The Middle Ear

Dennis Prager: The Side Not Seen

2009-03-09T09:16:00.005-05:00

Dennis Prager is a conservative thinker who has a nationally-syndicated radio program on the Salem Radio Network. His support lies with the Republican Party to which listeners can hear his criticisms of liberals, the Democratic Party, and secularism in general. I had listened to Prager's program extensively for a good 3-5 years during the beginning and middle of the decade. I found his program to be quite insightful and hold many fine moral principles. However, as time went by, I started to question his principles as well as the way his program was presented. In general it wasn't anything I could actually prove, but my sense was things were not quite what they seemed. So after doing a little digging, I've come up with the following on why Mr. Prager isn't all that he seems, especially to his loyal fan base.

There appears to be quite a difference between nationally-aired political programs and what one can find on their local programming. The latter ten to take call-ins without screening their callers. In the experiences that I've had, they just say "Please hold", or something to the effect. Prager claims to have "debated the best", but in order to believe that it begs the question of why his program screens callers. The question has been answered with things like filtering the rude, obnoxious, vulgar callers. However, I have to wonder why these shows already have the technology in place to edit vulgar language out since there is a delay in transmission from the time the call-in takes place to when the listener receives the signal. In effect, the main reason is either censorship, or Prager hasn't ever really debated libertarians.

He has been criticized for turning down the volume of callers' phone connections so that he can have the last word. [1]

Although Prager centers himself as a "conservative Republican," opposing modern liberalism and the Democratic Party, his underlying philosophy is quite different and often undetected. As noted below, Prager would best be described as a 'virtue socialist' since he supports government intevention in non-economic areas:

Another justification for socialism is the vague concept of "virtue." Under this kind of socialism, society is manipulated toward the goal of creating a society based on certain religious ideals. The individual is largely left alone in his economic activities, but his non-economic activities are regulated if not banned, even though those activities are conducted between consenting adults with a clear and honest agreement regarding their association.

This form of socialism is as destructive of individual liberty as the more recognized Marxist form of socialism. Bizarrely, the proponents of virtue socialism refuse to recognize their socialism, despite their constant invocation of terms like society, the greater good, and the majority, in the context of manipulating them using government fiat -- classic rhetoric of all socialists. [2]

Europe has given the world Marxism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, racism, and socialism, all rotten ideas that have caused immeasurable human suffering. But for Europeans and their ideological twins on the American left and at universities, ideas are not judged by their ability to ameliorate human suffering or reduce evil, but by their complexity and apparent profundity. An idea is not good because it produces good – that’s unromantic American pragmatism – it is good because it sounds good. -D.P. [3]

Prager's political philosophy holds remnants of elitism and mysticism (a leader of doing 'God's work'), socialism, totalitarianism, and other examples of religious tryanny (since there is no end in sight to the control over human conduct they seek). He is also a hyprocrite since he claims the 'moral idiocy' of a generation but doesn't consider his own god-driven rule is lacking a visible endorsement from, namely, God. Prager refers to the Bible as the sole truth of his politico actions since human is fallible and cannot be trusted to live in freedom, for freedom is at the core of his disdain. In other words, for humanity to reach its highest heights, suppression needs to be enacted since Prager is citing a 'divine text'.

In his column Internet Anonymity Is As Destructive As Internet Porn, Prager believes that the way to a more civil discourse is through the depletion of free speech. This couldn't be further from the truth:

(excerpt)

There are a number of huge flaws with this idea, though:
1. Incivility on the internet is a nuisance, but not a threat; if you are seriously offended and hurt by something said by an anonymous commenter or blogger, then you need to grow a thicker skin. Not to say you can't be seriously annoyed by this sort of thing- just that we're not usually talking about serious threats to someone's reputation or physical well-being. An ad hominem by an anonymous poster is hardly going to hurt someone's reputation, and it really shouldn't hurt their feelings. The primary effect of the ad hominem nuisance is often that it prevents the anonymous poster's legitimate arguments from ever getting a fair hearing from the "victim." [4]

I have come to realize that the great divide in values is not between those who believe in God and those who do not but between those who believe in a divine text and those who do not. -D.P.

This seemingly innocuous statement of his personal belief is far more dangerous in its sweeping world view that anyone who does not follow a fundamentalist literalist interpretation of the Bible is politically wrong. I have no doubt that Prager would happily endorse violent enforcement of Biblical literalism if he had the power to achieve it. That is what characterizes Christian Reconstructionism, more about it here and here. I find such statements and his advocacy of culture war, and his entrenched position on the air in radio far more disturbing and dangerous than his ludicrous column on married male female sex relations. [5] -Daily Kos

While not convinced Prager would resort to violence to enforce his values, he nonetheless is a supporter of mandating religion upon society. He has elements of Christian Reconstructionism since he believes "that every area dominated by sin must be 'reconstructed' in terms of the Bible." [6] Prager fails to grasp that only those who benefit from socialist law are the ones on top of the food chain: meaning him. His forcible measure will do little to actually convert society to his thinking since about the only thing humans have ever had in common with one another is that we are human. Prager is making the same mistake history has seen when religion tries to interfere with liberty. It will produce reaction, not conversion. And since biblical adherrents are also often socialists (for they don't believe in the "individual" to begin with), they tend to place the responsibility back on the bible, not themselves. (They believe in their individual rights but not anyone else who differs from their morality.)

In Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence, Alan Dershowitz highlights some of Prager's faulty reasoning behind Congress-elected Keith Ellingson's decision to use a book other than the Bible on the swearing-in on the oath:

As if to demonstrate that intolerance once practiced against Jews can also be practiced by some Jews against other minorities, a Jewish right-wing talk show host named Dennis Prager led a campaign to disallow the first Muslim elected to congress (in November 2006) to take an oath of office on the Koran. Prager insisted that congressman Keith Ellingson should not be allowed to do so—not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.

Prager’s bigotry was immediately condemned by Jewish organizations across the ideological spectrum. This is what the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith said:

Prager is flat-out wrong when he asserts that Representative Ellingson’s use of a Koran would be “damaging to the fabric of American civilization.” To the contrary, the U.S. Constitution guarantees that “no religious test shall ever be required” to hold public office in America. Members of Congress, like all Americans, should be free to observe their own religious practices without government interference or coercion.

Prager’s patriotic prattling in misinformed on the facts, too. No Member of Congress is officially sworn in with a Bible. Under House rules, the official swearing-in ceremony is done in the House chambers, with the Speaker of the House administering the oath of office en masse. No Bibles or other holy books are used at all. Members may, if they choose, also have a private ceremony with family and friends. At these unofficial ceremonies, Members frequently solemnize the event by taking on oath while holding a personal family Bible.

Prager ridiculously asserts that permitting Rep. Ellingson to take the oath of office would “be doing more damage to the unity of America and to the value system that has formed this country than the terrorists of 9-11.” What he fails to understand is that what truly unifies all Americans is a value system built on religious freedom and pluralism, not dogmatism and coercion.

