate immigration from national security, and that's what keeps me up at night," he added.
The Department of Homeland Security has begun to take Maxwell's warnings seriously. A just-released report from the DHS Office of Inspector General revealed that 45,008 aliens from countries on the U.S. list of state-sponsors of terror (SST) or from countries that protected terrorist organizations and their members were released into the general public between 2001 and 2005, even though immigration officers couldn't confirm their identities.
Even worse, the report states: "it is not known exactly how many of these . . . aliens were ultimately issued final orders of removal and actually removed, since such data is not tracked" by the Detention and Removal Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The report estimated that 85 percent of those released aliens "will abscond," even if deportation orders are issued.
The report was released to the public on May 19, but has attracted no attention until now.
"It's rather frightening," Maxwell said. He says he "threw up a red flag" last year about the inability of immigration officers to perform background checks on aliens from terrorist-list countries, but nothing has changed.
"Even if the adjudicators get a terrorist hit, the regulations say they must refer the case to the FBI," Maxwell said. "It doesn't say, deny them an immigration benefit. It just says, refer. That's very dangerous, because once they get the immigration benefit it becomes very hard to investigate them."
If the FBI fails for whatever reason to send over the case file on the individual who has been flagged, "then statutorily, the case officer must grant the benefit, even if there's a warning the person is a terrorist," Maxwell told NewsMax.
That means that individuals from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, whose identities could not be verified and who could be working for terrorist groups, have been granted green cards or even citizenship, Maxwell added.
"The release of these OTMs [other than Mexicans] poses particular risks," the Inspector General report said. The report cited a recent U.S. intelligence assessment indicating that "terrorist organizations . . . believe illegal entry into the U.S. is more advantageous than legal entry for operations reasons."
Since 2001, the number of "OTMs" arrested for illegally entering this country has jumped by 27 percent to more than 145,000 per year.
From 2001 through the first half of 2005, 605,210 "OTM" aliens were arrested for violating U.S. immigration laws. But a lack of beds at detention facilities and other factors compelled the government to release 51 percent of them into the general population, while awaiting an immigration hearing on their final status.
"It is not clear the extent to which decisions to release OTMs are being made on a risk-based versus resource-based manner," the Inspector General report stated. "Even if risk is considered, the high release rate could undermine the public's confidence in the department's ability to secure our northern and southern borders."
The former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was split in two when Congress created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Immigrant services were given to CIS, while enforcement was handed over to ICE.
More than 7 million immigration-related "benefit" claims are adjudicated every year, which Maxwell and other critics say have led immigration officers to "rubber-stamp" green card and citizenship applications. Many CIS service centers have policies that reward immigration officers who adjudicate the highest number of cases per day, giving them additional paid leave and other benefits.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, says that he recently confirmed with FBI Director Robert Mueller that "a number of individuals from countries with al-Qaida connections are changing their identities. They're changing their Islamic surnames for Hispanic surnames, adopting false Hispanic identities . . . and hiding among the flood of illegals coming over our border and disappearing into the country."
Maxwell said it was impossible to know with any certainty how many terrorists had entered the United States illegally. But USCIS has documented an immigration route through the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico that could be exploited by foreign intelligence services and terrorists, with the complicity of U.S. immigration officers.
"The smugglers know that only one flight per day is inspected," Maxwell said, "so they put these folks on other flights," Maxwell said. An internal CIS investigation into the operations of the San Juan immigration district, obtained by NewsMax, describes the Virgin Islands-Puerto Rico immigration pipeline in great detail.
The report noted that smugglers were using the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John for "staging landings" of illegal immigrants, and that "smuggling ventures within the Caribbean meet with little to no resistance."
Maxwell said that corrupt U.S. immigration officials helped smugglers obtain false identity documents, so the illegals could "hit the beach with dry clothes and immigration documents waiting for them on the beach."
"That means there is someone dirty on the inside," he added. While the internal CIS report did not investigate potentially corrupt U.S. officials, it confirmed Maxwell's description of the Virgin Islands clandestine immigration pipeline.
"Once the aliens obtain documents," the Feb. 1, 2006 report stated, "they fly to San Juan and on to the [U.S.] mainland. With only a few flights in San Juan targeted for pre-flight inspection by CBP [Customs and Border Protection], an alien reaching San Juan is virtually assured of safe transport to the mainland United States."
In forwarding this report by e-mail to CIS Director Emilio T. Gonzales on Feb. 2, 2006, the deputy CIS director, Robert Divine, said the report "will be as captivating reading for the weekend as any novel you have brought up from Miami or picked up since then."
In sworn testimony before House International Relations subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation on April 6, 2006, Maxwell said that his office had received complaints of "USCIS employees providing material support to known terrorists or being influenced by foreign intelligence services."
One USCIS employee, "co-opted by a foreign intelligence entity," had "the ability to grant the immigration of their choosing to the person or persons of their choosing," Maxwell said in his sworn testimony.
In an unclassified meeting with senior USCIS leadership in February 2006, which he attended, Maxwell says that agency Director Emilio Gonzales "mentioned two foreign intelligence operatives who work on behalf of USCIS at an interest section abroad and who are assisting aliens into the United States as we speak."
In introducing Maxwell to a congressional hearing in April, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., said that USCIS was "riddled with fraud and corruption."
A big part of the problem, Royce added, was that "those deciding applications are under enormous pressure to reduce the backlog," and are told to "move the applications as fast as you can."