Prager presents intolerant, ugly views. His comparison of Ellison’s desire to “choose his favorite book” to that of the right of racist elected to public office to use Hitler’s Mein Kampf is outrageous.

Also...

In other words, the Constitution—according to the absurd reasoning of Chancellor Kent and Justice Brewer—would allow discrimination against Muslims and Buddhists, because they are religious “impostors,” but not against Christians, because that is the true religion. That, of course, is precisely what Dennis Prager is proposing, though he would probably describe our true religion as ‘Judeo-Christian.’ This is a poor provenance on which on which to base a claim that we are, as a matter of constitutional law, a Christian nation.

A few hypocritical examples:

Prager writes a column on Socialism Kills but doesn't see how his own religious rule over society is consider socialist.

His column on Why the Democrats Use 12-year-olds is contradictory since several years back he had his young son on his program and asked if he 'agreed' on one of his political positions. Well of course he's going to agree. He's your son.

Other contradictory examples:

His topic on nature, he states, "We are indeed to be responsible stewards of nature, but for our sake, not its." If Prager were reading the literal truth, the bible quite clearly states we are to caretake nature and its inhabitants not just for our sake, but its.

The romanticizing of nature, let alone the ascribing of divinity to it, involves ignoring what really happens in nature. I doubt that those American schoolchildren who conducted a campaign on behalf of freeing a killer whale (the whale in the film "Free Willy") ever saw films of actual killer whale behavior. There are National Geographic videos that show, among other things, killer whales tossing a terrified baby seal back and forth before finally killing it. Perhaps American schoolchildren should see those films and then petition killer whales not to treat baby seals sadistically.

If you care about good and evil, you cannot worship nature. And since that is what God most cares about, nature worship is antithetical to Judeo-Christian values. -D.P. [7]

Here Prager uses a very weak and straw man argument on the basis that since children don't see the "wild" portion of nature, we as humanity shouldn't apparently value nature. He doesn't even begin to address that adults value nature despite knowing 'the survival of the fittest'. Prager's underlying motivation for writing this is because the left control the environmental topic. That has bothered Republicans going back to the '70s and the environmental movement. And they continue to have little voice on the matter due to their own failure. You would think that since God and God's creation, Nature, go hand-in-hand, that Prager would have an appreciation for it. I actually agree with some of his points on green extremism, but it's quite odd to me that Prager isn't very sympathetic to his creator's creation.

In Thank God For Moral Violence, Prager makes some relatively decent points on the use of moral violence vs. immoral violence. However, the title of his column is disturbing because he attributes a moral campaign to fight immorality, with God. Prager once said that there have been far more secular wars than religious wars. Well the point he misses is that there ARE religious wars. And if religion is such a great thing, wouldn't there be like zero wars in history? Because the entire point is a matter of tolerating other view points. Like religion, Prager is a socialist, and since socialism is a "collective" vision, he is continually seeking to push his morality above others. Prager presumably sees no end in sight to the wars America can wage on immoral foreign soils, even if those pocket wars pose no security risk to our country. There is little hindsight to the thought of letting humanity decide their own fate provided it doesn't interfere with the survival of others. I am not trying to attribute Prager to the likes of Hitler or Stalin. I'm simply saying there is no end in sight to the intervention he seeks over other immorals since he ascribes his mission to what he believes God wants, which is stomping out all immorality. While American troops dying for the betterment of other nations is a noble one, it does bring into question why those nations are dependent upon America to do the dying for them.

As a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, I specialized in the study of totalitarianism, especially, though not only, the communist variety. I found the subject fascinating, but I never for a moment imagined that any expertise gained in this field would prove relevant to American life.

Sad to say, it has turned out to be the most valuable subject I could have studied. The totalitarian temptation is not confined to Nazis and communists; it can rear its head in any society and gradually destroy it. And as the Soviet dissident joke notes, one quick way to identify totalitarian threats to liberty is to identify those who falsify the historical record on behalf of their cause. [8]

A person who actively seeks to control who are who cannot marry on a wide scale such as a national level, is a nationalist. Since Prager is bothered by how "other" countries handle this topic too, that makes him a totalitarian for he seeks to control the globe. For such an "expert" on totalitarianism, it is amazing how he doesn't view himself as such. I can be thankful he doesn't have the power to achieve his aims.

Dennis Prager's Inconsistent Arguments

Update:

During the week of 10-5 to 10-9-09, Prager claimed that one can be against same sex marriage while basically not holding prejudisms against said. No, that would be an impossibility. One cannot claim divinity through the use of government coercion (heterosexual mandation). See, his issue is morality (of which many things I agree with), but his actions are just as immoral for he seeks to use government and the socialist method of legislation. Marriage is defined by the individual, and there is no such thing as Prager claims to the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. The only way for heterosexual marriage to be destroyed is if heterosexuals be not able to marry. And since that is not exactly under any serious threat -- guess what? It's a clever engineering to justify to himself that not only is he not a homophobic, but that his goal is of divine origin through biblical terms. One simply cannot say they don't mean any ill will towards another group by preventing certain activities. And there certainly is no ownership over marriage. The only reason a singular definition has allowed to exist this long is through legislation, albeit still tyranny. Mr. Prager certainly has no extraordinary rights over anyone else. It doesn't matter how good it sounds in moralistic terms in the Prager camp. If one has to commit another form of force to maintain the status quo, they're committing a different yet similar immoral.

In Smite of Our Fore Fathers

2008-06-02T16:11:00.001-05:00

Locke, Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson--
their cause hijacked, collectivism won;
"A republic, if you can keep it,"--
Ben must surely be having a fit!;
Aristotle knew, Von Mises did,
Ayn Rand had a clue, the people hid;
God, religion, and mysticism,
Tyranny hasn't produced much wisdom;
The Declaration of Independence,
of which the Religious Right took offense;
The Constitution was written as a taper,
Dubya said, "It's just a god-damn piece of paper!";
Do you remember the Bill of Rights?
"Sorta," and flicks the cigarette light;
War and imperialism were enacted,
our youth were forced into being drafted;
Abroad we fought Russia and Communism,
at home the Smoking Ban equates to Nazism;
Oil prices, healthcare, and gay rights,
stems from which suit has the most might;
The Blues & Reds take credit for being the ones,
but it is closer to the Libertarians;
"All for One, and One for All,"
the saying has been our fall;
We live under a doctrine of hate,
no answers, just circles of debate;
Like droids marching in a world of denial,
our best attempt is to give a plastic smile;
Billy Joel said "We Didn't Start the Fire,"
that depends on if Frank Luntz is for hire;
Where have I heard this song before?
Oh yes, in the pages before.

Democrats are overachievers; Republicans are underachievers

2008-03-05T09:18:00.000-06:00

The RNP are failures. Our fore fathers built America on a Republic, and it is anything but today. Republicans really don’t even comprehend what America once was. Their really only goal is to be “less worse” than the Democrats. The Constitution, liberty, etc. is a bunch of passé blah to them. (“The Constitution is just a god damn piece of paper.” –George W. Bush)

On the other hand, the Democrats are winners. Not in head-to-head principles per se, but they’ve won the emotional debate. (No? Then ask yourself why Republicans often call themselves “compassionate conservatives.”) Democrats own the media, too. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, etc. all have liberal leanings. The main conservative channel out there is really only FOX.