The subcommittee co-chair, Rep. Brad Sherman, D, Calif., said that Maxwell's information should be taken into account as Congress weighs a major new immigration law.
"We need to make sure that any change that we make in our immigration law does not overwhelm USCIS," Sherman said.
"It's not enough to adopt good policy, and that will be contentious here in Congress. It has to be a policy that the agency is capable of administering."
The information Michael Maxwell had provided the committee shows that "the agency has great difficulty administering even the present law," Sherman said.
Original article: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/6/13/154454.shtml?s=et « Close It
Posted June 15, 2006 11:07 AM Permalink
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What has Arizona's Governor been doing?

Once again, GINO Janet Napolitano (D) failed to act on illegal immigration and vetoed an exceptional border security bill last week, making everyone measurably less safe both economically and physically. She nixed $50 million for a radar system that could spot illegal aliens crossing the desert; she said no to $55 million for local law enforcement to pay for the costs of helping with border enforcement; she said no to employer sanctions that would have forced businesses to follow federal immigration law or face a loss of their business license; and she refused to force people to prove legal residency for numerous taxpayer programs. So for the time being, we must continue without any immediate relief from the economic, environmental and public safety turmoil of illegal immigration. It will be another long hot summer in the Valley of the Sun with more deaths in the desert, more victims of violent and drug crime, and a surging flow of armed illegal border crossers.
Read More »"Again, the Governor has thwarted the will of the people. Governor Napolitano is continuing to allow the unabated flow of illegal aliens into Arizona," said House Speaker Jim Weiers expressing the disappointment felt by so many after the veto of the nation’s most comprehensive state legislation on illegal immigration.
It's been a real hit parade for the governor's veto stamp this session. In addition to the aforementioned wipeout of comprehensive illegal immigration reform and border enforcement, earlier in the session she followed the recommendation of the trial lawyers and said no to a bill that would have made it harder to bring frivolous law suits against a vanishing breed: emergency room doctors. She refused a bill that would limit the governor's own ability to take your gun from you during a time of emergency, as was done during Hurricane Katrina.
The Governor wants to increase state spending by 22%, but has threatened vetoes of major property and income tax relief being proposed by Republican lawmakers. If that were not enough, this past week, right after vetoing the immigration package, the Governor put the kibosh on a major private property rights protection bill that would have protected citizens from losing their property to over-reaching and greedy municipalities. HB 2675 was intended as an inoculation in the arm of property owners. Instead, Napolitano's veto of HB 2675 was a green light to mayors and bureaucrats.
Governor Napolitano now has the distinction of breaking the state's veto record by reaching 115 vetoes in less than half the time it took discredited former Governor Bruce Babbitt (D) to amass 114 back in the 1980's.
It is clear that your AZ state legislature is doing their job, but the Governor is bending each and every Arizona citizen over a rain barrel. How does it feel to know that your life, job and property mean absolutely nothing?
While you shouldn’t judge folks by their relatives, it is probably safe in Arizona to judge politicians by their political party affiliation.
Red State Patriot
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Posted June 14, 2006 05:02 PM Permalink
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The Mental Path To Appeasement

The Mental Path To Appeasement
The Western response to the threat of Iran gaining nuclear weapons is tracking dangerously toward appeasement and failure. It is not yet inevitable -- President Bush has insisted in two State of the Union addresses and currently that he will not permit it to happen. But most government officials in Europe and here, and of course the dominant media, are already deeply into resignation, rationalization and denial. Indeed, in the last couple of years, the absolute exclusion of a military option has become the only "respectable" posture amongst both European and American officials and senior media personages.
This rationalizing mentality was epitomized by the statement of Gen. Barry McCaffrey on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. The general is a usually levelheaded and deeply experienced senior statesman. He has criticized Bush's policies where he disagrees with them, but he is not anti-Bush. His statement is worth reading carefully.
Read More »"Mr. Russert: 'So it's inevitable they get the nuclear bomb, in your opinion?'
"Gen McCaffrey: 'I think so. I think they're going nuclear five, 10 years from now. We'll be confronted. And that's not a good outcome. That argues that perhaps Saudi money and Egyptian technology gets an Arab Sunni bomb to confront the Persian Shia bomb. None of us want to see proliferation in the Gulf. This is a time for serious diplomatic interventions.'"
The last sentence calling for diplomacy is such a feeble, mantra-like invocation of a hopeless solution when preceded by his confident statements that he thinks they want the bomb and will get it. Virtually no one believes Iran only wants peaceful nuclear generation. Neither do serious people believe that enactable economic and diplomatic sanctions will deflect the Iranians from their objective.
Thus, the offer on the table -- to give them peaceful nuclear technology or threaten them with non-military sanction -- suffers from providing a "carrot that is not tempting and a stick that is not threatening." (Ian Kershaw's "Making Friends with Hitler.")
This evolving mental path to appeasement mirrors in uncanny detail a similar path taken by the British government to Hitler in the 1930s.
Contrary to popular history, the British government was under little illusion concerning Hitler's nature and objectives in the early 1930s. Those illusions only emerged as mental rationalizations later in the 1930s.
In April 1933, just three months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the British government presciently assessed the man and his plans. The outgoing British ambassador to Germany, Sir Horace Rumbold, who had been closely observing Hitler for years, reported back to London in a special dispatch to the prime minister on April 26, 1933. He warned his government to take "Mein Kampf" seriously.