Despite opposition accounts, Republicans are more unpredictable. It’s true Democrats will not confront their socialism at times, but everyone knows they’re tax & spenders. Everyone basically knows they’re socialists. Democrats really have an internationalist agenda with Europe as its model. Should a Democrat get in office, nobody is really that surprised if spending and/or social programs should explode to the point of setting new records. But if a Republican spends a bunch or becomes decidedly liberal, people are like, WTF?!

Republicans are usually predictable when it comes to giving you more of your tax dollars back. But many other areas you cannot be for certain. Spending is even open game now (if it ever wasn’t in the first place?). You cannot be for certain a Republican will be true to their conservancy. That knowingness of who they truly are isn’t as inherent as it is with the Democrats.

Democrats, like Obama, pride themselves on socialist terms like “we” and greater environmental protections. Republicans kinda hang onto the ends of the blue coattails because they fear losing the compassion debate. Democrats tend to spout all kinds of social ideals on various subjects. As Ayn Rand notes, Republicans still tend to use the jargon “faith” and “tradition.” In that regards, the Blues have better jargon for they think in terms of “future” and “progressive.” Republicans call to the past – whatever that means? But they don’t comprehend what their past is. They just take pride in knowing that polls like approval ratings from say two years ago are a 30-20 percent in favor of them. They’d say, “Well, hahaha, at least we’re not as bad as the Democrats!” The idea that they should have great principles, first, is secondary to the one of being mildly better than the Democrats. The Blues tend to win more by evasion since they know their ideas cannot be debated in the open. The Reds – oh boy! – know they can win the open debate but in the end follow suit many times.

Since the Democrats know their ideas cannot be openly debated, they win the emotions debate, or the vagueness of media and pictures, to get an edge. Republicans haven’t really figured out with any consistency how to beat them over the years. It’s true the RNP have held more presidential offices. That would, to them, account as impressive, worthy of a moral victory. But when you think about what America was built on, and how a party that can offer nothing has slowly transformed America into something other than its beginnings, it is they who are the overachievers.

Religion's socialist tyranny

2008-03-05T09:16:00.000-06:00

The Bible was written by many authors over a long period of time, but it was written during a period known for its “Holy Wars.” This was a period of bloodshed and tyranny. It’s important to note many of The Bible’s tones were created by people who wanted to control humanities conduct by injecting fear in the text to prevent/scare people into submission of their supposed sins. (An entry into God’s Kingdom for being good is just one of them, though no one has actually empirically been able to prove this.)

Religious prophets and/or authoritarians have a history of upper class. They seek to find answers that are not necessarily there in the text, justifying biblical tones that contradict logic and common sense. For some it’s based on emotional vices; the need to cling onto their beliefs at all costs. They are special people who are praised for their foresight and desire an everlasting legacy. They seek that attention because to a certain extent it’s natural to want to be loved and appreciated. However, the foundation of their religious values lives in some contradiction.

For instance, Genesis 1:3-5, “On the first day God created light,” but then later in 1:19, “And the evening and the morning were the fourth day,” implying a contradiction since it’s impossible scientifically to have a morning created three days after the sun was created – for light is morning (!). Or from the Infidels website: “In the Bible, words having to do with killing significantly outnumber words having to do with love.” “If the Bible were really the work of a perfect, all-powerful, and loving God, one would reasonably expect it to be obviously superlative in every respect – accurate, clear, concise, and consistent throughout – as compared to anything that could possibly be conceived by human intellect alone.”

Now I could sit here and go through every biblical contradiction, but the reality is some minds just are not going to be changed. Religion is predicated on tribalism (social groups). Caste systems are designed to protect people from reality. Therefore there is a strong association of reality denial between The Bible, religion, and prayer. They seek to engulf the individual’s mind to a higher power, but it usually isn’t God. Rather it’s usually a religious authoritarian claiming to be the cipher of an Almighty. They provide no empirical evidence for their second sight – and they seek none for they loathe the scientific method. They might dismiss the examples above because science asks them to prove their positions. They want not to because otherwise their beliefs start to fall apart at the seams. And yet at the same time they try -- though fail – to use the scientific method to claim the Bible is the truth because the Bible exists and therefore is the truth. No other visible requirement is necessary.

Religionists/prayerists stubbornly adhere to socialism. Neither really believes in the individual. You might hear a religious person talk about how they’ve spoken with God, that they speak “tongues” with their Creator. It rarely – if ever – is questioned what they said, or why they are given special gifts to talk with God while the rest of us are not. They say that you have to be a deep believer in order to communicate with God, though their communications are vague and never given the detail necessary to solidify their position. Notice how some believe prayers are answered while there are a whole host of other examples that are not answered. Disease has been cured. Therefore it was by God’s hand. It had nothing to do with human engineering. But many of the other instances of good Christian people who die of disease-related ailments are simply discarded.

The kind of people I want to be around are the cancer patients who believe they will beat the disease. Those who place their life in God’s hands are essentially saying they do not have the strength to confront their condition. Whatever conclusion they reach, they determine themselves. The man who called his wife on his cell phone right before his hijacked plane hit one of the World Trade Center’s essentially gave his life up because he didn’t have the strength to confront reality and fight back. That of course isn’t suggesting he would’ve lived anyway, but the terrorist pilots course might have been altered had he decided to try and break down the door of the cockpit. In essence, prayer is a good in the sense that it lifts the human spirit. The dark side is that prayer lifts people away from reality.

If a religious person said that they believe religion creates better people, better values, and more peaceful communities—that’s great. But it needs to be left at that. Religion is a private institution, and the unseen, the mystical revelations, the claiming of God’s word, can never be entered into political law for liberty can only be run on the conscious. Since religions quota is socialism, it is always seeking to engulf the individual no matter how kind its intentions. (Religion is anti-individual, anti-mind.) Religionists never really get around to answering that if God is The Almighty power, why does God need humans to speak on its behalf in the first place? Otherwise their socialist tyranny comes into question. The idea that God created humanity with a free will to choose its own fate explains to me that it isn’t religion I fear, but people in religion I fear.

biblical flaws -- miscellaneous

2007-12-13T14:16:00.000-06:00

Jesus is God's Son
Either Jesus was a fictional character or he took far too much credit for being the eyes of God. Mysticism places more value in the unseen than seen. It becomes a problem when one (authors of scripture) claims to be the spokesperson of a higher power that really doesn't require the assistance of its creation(s). It would seem God, The Almighty, can emit the message clearly to its people at any time. That thought either cannot or rarely is ever challenged in biblical circles. Because, to them, "God works in many ways" but the one direct example of just appearing in front of us all on the doorstep. Again this appears to be another creation debate, but in fact I'm suggesting that "God's Plan" is simply a hands-off approach in which humanity is to figure out life's obstacles for themselves. Many of these ideas were self-generated by religious icons who took empowerment too seriously.