Rumbold assessed that Hitler would resort to periodic peaceful claims "to induce a sense of security abroad," and Hitler planned to expand into Russia and "would not abandon the cardinal points of his program," [but would seek to] lull adversaries into such a state of coma that they will allow themselves to be engaged one by one." Rumbold was sure that "a deliberate policy is now being pursued, whose aim was to prepare Germany militarily before her adversaries could interfere." He also warned that Hitler personally believed in his violent anti-Semitism and that it was central to his government policy.
Back in London, Maj. Gen. A.C. Temperley briefed the prime minister on the Rumbold dispatch that if Britain did not stop Hitler right away, the alternative was "to allow things to drift for another five years, by which time . . . war seems inevitable." In the event, general war in Europe came in six years, not five.
But because the British people, still under the sway of their memory of WWI, were against military action, and because the politicians wanted to spend precious tax revenues on domestic programs, they walked away from their own good judgment.
The unpleasantness of dealing with Hitler and the public's abhorrence of another war led the new British ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric Phipps, responding to the Rumbold dispatch, to argue in that fateful month of April 1933 that: "We cannot regard him solely as the author of "Mein Kampf," for in such a case we should logically be bound to adopt the policy of preventive war." So, he argued, "The best hope is to bind him, that is, by a [disarmament] agreement bearing his signature freely and proudly given. ... By some odd kink in his mental makeup he might even feel compelled to honor it."
Here we have the 1930s version of Gen. McCaffrey's statement. Ambassador Phipps first states the obvious: To wit, if Hitler is as the government believes him to be, logic requires a preventive war. But they don't want to do that, so he hopes Hitler isn't as they know him to be, and they seek a diplomatic agreement, which even Phipps recognized was unlikely to be honored.
Just so, Gen. McCaffrey, representing the overwhelming view of government officials and major media in the West, first states the obvious: Iran will get the bomb. Then he ends with: So let's just do diplomacy.
In fact, Western leaders are resigned to Iran getting the bomb. The diplomacy is understood to be as pointless as getting Hitler to honor a disarmament treaty. But "leaders" have to be seen to be doing something -- even if they know it is futile.
This defeatist attitude exists largely because with the Iraq war as bad precedent -- just as WWI was a bad precedent for another war in 1933 -- military action has been placed, as an emotional response to unpleasantness, out of the question by a weary Western elite.
That is where we are today: about four-fifths down the mental path to appeasement. As unpleasant as dealing with Iran today is, it will be incomparably nastier in a few years when they have the bomb operational. Where are the cold-eyed realists when we need them?
By Tony Blankley, Jun 14, 2006
Tony Blankley is the author of The West's Last Chance and editorial page editor for the Washington Times. « Close It
Posted June 14, 2006 01:11 PM Permalink
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~ Islam, Terrorism and WMD
Fraying at the Edges

What is this country coming too? Five million of our older Americans have not yet signed up for their Medicare, Part D drug plan--they are old and confused. We are not going to grant them an extension! However, 12-20 million illegal aliens are in our country and we are going to allow them to stay, protest, march in the street, dictate the terms of American surrender, procreate, receive welfare and social security benefits, attend schools, pay little or no income taxes, shut down our hospitals, transport drugs, be responsible for doubling the rate of violent crime, and have our teachers take 300 hours of ESOL (English as a second language) training at our expense, etc. Then we are going to invite 100 million more illegal aliens to ignore immigration law and join the party.
Congress must really dislike Americans, particularly old Americans.
Read More »We worry about how terrorists are treated, these defective human beings who kill innocent people, but do we care about crime victims in America? It would not appear that we give a hoot. We worry about every minority and their imaginary rights, but not the inalienable rights of the people who built this country without demanding special privileges. We worry about homosexuals who have contributed to killing 40 million people worldwide by voluntarily spreading disease, but not the Alzheimer’s patients who outnumber HIV patients 10-1. We worry about serving a search warrant on a crooked politician as if Congress is a ruling class, above the law, while the media, setting aside this special time to humiliate themselves in public, knowingly and recklessly reveals classified information that will cause the deaths of American servicemen and intelligence agents.
Congress doesn’t worry about “saving” Social Security because everybody in Congress has already gotten theirs (voted themselves a “peach” of a system). They don’t give a damn about the rest of America. Congress and the media are consumed by which telephone calls the government is listening to, but do little (or nothing) to defend our nation from another Muslim attack or a foreign invasion of illegal aliens. While we mourn the brutal death of 3,000 Americans, the media ridicules as racist and shames ordinary citizens for reporting unusual behavior or joining the Minutemen. The media conceals the predictably Muslim affiliation of those in the United States and Canada who are committing violent acts or planning acts of terrorism, but they quickly reveal the identity of rape victims. We complain about the frequency of child abuse, but give a free pass to the largely homosexual clergy and Congressmen who have violated thousands of American youth. Most recently, we have begun to celebrate female teachers who rape their male students. It should be obvious by now, to almost everyone, that most liberals are dangerously under-medicated.
We Americans worry that we have no voice in the education of our children in the government-controlled schools, but too many of us mightily and foolishly try to control the freedom of speech of others. We convict and sentence to death those who brutally slay other human beings, but passively watch as the legal profession takes 15-20 years to appeal the death sentence at taxpayer expense, as if that's acceptable as part of the “Privileged Attorney’s Full Employment Act.” We celebrate violence in the movies, and obfuscate reality by calling Islam the “Religion of Peace,” but deny that it influences the decision making of children. Police departments no longer protect citizens from property or violent crimes to avoid law suits for pursuits, but government wants to deny you the right to bear arms in your own self defense. Too many politicians and judges run roughshod over citizens acting as revenue collection agents for their local city council while themselves refusing to enforce the laws and render justice.