Hell
If God is forgiving and loving, then a belief in Hell is contradictory. It establishes once again that God is vengeful and therefore no better than humanity. For God created humanity with a free will to decide the path they so choose. Not to punish them when God had the choice and power to create a same-face collective.

The Devil
The belief in such implies that an entity consumes people whole. However, to believe that people get their evilness from a Devil is to imply they are not responsible for their actions. For example, if a criminal commits a crime, it is deemed the evil spirit caused the problem because they consumed their soul. In effect modern jurisprudence doesn't need to exist for individuals are not responsible for their own conclusions.

biblical flaws

2007-11-08T17:33:00.000-06:00

Deuteronomy is unfortunately one of my least favorite chapters because it is riddled with tyranny, injecting fear, racism, and the occasional promotion of murder. Hopefully the examples I give will explain why.

Moses Urges Israel To Obey - 4:3-4
You saw what the Lord did to you at Baal-Peor, where the Lord your God destroyed everyone who had worshiped the god Baal-Peor. But all of you who were faithful to the Lord your God are still alive today.

This parallels "Worshiping Other Gods." The reason this doesn't hold true is relatively simple: Scientific evidence proves that with each new birth creates a seperate, new mind to think and act for one's self (free will). No descent Creator would destroy the very thing, the human mind, that was designed to make those religious choices for themselves. To a Creator, they've already accepted that each human can except or reject creation. Therefore, this was a human-influenced ideal and certainly not a higher power-guided prophet.

4:5
You must obey these laws and regulations when you arrive in the land you are about to enter and occupy. The Lord my God gave them to me and commanded me to pass them on to you.

Words like "must" and "commanded" are force. If in fact the lord demands these things, why doesn't he come out in the open, in the visible, and physically prove his wishes with spoken word? Hence the enclosed system of belief in tyranny amongst religious dogmas.

4:25
...do not corrupt yourselves by making idols of any kind.

In religion this should read to not have idols superior to God. In terms of progress and ingenuity, if humanity didn't have models in achievements in arts, technology, etc., there would be no reason to expand our knowledge.

The Ten Commandments - 5:9
I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to third and fourth generations.

Pretty self-explanatory really. Children should be punished for things that are out of their control.

Worshipping Other Gods 13:6-10
If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods (god that neither you nor your fathers have known, god's of the people around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. And then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

The Layman's Bible (interpretations):
It must, however, be remembered that idolatry struck at the very foundations of Hebrew national life as founded on the Covenant at Horeb. The religions of the Canaanites and sorrounding peoples was a debased from of nature worship, with revolting moral standards and practices. We may not like the exact way in which the Hebrews sought to deal with their subversives, but we can recognize the legitimacy of their abhorrence of the offense and of their desire to guard against it. They were anxious, therefore, to keep out any marks of pagan customs, even mourning rites of bodily mutilation and shaving of the head. The barriers against standards and practices must be high and thick, lest the nation eventually be engulfed by them.

In a savage period, religion still cannot be excused for acts of murder. A is A. The Bible is the only book historically that can get away with such grotesque promotions. However, if a pagan forced their values that threatened the survival of a Christian(s), of course defending ones self is right and moral. But neither paragraph really attempts to detail such, possibly due to blind obedience. The first paragraph doesn't even attempt to at all. Hence why their guilty of the promotion of murder. The second, the interpreter, is nearly as guilty. The author acknowledges the offense, mildly, but quickly by-passes it for the upholding of the Bible's principles of tyranny and self-sacrifice. There is no difference between secular and non-secular force. Both deem to engulf the individual. Blind abidance to the Bible is dangerous considering the flawed nature of its authors: humans, who have used it to protect believers from the reality of their customs of tyranny and violence. A "middle ground" is unacceptable to them for threat of divisions in religious circles (an act Morman's practice, amongst others).

The Prophet 18:15
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from amongst your own brothers.

Layman's Commentary:
(excerpt)
The Deuteronomists -- to whom Moses was a figure of colossal proportions, to say the least -- certainly regarded him as the standard by which all messengers of God must be measured.

"Messengers of God" or "God's agents" were authoritarians who actively promoted the use of force and to suppress secular liberty. (It was secularism, not religion, that attained liberty.) Prophets used their intelligence to overstep their boundaries to acquire power. "God's word" by now is simply a phrase to draw attention to the Bible as the bearer of all morals versus human knowledge that is acquired through experience. These quotes instill fear into people, which is the entire point of religious prophetising. It implies God should be feared for God is vengeful. The problem is if God is so, then God is no better than humanity for we are vengeful. It doesn't quite make logical sense to fear God when God is superior in every way to humanity.

Liberty in the 21st Century

2007-07-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

http://www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/117...176&wid=117
Tibor R. Machan
The Libertarian Perspective #75 Tue, 24 Oct 2006
The Common Good

Liberal Democrats are having a conniption fit about the lack of any vision that unites the Democratic Party. So several of their pundit-philosophers are writing essays in which they lament this situation and propose remedies.

Among those doing this is Michael Tomasky, who, in a recent piece for The American Prospect, suggests that "Democrats need to become the party of the common good." Then he goes on to write, as one of his critics put it, "breathlessly," that "We are all in this . . . together, and . . . we have to pull together, make some sacrifices, and, just sometimes, look beyond our own interest to solve our problems and create the future."

I have a better idea. Let Democrats, Republicans, and the rest recover the powerful idea that got the country going in the first place, one laid out pretty neatly in the Declaration of Independence. This idea is that the common good is pursued precisely when government does what justifies its existence—namely, secure our rights. That, indeed, is THE common good in the American political tradition.

There are millions of disparate "goods" that individuals pursue, but only one unites them, only one is their common good: the protection of their fundamental individual rights. This was part of the revolutionary idea that animated the Founders and put the country in opposition to so many others, including those in Europe from which so many of its initial population fled.

In most countries throughout human history the idea was promoted that there is a rich common good, a whole slew of objectives that everyone must pursue. In other words, the common good was really the collective goods of all the people, as if they really did share goods galore that they needed to promote. The one-size-fits-all mentality was encouraged by rulers, monarchs, tsars, and the rest who needed to hoodwink us into thinking that their goals are really our goals and we cannot really, individually, have goals of our own. That was the common good–the leaders' good peddled for the rest as their good, too.

The American Founders, guided by the classical liberal social-political philosophies of John Locke and company, saw through this. They realized that in a big country, the millions of inhabitants share but very few goods. (Of course, small associations—churches, clubs, corporations, professional groups and so forth—can have some common objectives all right. But no such common good or objective exists for the millions of us!) And the most important—probably, in fact, only—common good we share is the protection of our individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It's the one good that's indeed good for us all, that we have in common.

If government, which is instituted to secure these rights, does its job right, it will stick to little more than making sure that everyone's liberty is safe. Why? Because then all the millions of different individuals, and some of the groups they voluntarily form amongst themselves, will quite successfully embark on the task of pursuing all those goods that suit them. Securing our rights does that for us!