All those in the power-oriented food chain want to nullify the 2nd Amendment to protect themselves. Have you noticed that politicians are incrementally excluding the legal right to bear arms in specific locations, which will eventually become anywhere? If you can't take a gun somewhere, or anywhere, or even use them in the self defense of yourself, your family and others who may be threatened, it's as good as denying you the right to own them. It is a wonder that Americans in general and the Supreme Court in particular fails to realize (or care) that any “restriction” what-so-ever on 2nd Amendment rights is an abrogation of the 2nd Amendment?
We Americans worry about a pervasive absence of morals and ethics in society, but federal judges take the Bibles out of schools and the word of God off documents and buildings. We worry about kids getting fat from fast food, but we won't close our borders and stop the drugs that are destroying the lives of tens of thousands of American youth. We haven't got enough of a birth rate to replace ourselves having sacrificed the lives of 40 million children since Roe v. Wade, but we continue to condone more divorce, plus more abortion as a form of birth control, and now euthanasia. The last 50 years illustrates a stark reality: conservatism is the belief in a transcendent moral order; and liberalism is the belief that there should be no moral order. You would think the choice at a ballot box would be clearer.
We worry about our civil rights and personal freedoms, but ill-informed liberals beg for more government regulation. We complain about the tax rate, but minorities scream to reduce the number of people who must pay taxes, and then legislatures create innovative new ways to redistribute the confiscated money of other people. We worry about poor education of our youth, but do absolutely nothing to encourage the gifted students or promote the educational process. The only pretense toward education we make today is to foolishly throw more money at it, most often because courts have ruled we parents no longer have any say in our children's education. In fact, no one fails a class in public schools anymore. They have simply become “passing impaired.”
We worry about oil shortages, but refuse to develop any form of energy (nuclear, refineries, natural gas, wind, oil exploration). We worry that jobs are going overseas, but add 1000 new regulations and increase taxes on small businesses each and every day. Incredibly, Congress transfers American sovereignty to world courts with NAFTA and CAFTA legislation, gifting foreign governments the right to sue Americans. Liberals somehow believe heavier taxation will create more American jobs. The next several years will illustrate the folly of that premise, as the federal tax rate reductions that were more than offset by state tax increases in every imaginable category, come home to roost. The phrase "working American" should be redundant, but it will probably become an oxymoron without conservative intervention to restore individual liberty.
We worry that foreign countries are stealing our technology, but we won't let the brightest and most gifted foreign students remain in America after we educate them. Instead, our immigration brain trust forces them to take the technology we taught them back to India and start their own wildly successful businesses. Then we welcome 20-100 million of the worlds least educated, least qualified, illiterate and least socially disciplined across the border contravening immigration law. How can it be unfair to say that every proposed piece of immigration reform legislation under consideration in the U.S. Senate, regardless of who claims congressional sponsorship, reduces the U.S. Constitution to a simple piece of bathroom tissue? Is there any U.S. Senator not currently a paid agent of Mexico?
We have asked all Americans to subsidize (first voluntarily and then by confiscation) rebuilding coastal communities damaged by nature, which will surely be destroyed again and again (100 billion dollars wasted each time). In the same breath, we think NASA, the never-ending source of incredible technology, is a waste of money and scrapping it is about time. We complain about the behavior of politicians, but hold none of them accountable for any number of high crimes and misdemeanors. We used to turn to God for answers to our prayers and problems, but we have proudly made government our "god," looking instead to government for solutions, and denounced the Christian faith. All other faiths (without value systems which liberals abhor) are of course welcome and proffered in public schools. And now Congress, working hard to ration consciousness, wrangles over making Hawaii a race-oriented state government that has as a stated intent to secede from the Union. More importantly, Congress will soon vote to have Americans pay taxes to the United Nations. Economically, fascism is evident everywhere in the United States, at every level of government, and Americans don't even know what that is. We complain about eminent domain, but state legislatures do nothing, failing to realize that without private property, there will be no liberty for anyone in America. In the meantime, state legislatures have made significant strides to regulate the public’s use of seat belts believing that wearing seat belts makes it harder for the aliens to snatch you from your car.
Congress has already achieved the distinction of becoming the bottom 6-inches in a cesspool of ethics and professionalism, just below the main stream media who are aptly and affectionately called the "maggots of society."
What has gone wrong with this country? Unfortunately, my Senator has been in Congress since 1987. If only we had elected an American! I suspect John McCain will seek political asylum in another state after leaving the U.S. Senate, but he will not be the first to leave Arizona. Governor Janet Napolitano, whose sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others, will hopefully leave before John McCain. Something has got to give real soon as the fabric of this magnificent nation appears to be fraying badly at the edges.
Red State Patriot « Close It
Posted June 14, 2006 12:20 AM Permalink
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~ Congress
Liberals Will Always Be The Victims
The ignorance of our nation’s youth is one of conscious design.
So obvious are the shortcomings in the American system of education and so intransigent are the educators, Education Department and NTA, one can only conclude that the ignorance of our nation’s youth is the result of a carefully orchestrated “dumbing down of America.” Orchestrated does not imply a vast conspiracy. However, it does strongly suggest that most educators serve their own interests before those of the nation or the youth entrusted to their care.
Assuming change will eventually be recognized as needed, and before it is going to occur, avowed liberal socialists (both Republicans and Democrats) are going to fight conservatives every inch of the way. Why? Because liberals think the status quo is just fine, thank you very much, since it serves their self interest.
Why is education such a critical factor in our economic destiny?
Read More »Socialism is a direct and predictable result of the current system of government public education.
What else is a nation to do with a generation of unprepared youth, uneducated to the extreme, unable to compete, unable to communicate or comprehend in writing, unable to read instructions or perform the simplest vocational task, let alone make change. Underlying the ugly surface deficiencies, our youth are unable to reason, be self-reliant, display integrity when challenged, and a great preponderance are unreliable, unmotivated, and unable to speak a recognizable form of business English.
What is a good socialist to do? Add them to the welfare roles of course, or give them government or corporate jobs under the guise of equal opportunity. Call it what you want, it’s still a form of welfare and institutionalized prejudice. Clearly more qualified individuals applied for those jobs and did not get the job, or the seat in a college or university.
And by all means, we must reward the most ignorant of our youth with the right to vote. Now sit back and watch the perfect political example of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).
Our system of education is both grounded in and advocates socialism in its purest sense. How could that be?
Education in America today, little better than a human “puppy mill” and juvenile day care center, is government subsidized, regulated and void internally of meaningful competition. Rather than emphasize initiative, excellence, integrity, achievement, character and citizenship, public schools encourage conformity to substandard mediocrity. What is lacking is the societal premise that "Good enough, isn't." Our education system lacks criterion reference testing, terminal performance skill and knowledge objectives in any variation, and functions without standardized student accountability. Needs analysis are non-existent except to justify next year’s budget. Admissions are dictated by anything but merit. Centers for education are staffed by large (huge) numbers of people who have done nothing in life except read a book and express their opinions, people who never served their country, people who refuse to tolerate free speech, people unaccountable for their competence, people who refuse intellectual exchange of ideas, people who endorse secularism as the “state religion” while demonstrating no tolerance for any other, people who ostracize and demean faculty members and the public with divergent views, people who condone aberrant behavior, people who serve only their own self interests and narcissism, people who coerce their students under the veiled threat of failing grades, people who have institutionalized lifetime welfare in the guise of tenure, people who coddle terrorism, people who repudiate patriotism and demean military service, people who scorn free markets and capitalism, and people who even advocate undermining of the American democratic process. Did I leave anything out? And not a word was exaggeration.
Do you remember when teachers were underpaid? Today, the average annual teacher’s salary is $46,752, more that the average enlisted man’s salary in Iraq or the police officer on the front lines in our cities. And you thought “expected return” was based on risk analysis.
In fact, educators wrongfully refer to their occupation as a profession. At a minimum you'd think they would know the difference. If education were a profession, it would be exclusive which it is not. People routinely teach others outside a traditional school environment. Entrance to the occupation would be competitive and educators and the system of education would be self-regulating, neither of which it is the case. Laypeople in state legislatures and unions, or those on boards of education typically set the rules for and regulate teachers. Teaching is an occupation, i.e., a group of people with a vocational expertise that in many states is less difficult to obtain than a real estate license.
It is unusual to find a single person in the education industry who understands the simple postulation that we are all the end result of the sum of our economic, behavioral and political decisions, both as a nation and as individuals, each and every minute of every day. And the decisions we make are both cumulative and more often than not, irrevocable!
Meanwhile, our lack of individual education is manifested in our collective voting decisions. Whether voters are informed or not, their votes still result in choosing our elected representatives. The pathetic state of affairs in the United States Senate makes the point.
Consequently, one could cynically suggest that America deserves what Congress and State Legislatures vote for. We would argue that American citizens don’t deserve what is happening to their culture at the hands of an ignorant and self-serving Congress, anti-American media, activist Judiciary and Marxist system of youth indoctrination in government-controlled public schools.
At the end of the day, liberals won’t like it either; but true to form, it will be someone else’s fault and they will once again portray themselves to be the victims.
Red State Patriot « Close It
Posted June 13, 2006 09:47 AM Permalink
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~ Education
~ Political Thought
The Truth Shall Set You Free

Hat tip: Pete Perkins
Posted June 9, 2006 05:23 PM Permalink
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Congress Declares War On Americans

Cheap labor. Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about – supposedly businesses don’t want to pay a decent wage? That’s what Congress wants you to believe. Well, don’t believe everything you think.
The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth. There is no such thing as "cheap labor." Anybody that uses the term in reference to the ongoing crisis of illegal alien migration is either painfully ignorant or thinks you are pathetically stupid. In any event, you should probably find someone else to talk to.
Read More »Take, for example, a migrant family with a husband, a wife and five children. Nobody in this extended family has an education beyond 8th grade. Only his young children speak English which they learned in American public schools, and three of his five children will drop out of high school. The two who do graduate will possess little that resembles an education. He takes a job for $5.00 or $6.00 an hour if he is “on-the-books” or $8 to $10 an hour if he is “off-the-books.” If our hypothetical migrant husband has any skills, such as electrical, construction, plumbing, or landscape irrigation systems, he typically works for $12-15 per hour on- or off-the-books.