But today's public pundit-intellectuals don't get it. They want to find some thick public good—a whole, humongous basket of allegedly common goods—that government will set out to achieve. And they are surprised that there isn't such a basket; in a largely free society people have their own basket of proposed goods they want to obtain for themselves. And this isn't because they are selfish and will not make sacrifices—notice how looking out for yourself is being demeaned in Tomasky's call to arms—but because even in what they consider appropriate objectives for which sacrifices should be made the citizenry differs significantly. They don't need having one idea of what's worthy of a sacrifice shoved down their throats. No, they want to choose those objectives, as well as the ways of making the sacrifices for them if need be.

Maybe the Democrats—and Republicans—ought to recover the Founders' vision. Then they wouldn't have to concoct an impossible one behind which they cannot manage to unite folks.
---------------------------

http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/hancock/hancock1.html
(excerpt)

Libertarians in general knew government had every motivation to grow in size and intrusiveness and lacked any real deterrent against doing so. The Libertarian Party represented a growing understanding that force or the threat of force, in whatever form, was required to maintain control of a population increasingly aware of the illegitimacy of so much government in their lives. Most people simply wish to be left alone, but government cannot leave them alone. Men in uniforms with shiny badges and seal-embossed parchments demanding service to “The King” have always been accompanied by the threat of violence for non-compliance.

The Revolution between the ears won’t take place all at once, but it will take place overnight. One morning everything will be different. Government actions against the people in the form of laws like the USA PATRIOT Act, surveillance of the innocent, controls on communications and the supposed dominion over one's body are creating an explosive environment, and the central planners know it. These police state tactics are not for our protection from outside threats, but for the protection of government from the American people. Government limits on our ability to seek redress and physically defend against tyranny are increasing -- an outcome predicted for decades by libertarians.

There are reasons to avoid being in public office these days. I firmly believe there will be at least a metaphorical guillotining of public officials responsible for destroying the American Dream for tens of millions of Americans. And I do not wish to be affiliated with those standing in line for their turn to have the lever pulled on their fate. I have absolutely no political goal other than to be left alone. My whole family and large circle of friends have invested a great deal of time, effort and money to that end. But I don't see wielding the power of elective office as a path to that goal.

While content to focus my efforts at home in Arizona , I have become increasingly aware of those with a great desire to be a “respected member” of the very system we oppose. The claim that one needs positions of power in order to free individuals is very troubling. We should be the Hobbits who do not seek power over others, and are willing to make great investments to ensure being left alone. Changing the hands on the levers of power won’t eliminate the levers. The abandonment of the principled foundation of libertarianism now would be disastrous and leave us with nothing of value to distinguish us from our ideological competition.

And while most libertarians would welcome a return to the size of government allowed by the US Constitution as championed in the Federalist Papers, many recognize that this document created the opportunity for the powerful central government we oppose today. The liberty-minded people of the American Revolution were profoundly ambivalent about the US Constitution, and detailed their concerns in the Anti-Federalist Papers. What good are checks and balances when all three branches of government are aligned against the rights of the individual? The Bill of Rights was the libertarian compromise. These ten “Thou Shalt Nots” of government was the deal made to avoid conflict. But the document has proven to be binding only on the people, in our forced support of our present government, while every single one of the Bill of Rights is constantly violated without hesitation by government. I am certain that I am not the only one wondering when this “social contract” will finally be declared null and void. –Ernest Hancock
---------------

Every generation has one or two philosophers that transcend time. From Aristotle (The Father of Logic) to Thomas Aquinas. From the Founding Fathers (Creators of the first free nation) to Ludwig Von Mises (The Father of “True” Economics). From Ayn Rand (The Mother of Liberty) to her heir, Leonard Peikoff, and on to the Libertarian Party.

In the 21st Century, I believe there is the beginnings of another. Lo Bastido’s two keystone contributions are essential as not only a guide, but for all of time.

The term "socialism" is not merely an economic term; it has other aspects, which all relate back to its very name.

Any government measure designed to manipulate society into what is deemed to be the ideal is socialism. Leftists -- no matter how moderate -- are socialists, since they support the manipulating of the economy to decrease economic inequality, and thus, presumably, social distinctions between rich and poor. Naturally, they also support some -- but not all -- permissions in regards to non-economic activities, such as marriage. Note that I said permissions, instead of rights. There are no civil rights for individuals under socialism, because socialism takes it for granted that "society" -- whether in the form of all individuals, a majority of individuals, or even some individuals as a group -- is superior to the individual qua individual. Those who call themselves "liberals" do not believe in rights; their perceived entitlements to welfare are certainly not rights; groups of individuals cannot have their own rights as a group; the overall principle is that the individual must kneel before the whims of society (although actually the ruling elite in charge of the government).

We must take into account the wide scope of socialist activities. Economic measures designed to manipulate society are a form of socialism, as we have seen. But there are many justifications for socialism, and Marxism is only one of them. (The term "Marxism" may reasonably be applied to the general concept of wealth redistribution from the wealthy to the poor, with the underlying assumptions that under capitalism there is no middle class; that the rich are always getting richer while the poor are always getting poorer; and that the rich can only get rich at the expense of the poor.)

Another justification for socialism is the vague concept of "virtue." Under this kind of socialism, society is manipulated toward the goal of creating a society based on certain religious ideals. The individual is largely left alone in his economic activities, but his non-economic activities are regulated if not banned, even though those activities are conducted between consenting adults with a clear and honest agreement regarding their association.

This form of socialism is as destructive of individual liberty as the more recognized Marxist form of socialism. Bizarrely, the proponents of virtue socialism refuse to recognize their socialism, despite their constant invocation of terms like society, the greater good, and the majority, in the context of manipulating them using government fiat -- classic rhetoric of all socialists.

Any system which aims to respect individual liberty must accept that society (or the greater good, or the majority) is built up from the basic unit of the individual. There must also be the recognition that no group of individuals -- be it a group of only two individials, or of all other individuals -- has any special rights of its own; and it certainly has no superior rights over the individual. Put briefly: society has no rights; government has no responsibility to safeguard society. The term "social contract" clouds the truth that government is basically a contract between the individual and his government; society itself has no political-cum-legal substance, with no rights, privileges, or responsibilities of its own.

Society must be allowed to take whatever course it will, regardless of the outcome. Representative government is founded on the principle that the constituency deserves whatever it votes for, and should be allowed to freely choose its fate. Society must be treated -- respected -- in the same way: whatever society as a whole wants, society as a whole should get.

Now, socialists believe the worst in humanity: they must, otherwise their policies cannot be justified. They take for granted that, if not for their interventionism, society will collapse into unspeakable horror. This belief is based on a bedrock of rank misanthropy. The prediction just mentioned requires the average individual to be a reckless, cruel idiot with no real ability to control himself: a slave to his own impulses and desires. Socialists justify the enslavement of the individual on the grounds that the individual is already a slave to his own passions. This is true no matter how vigorous a socialist's policies are in enslaving the individual: even if a policy only slightly enslaves the individual, it is assumed that the individual is only slightly a reckless, cruel idiot with a reduced ability to control himself. They call this misanthropy pragmatism, as if pragmatism were an ideal which lifts humanity to its greatest heights. (It only lifts those in charge to the greatests heights, which is the entire point of socialist politics.)