In any event, assume he is a legal alien. He claims six dependents and reports only his “on-books income.” Since only the top 50% of all wage earners in the United States pay income taxes, he pays none. In fact, because he files an Income Tax Return, he gets an “earned income tax credit” cash rebate from the government up to $3200.00 – free. He qualifies for Section 8 (low income) housing and subsidized rent. He qualifies for food stamps, in-state tuition, free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care and medication, and his children get free breakfasts and lunches at school. He is entitled to bilingual teachers and books; he qualifies for relief from high energy bills, and if old, blind or disabled he qualifies for SSI and Medicare, otherwise Medicaid - all this at the expense of Americans who do pay taxes. If you report more than $30,000 a year of joint income to the IRS, that includes you. He doesn’t worry about car insurance, life insurance or homeowner’s insurance. American taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material, plus interpreters for any court appearance. Some states even have established dedicated courts for illegal aliens that have been documented to meat out less punishment to an illegal alien than an American citizen for violation of the same laws. Even though citizenship requires a proficiency in English, voting documents are printed in Spanish for someone, for some reason. Certainly, Hispanic non-citizens aren’t voting in American elections. How could that be?
When his benefits are added together, he and his family receive the equivalent of (drum roll please) $30 per hour just in benefits. Working Americans are lucky to have $5 or $6 per hour left after paying both their own bills and his. Working Americans also pay for schools, roads, sewage, electricity, garbage pickup, water and gas, plus taxes to cover the expenses of increased crime, courts, incarceration, bureaucratic manpower and graffiti. This migrant family has probably been here for 5+ years and has no intention of earning citizenship. In fact, much of their income is sent or carried back across the border to support extended families in Mexico or other parts of Central America. When opportunity permits they vote in Mexico. By refusing to enforce immigration laws, Congress and the Bush Administration sanction this sad state of affairs. Congress is not just subsidizing legal or illegal aliens; they are proudly subsidizing the entire country and government of Mexico. Speaking of amnesty, many who were granted the ill-conceived amnesty 20 years ago during the Reagan Administration still haven’t earned United States citizenship.
And then there is the illegal alien, complete with fraudulent documents, having committed a mind-numbing string of misdemeanor and felony crimes in just a few short years. Federal and state legislation, and judicial activism, requires that he and his extended family also receive most of the social benefits described above. He reports no income to the IRS. After all, not much of his income stays in the United States. He pays no taxes. In fact, two federal agencies, the IRS and the Social Security Administration, are sitting on millions of names and addresses of people using bogus Social Security numbers, but they’re protecting Americans by keeping that information secret from law enforcement. Ask your congressman why, don’t ask me.
So what is it that qualifies illegal aliens, who represent only 5% of the labor force, as “cheap labor?” First of all, contrary to popular belief, until recently and only a very few states, there is no penalty on employers who replace Americans with illegal aliens at lower pay.
In addition, state legislatures and Congress have spent decades legislating 100 reasons why no business enterprise would want to stay in America, let alone hire any full-time employees. It is Congress and state legislatures that defiantly refuse to reduce or eliminate regulatory and tax burdens on businesses. So business’ flee to India and elsewhere, and if that is not possible, businesses hire as few employees as possible – just enough to stay in business and no more. Employees have become incredibly expensive. The onerous business costs include Social Security, FICA, Worker’s Compensation, Medical Care, retirement plans, product liability, child care, pre-natal care, equal opportunity, disability legislation, affirmative action, gender orientation issues, sexual harassment, garnishment of employee wages for child support or unpaid taxes, OSHA requirements, EPA requirements, and on and on. You can name many more.
The point is that while illegal aliens earn less than the employees they have displaced, it is not a lot less. However, let’s be quick to add, if you’re an American trying to support a family, 10-20% is a lot less at the lower income levels. In fact, there has been so much immigration that the supply of illegal alien workers has become huge. Even the wages of illegal aliens has begun to decrease. It’s elementary supply and demand. Ask yourself this: If the price of anything should go up, not down, when demand is high and supply is limited, why have real wages of Americans been going down for decades? Answer: there are more workers than what are needed for the available supply of jobs. The excess supply is exacerbated by illegal aliens.
If we had a shortage of labor “to do jobs American’s don’t want to do,” like pick lettuce, the price of labor would be going up, not down. The truth is that there is no shortage of Americans willing to do any job, and a huge - no make that gigantic oversupply of illegal aliens looking for a job. Once again, don’t believe everything you think. In fact, the larger issue is that there are not enough jobs to support the combination of American citizens, legal aliens and illegal aliens. Ask your congressman and state legislator why there are so many impediments to business formation and success. Don't ask me, because this article wouldn't end until next week.
Still, there is another issue that is being overlooked. Democrats have traditionally been supported by organized labor, for generations. Why is it that unions are not agitated by the magnitude of illegal immigration? One simple reason is that they have opened their membership to non-citizens. Unions are still getting their millions of dollars in union dues, a growing percentage of which comes from both legal and illegal aliens. So while one would logically think unions would support American workers, once again don’t believe everything you think.
So where is the problem? What is the REAL issue? As you would expect, it is money.
I will say this several different ways to make the point. Illegal aliens don’t create the same high employees costs that legal aliens or American citizens do. When hiring illegal aliens, the employee costs, those costs traditionally paid by the employer, have been shifted from the business to the taxpayers. Business used to provide benefits to Americans and legal aliens, but businesses don’t have to pay benefits to illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are none-the-less getting those benefits, but from government. It is the taxpayers who have picked up the benefit costs of these employees, the cost of which has been assessed to you. As a result, when a business hires illegal aliens, the federal, state, county and city governments are picking up the tab for what was once called "labor" expense, the largest price of doing business, and shifted those labor costs (plus benefit costs) to the American taxpayer. In fact, an illegal alien doesn’t even have to work to be entitled to all the benefits. Think of that.
Many people think Congressmen are outright stupid. I’m sure there are a few genuinely ignorant louts in Congress. However, their staffs are typically “crackerjack” – “top drawer” if you prefer. Even Ted Kennedy’s staff is exceptional, regardless of the fact that the Senator himself is seldom both awake and conscious.
It is reasonable to speculate that, with few exceptions, Congressmen and women know exactly what they are voting for or against, and they know (via their staff) the implications of each and every vote. While you and I see each legislative issue in a framework of short- and long-term benefits or impacts to the country and our citizens, Congress uses an entirely different framework. When considering each and every piece of potential legislation – Congressmen see it through the framework of one single talk-radio station that they all listen to, WIFM (What’s In It For Me?). You and I would call it unmitigated self-interest. We citizens do not look at any issue through the same pair of glasses as a Congressman, nor do we have the opportunity to sell our vote for future income and job security, which guides a congressman’s every waking conscious thought. Make no mistake; except for a handful of principled congressmen, every vote by every U.S. Congressman is auctioned off to the highest bidder. The merit of the legislation has become irrelevant. Congress has become a meat-market of self-interest.
In the arena of ideas, Congress has absolutely no intention of enforcing immigration laws, now or in the future. If you think otherwise, you are the victim of a cruel hoax. Illegal aliens are (1), a source of coveted votes and (2), pro-Hispanic groups are funneling millions and millions of dollars into the campaign bank accounts of open-borders Congressmen. It is only reasonable to suspect some of the money is actually coming from the government of Mexico by a circuitous route, just as history has shown the Chinese government heavily funded the Clinton Administration. There is no other explanation for a Senator, like John “Lettuce” McCain, defiantly acting as if he was a paid agent of the Mexican government. It certainly isn’t patriotism.
Try to forget that the votes of illegal aliens are illegal. Governor Janet Napolitano wants to change all that. After all, she will tell you it is racist to expect personal identification at the voting booth or proof of citizenship. Try to imagine millions of illegal aliens who are dependent on all forms of taxpayer income redistribution, beholding to pro-Hispanic politicians such as Arizona’s Governor, and then picture 20 million new voters.
There are dozens of politicians across the country holding public office today that would not have been elected were it not for illegal votes, i.e., multiple votes, votes by dead people, votes by non-existent people (like Bugs Bunny), votes of convicted felons, votes in more than one state, and votes of illegal aliens. Congress knows, right down to the last man and woman, that they are selling citizenship for votes. And they know there is nothing you can do about it. They are confident you can’t stop them. Both John McCain and President Bush have as much as said so.
Once amnesty has been conferred on these millions of “the least qualified labor in the world,” business will then be expected to pay them a minimum wage (which may be two-tier if they are to be indentured servants, i.e., slaves). Any differential between the lower wages of immigrants and those of Americans will be made up by a truckload of social benefits intended solely for the illegal aliens.
Congress will be quick to tell you that in nirvana everybody will pay taxes. The fact is that few of these migrants (soon to become immigrants) will ever pay a dime in taxes.
President Bush, when with the stroke of his pen he grants amnesty, regardless of the criteria Congress imposes, the legislation will instantly create the intergalactic vacuum necessary to suction the next 20 million of most uneducated and unskilled out of Mexico, Central America and South America. This will happen because those illegal aliens that have been here some time and now have amnesty and immigrant status, are suddenly going to become very expensive to businesses for a number of reasons called benefits. When these newly minted immigrants begin to cost businesses more, because they are now legal, you can be sure that businesses will not be so quick to hire them because they will have to pay government-mandated benefits and conform to government regulations. Instead, businesses will once again turn to newly arriving illegal aliens and the party will continue.
Those who were just consecrated "legal immigrants" will quickly become even more of a taxpayer burden because they too, along with many Americans, will not have any jobs.
Where this all gets interesting is when those Illegal aliens who are eligible to become immigrants have to make a choice between American citizenship and paying taxes, or keep their jobs. Recent history demonstrates that most of the current crop if illegal aliens and their miscreant children have no intention of becoming American citizens, so what do you think their choice will be?
As for President Bush, were you aware that during the 2004 campaign, President Bush secretly mailed a campaign video to Latino voters? The video shows President Bush waving a Mexican flag and saying in his own voice: “About 15 years before the Civil War, much of the American West was northern Mexico. The people who lived there weren’t called Latinos or Hispanics. They were Mexican citizens, until all that land became part of the United States. After that, may of them were treated as foreigners in their own land.” The Los Angeles Times pointed out on 4/2/06 that the President Bush “essentially described millions of Americans who populate his home state as the true foreigners in someone else’s native land.”
If you think illegal migration is bad now, you haven’t seen anything yet. We complain about 12-20 million illegal migrants today. Can you imagine 100 million more in the next twenty years, maybe double that. Well, you had better start thinking about it. Any form of amnesty will be the biggest magnet ever, a dinner bell – come one, come all. To those Republican ideologues who argue that President Bush is not offering amnesty, your quarrel is with the dictionary, not me. Congressmen fail to recognize how close they are to being treated with the same contempt and disdain that they once disgracefully displayed toward American Armed Forces returning from Vietnam.
As for national security and terrorism, five illegal’s who received amnesty in 1986 subsequently participated in the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. The question is only when, not if.
Economically, it’s not the end of the real estate bubble that should concern you, its property values across most communities. You can’t displace (force out) blue collar Americans from their jobs and businesses, and ultimately their homes, and replace them with millions and millions of illegal aliens and expect property to hold its value – anywhere in America.