There is no real cure for misanthropy. And socialists refuse to acknowledge the value of liberty -- or if they do, they insist that it is inferior as an ideal to misanthropic pragmatism. For them it is better, in other words, to treat their fellow individuals as irresponsible slaves than to allow them to destroy themselves.

Note irresponsible: liberty and responsibility are inseparable halves. Both Marxist socialists and virtue socialists pay at least some superficial homage to responsibility -- more so with the latter -- but in the end neither truly believes in it. Even if an individual will destroy himself if given the freedom to do so, he must be respected in that choice. And if he hurts someone else's property or person, then he must be respected enough to be prosecuted for it. Socialist fiat is essentially preemptive: it seeks to prevent what are deemed criminous actions before they occur. Some activities often lead to other, harmful activities; it certainly feels good to prevent the latter by banning the former. But what such emotion-driven policy neglects is that freedom-based justice cannot survive under such prosecutorial policy. By preventing action B by banning action A, one has essentially declared all actors of A -- all of them! -- to be guilty ahead of the fact. Thus two sacred principles of Western jurisprudence are violated: prosecution on an individual basis, with the opportunity to confront one's accuser; and the presumption of innocence until one has been proven guilty. Briefly: socialism replaces proof of guilt with presumption of guilt.

Assume that, say, 80% of crack users will commit robberies while high, or to support their habit, or both; government still has no right to use statistics to prosecute all crack users. (It should use actual evidence, something which socialists tend to dismiss as irrelevant.) One of the defining qualities -- and evils -- of socialism is that it punishes the innocent (those who would not commit other crimes) along with the guilty (those who were going to commit other crimes). Modern jurisprudence should not run on statistics; a prosecutor should not charge someone with the possibility that he might mug someone in the future. (Those of you whom I am describing in this post, please take a moment to re-read the previous sentence objectively; and ask yourself honestly if such a system as described horrifies you.)

Thus, the man who snorts coke in his apartment, and has no inclination to hurt anyone else or their property, is as wicked as the man who stabs someone on the street to pay for his next heroin fix. No socialist can claim that absolutely all users of such hard drugs commit secondary crimes; and even a 99% possibility of a future crime is no justification for prosecution. It is scarcely appreciated by socialists that people should be prosecuted as individuals for the crimes they have already committed, using evidence collected against them, and with the chance to confront their accusers. No, that whole irrelevant -- to them -- rigamarole should be avoided by simply preventing people from doing things which often lead to those other crimes.

These socialist policies on criminal justice are an indication of how hostile socialism is to responsibility. If an individual manages to get his hands on cocaine, and goes on a shooting spree using a prohibited firearm, socialists studiously avoid putting the responsibility on the individual: the Marxist socialist blames the firearm, while the virtue socialist blames the cocaine. From that kind of perspective, it's not the individual who failed in his responsibilities (for he has none, since he deserves none), it's the government who failed in its responsibilities! No socialist commentator would say "Well, it's his own fault; he chose to do the coke, and so he's responsible for whatever he does even if he's hopped up." Instead a socialist would say "Government failed this man, and failed the people he shot; government must work harder to live up to its responsibilities."

In other words, government is assumed to be more responsible than the individual -- even though the enormous mass of human history has proven the reverse. Misanthropists-as-socialists do not trust people; and since according to human nature they must trust in something to make things right, they place their trust in government. Beware those who would take away responsibility from the individual, for they are putting responsibility into the one human institution which least deserves it: government, which has the power to arrest or even kill those who dare violate the tyranny guarding the current social ideal. –Lo Bastido
---------------------------

- Murder
- Assault
- Property damage and theft
- Copyright and patent infringement
- Breach of contract

All these activities violate one fundamental precept: that we all have the rights to our own bodies and property, and nothing else. (None of us, of course, have any rights toward other people's bodies and property.) The principle is that adults of sound mind may consent to activities with other adults with no interference from government except as an arbiter in case of dispute. –Lo Bastido, on the only areas of government intervention

Does prayer work?

2007-07-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

Does prayer work?

I personally believe prayer has subverted reason for the mystical. Now I want to make it clear that I believe prayer is important to lifting one's spirit; but not when mysticism has been passed over as concrete evidence throughout religionist history. For example: if a cancer survivor is so certain in the power of prayer, the power to heal from God's hands, why did they need radiation treatments in the first place? It would seem to me, at most, that a Creator created humanity with the tools to develop said radiation treatment; but any medical successes are to the credit of human knowledge and free will. These "miracles" are more likely works of invention than any purported hand from God.

The big question that is asked by religionists is: "Why does God allow evil to happen?" He doesn't. Humanity does. In fact, you could say to a certain extent religion has. Because prayer (mysticism) often suspends thought--and more importantly, action--"faith" offers complacency, and hiding, as comfort. Those believing evil emanates from secularism also allow the most heinous of tyranny to go on untouched. ("If we all just pray, things will get better.") In the 20th Century, we've been through two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the globe is under the constant threat of teetering on a nuclear World War III. We have the tools to choose, to think, and to act for ourselves. Yet mysticism hides in an impenetrable bubble of reality denial to which reason disintegrates.

If my biblical knowledge is correct, "The Great Flood" was an invention passed over from generation to generation by the mystic intellectuals, in order to scare the non-believers into believing God unleashed his wrath upon human sin. Yet weather patterns by some religionists are deemed to be "set in motion" with no true discrimination in mind other than just the right elements of cool and warm temperatures creating natural disasters. (If the American central belt is under constant tornado threat, are these people greater "sinners" than the rest of Americans?) Those who unfortunately are in the wrong place at the wrong time lose their life--and not by predicted design. On a global weather scale, the earth is trying to keep a constant yin and yang balance. Those geographs lacking or having an abundance of moist/dry or cool/warm temperatures, will eventually have enough, or an extreme, of the other. Yet we're suppose to be sensitive to the religionist's beliefs; but why does the non-believer not deserve the same sensitivity when unsubstantiated mysticism is shoved down our throats via creation stories and biblical-as-legislated-people-control-rule? (Namely forced prayer in schools.)

A dear friend of mine had brain cancer. Her treatments had cured her--or so we thought. She claimed "God saved her." Later, the doctors found more cancer, and she died. Where are the prayerists now? No reply. Even worse, a friend of mine is battling in a custody case. She believes--get this--that "God is amongst" her lawyer, but she isn't preparing herself, or more immediately, the case, for appropriate action. Meaning, again, that individual responsibility is subverted for prayer in hopes everything will turn out in the end. Whatever positive outcomes are gifts from God; whatever negatives are deemed Devil worship, or simply are forgotten in the context of prayer.

So if you want prayer in your life, that's great; but please don't replace it with free will and the power of the human mind.