It is a fact that neither the typical legal or illegal alien, regardless of origin, contributes anything positive to the American culture for two generations except cheap labor (very few exceptions). More prevalent is social unrest, drugs, gangs and crime, often exacerbated by a reluctance or refusal to assimilate, which in turn was caused by too much immigration in the first place. That many immigrants cannot be assimilated all at one time. You simply cannot absorb a bucket of water into a single sponge all at once. Absorption can only happen incrementally, the same with assimilation. When you let the bucket of water become too full, it will become stagnant and dangerous to consume before you can absorb all the water one sponge at a time.
What is needed most is not more, but less immigration of unskilled labor from Mexico and points south, for at least the next twenty years. If no immigration reductions in unskilled and uneducated labor are going to become a reality, as Congress marches on selling citizenship for votes, the price we will have to pay (the price our children will have to pay) will be daunting, enough to crush the economy. But politicians, with the certainty of a rising sun, will solidify their hold on power as members of this nation’s elite ruling class, eventually sequestering themselves in Washington, D.C. and returning less and less often to their home states. Many may even have to seek political sanctuary in other states after completing their term in office.
We are at a pivotal point in American history. We can only go one of two ways. There don’t seem to be any other forks in the road. Either Americans will take back their country and their government, and return to a government of the people and by the people, or we will literally serve a Congressional and Judicial self-anointed ruling class as a member of a borderless North America, eventually governed by the one-world advocates, and the United Nations. Either Americans will angrily restructure Congress to become one of service without expectation of reward, or Congress will continue to restructure us having voted to themselves unlimited power and a place above the law.
We are on the edge. With this societal decision, so goes the economy and possibly our nation.
Until the date that such a choice is made and the decision becomes law, it is important that all Americans recognize that the singular reason immigration legislation is so hotly contested is because what is transpiring before your eyes is literally a contest for power between Congress and the rest of us Americans – from their point of view, them versus us, and they have no intention of losing. Even if no legislation is passed in this session of Congress, Congress and the Administration will steadfastly refuse to enforce existing immigration laws.
Yes, Dorothy, Congress has declared war on Americans. Instead of their serving us, it is their big-picture, long-term intention that we serve them.
By Red State Patriot
June 8, 2006 « Close It
Posted June 8, 2006 05:14 PM Permalink
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~ Congress
What was America?
Why ask such a question? Because Americans have a profound need to understand fundamental economic issues and the policy alternatives society utilizes in order to reason accurately and objectively and make informed choices with democratic votes. That is arguably the singular premise upon which the experiment in American liberty depends and the most important determinant of success and continued existence of our nation.
Americans, since the earliest days of the nation’s founders, were informed and engaged, arguably until the advent of the Education Department. Ever since, knowledge accumulation in our schools has been minimal, and as a result, informed choices are rare at any level of society, particularly in Congress and the Courts. The trajectory of the trend resembles that of a gliding anvil.
Read More »The cause and effect is readily apparent to anyone willing to look with one eye and see with the other. Everything that is clearly visible in society today, including culture, was once taught, indoctrinated, condoned, repudiated or ignored in the education, media and entertainment systems of America, which in large part explains why several Supreme Court Justices know little about the Constitution of the United States of America or the Bill of Rights.
We casually joke and occasionally complain about congressmen, but they weren’t born that way. They were educated and trained by our academic institutions, and encouraged by a justice system that rewards social avarice. Similarly trained were our judges, trial lawyers, doctors, corporate executives, pilots, nurses, school teachers, police officers, governors, mayors, etc.
Americans are today exactly what we taught them to be - in our schools. They are precisely what our educational institutions created yesterday. In other words, today’s educators will always create tomorrow’s culture which, without serious change, will be intellectually, culturally, morally and ethically vacant.
Since our youth are specifically being indoctrinated to reject liberty and morality, and embrace licentiousness and collectivism, what would you reasonably expect economically and politically in the years ahead?
Only in unusual cases does a family have a modifying influence and that fortunate student avoids drugs and finds access either to a private school or a school voucher program. If you think about it, liberals have proudly and defiantly strived for years to replace parents with a village, family with a government, parents with law enforcement, reward the less productive and marginal achievers with a free ride, and to deny citizen access at the state and local levels to all forms of private, religious and charter schools, and all forms of voucher programs.
Assuming all the brightest children in America weren’t victims of abortion, the only other explanation for the low achievement scores and educational AIDS (acquired intelligence deficiency syndrome), is an inexcusable public (government) education system, with mindless administrators, unqualified and under-employed educators, tenure without excellence or accountability, unmotivated miscreants as students, massive state and federal government subsidies, institutionalized prejudice, and government oversight and regulation in lieu of private enterprise and competition.
In the meantime, educators make the achievement tests easier and easier, and when that doesn’t work, they lower the passing score and claim improving results and unions demand pay raises and benefit increases.
Educational AIDS is no less a disease than HIV, and no less deadly to the nation. Nor is there any cure short of eradication. That must begin with a profound national attitude and behavioral change from one of inept delivery of poor quality indoctrination to irresponsible youth, to one of individual responsibility to obtain an education and personal accountability for failing.
No amount of taxation, grants, endowments, programs, subsidies, sports, magnificient campus structures, salaries, tenure and redistribution of opportunity give a single youth the barest elements of an education. Only when a majority of Americans begin to understand that education is possibly the only thing in life that cannot be "given" - and instill that reality in their children and their politicians, will change begin.
Red State America « Close It
Posted June 6, 2006 02:24 PM Permalink
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~ Education
~ Immigration and Border Control
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