John Roberts on Homosexuality and AIDs

2007-03-27T14:23:00.000-05:00

After reading Roberts' column on AIDs, it wasn't the issue of the disease spreading that scared me most, but John Roberts himself. I'll explain why as I comment on his ideas.

There's no denying Roberts is an intelligent person and holds many fine values I'm sure. But it's the idea he claims to have such experience with homosexuals that bothers me. ("During a lifetime of working with people, I have met many homosexual people.") Then Roberts says:

1 The genetically sexually indeterminate. (Chromosome abnormality).
2 The emotionally homosexual. Those naturally effeminate (or female masculinity).

First he acknowledges that some cases of homosexuality are "genetic" and "naturally effeminate," and then proceeds to say:

It will be apparent that those persons coming within the first category may be regarded as unfortunate individuals. Those who suffer from a distinctly biological condition are deserving of public compassion. One can throw no stones at these people: nor does it appear that much can be done, medically speaking, to alleviate the condition. It is a problem for geneticists and psychologists."

Almost as though there are "other" justifiable times when 'stones can be thrown' at people who do not have the same moral code. (I'm probably overpicking on this one, but in the Old Testament there are instances in the scripture, like in Deuteronomy 16:17 "Worshiping Other Gods," when stone throwing is deemed an acceptable action to those who worship "other" God's. A local priest once told me part of reading the Bible is how you "interpret" the scripture, as though there is anything to interpret with mandated killing.)

On top of that - and after acknowledging the "genetic" makeup of homosexuals - he says this is a problem for geneticists and psychologists. He essentially contradicts his own words with whisking away the problem off to two of the areas (science and mind) that have never been able to "cure" something that has never been scientifically or psychologically curable. Maybe it just is. But no...

That is my belief: the personal responsibility for all human activity

Religionists do not have an "ordain" right of any kind over anyone else. This is the extremist religious view: they believe secular law is totalitarian but ordain law isn't.

The hidden, concealed and underhand nature of the "evil" makes it incumbent upon legislatures to carefully consider the alternatives.

Which is where he can only fail. Legislated virtues are force (aka tyranny), and with government mandating and removing laws at the device of the two-party system, the values John Roberts enacts might also be removed by another who doesn't share those values. Morality cannot be legislated because everyone has their own moral code.

Has anything been done to limit or control such behaviour? By no means! One must not comment upon the moral perversity of such behaviour. Society must not interfere with the lawful right of these people to engage in their obnoxious, disease-spreading activities. However, it has a weighty obligation to do all in its power to find a cure for this disease, which is a continuous threat to all mankind.

If Roberts wants to do something, he's better off educating people and legislating to remove all discrimination laws. (Because discrimination laws only candy over the truth: human racism. Believe it or not, the individual is within their rights to discriminate against whomever and for whatever reasons. The individual is entitled to their liberty.)

Roberts is a pragmatist. Here's why:

Now, socialists believe the worst in humanity: they must, otherwise their policies cannot be justified. They take for granted that, if not for their interventionism, society will collapse into unspeakable horror. This belief is based on a bedrock of rank misanthropy. The prediction just mentioned requires the average individual to be a reckless, cruel idiot with no real ability to control himself: a slave to his own impulses and desires. Socialists justify the enslavement of the individual on the grounds that the individual is already a slave to his own passions. This is true no matter how vigorous a socialist's policies are in enslaving the individual: even if a policy only slightly enslaves the individual, it is assumed that the individual is only slightly a reckless, cruel idiot with a reduced ability to control himself. They call this misanthropy pragmatism, as if pragmatism were an ideal which lifts humanity to its greatest heights. (It only lifts those in charge to the greatests heights, which is the entire point of socialist politics.)

There is no real cure for misanthropy. And socialists refuse to acknowledge the value of liberty -- or if they do, they insist that it is inferior as an ideal to misanthropic pragmatism. For them it is better, in other words, to treat their fellow individuals as irresponsible slaves than to allow them to destroy themselves.

Note irresponsible: liberty and responsibility are inseparable halves. Both Marxist socialists and virtue socialists pay at least some superficial homage to responsibility -- more so with the latter -- but in the end neither truly believes in it. Even if an individual will destroy himself if given the freedom to do so, he must be respected in that choice. -Lo Bastido

----------

Some wise person once described homosexual people as, 'The dead twigs on the tree of life'.

You homosexuals out there. Innit good to know yer nothing more than "dead twigs." Hmmm...lovely.

Conclusion: What then, is to be done about the problem of Homosexuality and Aids?

Not much. Education. But the reality is it has always existed. Roberts just doesn't want to accept it and let liberty run its course. Unless you want to turn the world into a police state - which usually ends in gang warfare because virtuists want to mess with freedoms.

Governments must discourage all forms of sexual activity that are likely to result in the spread of the contagion. In the absence of a cure, there will, sooner or later, have to be some control over the extent of homosexual practices. Amongst the alternatives are :

1 Greater discipline and segregation in Prisons.
2 Compulsory Aids testing before international travel.
3 Segregation of sexually active Aids patients. Use of mental hospitals (now empty) as Aids hospitals for these patients.
4 Public education as to the manner in which Aids is spread and as to the dangers of homosexual conduct.
5 Compulsory registration of Aids carriers.
6 A Public denial of the “normality” of homosexual conduct and a public rejection of the suggestion that homosexual relationships are proper or acceptable to Society as a whole. There can be no such status as that of homosexual or lesbian "marriage", which is an affront to Society. Nor should consideration be given, under any circumstances, to the adoption of children by persons living in such relationships.

Virtuists subconsciously are trying to create a heaven on Earth by controlling people. They are acting as 'messengers from God', and they do not believe their force of others is a "sin". It would be deemed an acceptable virtue to turn the landscape into something which ironically mirrors Nazi concentration camps; a police state with hired gunmen slapping their rifles on their hands because they love power over others. This vision comes from the same people who believe they have a seat reserved for them in heaven.

Because there are a few bad apples out there who consciously are spreading the contagion doesn't mean others should suffer with fisticuffs. Evil does not emanate from the majority, but the minority who want to control the majority. This is why I fear John Roberts more than AIDs: He would rather control and reduce liberties - which has a direct 'trickle down effect' on "other" freedoms by developing the mindset that force is acceptable - than believe the good nature of the majority will keep the contagion contained.

Beginning of the end of Freedom to Speech

2007-01-23T12:28:00.000-06:00

Picture a kid on a sled reaching the tipping point of a tall snow hill, and this is the end of America as we've known it, heading slowly, than faster, downhill. It was nice knowing you, Americans.

Congress Wants to Blame the Grassroots for Its Own Corruption
MANASSAS, Va., Jan. 16 /
PRNewswire-USNewswire/

-- The following is a
statement by Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of GrassrootsFreedom.com,
regarding legislation currently being considered by Congress to regulate
grassroots communications:

"In what sounds like a comedy sketch from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but
isn't, the U. S. Senate would impose criminal penalties, even jail time, on
grassroots causes and citizens who criticize Congress.

"Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the
Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to
500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report
quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220
would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive
intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history,
critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself.

"The bill would require reporting of 'paid efforts to stimulate
grassroots lobbying,' but defines 'paid' merely as communications to 500 or
more members of the public, with no other qualifiers.

"On January 9, the Senate passed Amendment 7 to S. 1, to create
criminal penalties, including up to one year in jail, if someone 'knowingly
and willingly fails to file or report.'

"That amendment was introduced by Senator David Vitter (R-LA). Senator
Vitter, however, is now a co-sponsor of Amendment 20 by Senator Robert
Bennett (R-UT) to remove Section 220 from the bill. Unless Amendment 20
succeeds, the Senate will have criminalized the exercise of First Amendment
rights. We'd be living under totalitarianism, not democracy.

"I started GrassrootsFreedom.com to fight efforts to silence the
grassroots. The website provides updates in the legislation and has a
petition to sign opposing Section 220.

"Thousands of nonprofit leaders, bloggers, and other citizens have
hammered the Senate with calls in opposition to Section 220, which seeks to
silence the grassroots. The criminal provisions will scare citizens into
silence.

"The legislation regulates small, legitimate nonprofits, bloggers, and
individuals, but creates loopholes for corporations, unions, and large
membership organizations that would be able to spend literally hundreds of
millions of dollars, yet not report.

"Congress is trying to blame the grassroots, which are American
citizens engaging in their First Amendment rights, for Washington's
internal corruption problems."

defending individual liberties

2006-11-08T11:53:00.000-06:00

These are examples of how the American political system has lost sight of what the Founders intended decades ago. The only true freedom is individual freedom, and gov't was established only for the purpose of defending our individual liberties.

I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.
-Ayn Rand, Anthem

Words Get Around II

The following is something I posted at RN in response to this article:

(Mad dope props to Ayn Rand for inspiration)

(excerpt)

Any system which aims to respect individual liberty must accept that society (or the greater good, or the majority) is built up from the basic unit of the individual. There must also be the recognition that no group of individuals -- be it a group of only two individials, or of all other individuals -- has any special rights of its own; and it certainly has no superior rights over the individual. Put briefly: society has no rights; government has no responsibility to safeguard society. The term "social contract" clouds the truth that government is basically a contract between the individual and his government; society itself has no political-cum-legal substance, with no rights, privileges, or responsibilities of its own.

Society must be allowed to take whatever course it will, regardless of the outcome. Representative government is founded on the principle that the constituency deserves whatever it votes for, and should be allowed to freely choose its fate. Society must be treated -- respected -- in the same way: whatever society as a whole wants, society as a whole should get.

Then...

In other words, government is assumed to be more responsible than the individual -- even though the enormous mass of human history has proven the reverse. Misanthropists-as-socialists do not trust people; and since according to human nature they must trust in something to make things right, they place their trust in government. Beware those who would take away responsibility from the individual, for they are putting responsibility into the one human institution which least deserves it: government, which has the power to arrest or even kill those who dare violate the tyranny guarding the current social ideal.
-Lo Bastido, on individual freedom and the negatives of socialism

Words Get Around II

- Murder
- Assault
- Property damage and theft
- Copyright and patent infringement
- Breach of contract

All these activities violate one fundamental precept: that we all have the rights to our own bodies and property, and nothing else. (None of us, of course, have any rights toward other people's bodies and property.) The principle is that adults of sound mind may consent to activities with other adults with no interference from government except as an arbiter in case of dispute.
-Lo Bastido, on the five areas gov't are needed

Free Market News
Tibor R. Machan
The Libertarian Perspective #75 Tue, 24 Oct 2006
The Common Good

I have a better idea. Let Democrats, Republicans, and the rest recover the powerful idea that got the country going in the first place, one laid out pretty neatly in the Declaration of Independence. This idea is that the common good is pursued precisely when government does what justifies its existence—namely, secure our rights. That, indeed, is THE common good in the American political tradition.

There are millions of disparate "goods" that individuals pursue, but only one unites them, only one is their common good: the protection of their fundamental individual rights. This was part of the revolutionary idea that animated the Founders and put the country in opposition to so many others, including those in Europe from which so many of its initial population fled.

In most countries throughout human history the idea was promoted that there is a rich common good, a whole slew of objectives that everyone must pursue. In other words, the common good was really the collective goods of all the people, as if they really did share goods galore that they needed to promote. The one-size-fits-all mentality was encouraged by rulers, monarchs, tsars, and the rest who needed to hoodwink us into thinking that their goals are really our goals and we cannot really, individually, have goals of our own. That was the common good–the leaders' good peddled for the rest as their good, too.

The American Founders, guided by the classical liberal social-political philosophies of John Locke and company, saw through this. They realized that in a big country, the millions of inhabitants share but very few goods. (Of course, small associations—churches, clubs, corporations, professional groups and so forth—can have some common objectives all right. But no such common good or objective exists for the millions of us!) And the most important—probably, in fact, only—common good we share is the protection of our individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It's the one good that's indeed good for us all, that we have in common.

If government, which is instituted to secure these rights, does its job right, it will stick to little more than making sure that everyone's liberty is safe. Why? Because then all the millions of different individuals, and some of the groups they voluntarily form amongst themselves, will quite successfully embark on the task of pursuing all those goods that suit them. Securing our rights does that for us!

But today's public pundit-intellectuals don't get it. They want to find some thick public good—a whole, humongous basket of allegedly common goods—that government will set out to achieve. And they are surprised that there isn't such a basket; in a largely free society people have their own basket of proposed goods they want to obtain for themselves. And this isn't because they are selfish and will not make sacrifices—notice how looking out for yourself is being demeaned in Tomasky's call to arms—but because even in what they consider appropriate objectives for which sacrifices should be made the citizenry differs significantly. They don't need having one idea of what's worthy of a sacrifice shoved down their throats. No, they want to choose those objectives, as well as the ways of making the sacrifices for them if need be.

Maybe the Democrats—and Republicans—ought to recover the Founders' vision. Then they wouldn't have to concoct an impossible one behind which they cannot manage to unite folks.

Strike the Root

Libertarians in general knew government had every motivation to grow in size and intrusiveness and lacked any real deterrent against doing so. The Libertarian Party represented a growing understanding that force or the threat of force, in whatever form, was required to maintain control of a population increasingly aware of the illegitimacy of so much government in their lives. Most people simply wish to be left alone, but government cannot leave them alone. Men in uniforms with shiny badges and seal-embossed parchments demanding service to “The King” have always been accompanied by the threat of violence for non-compliance.

The Revolution between the ears won’t take place all at once, but it will take place overnight. One morning everything will be different. Government actions against the people in the form of laws like the USA PATRIOT Act, surveillance of the innocent, controls on communications and the supposed dominion over one's body are creating an explosive environment, and the central planners know it. These police state tactics are not for our protection from outside threats, but for the protection of government from the American people. Government limits on our ability to seek redress and physically defend against tyranny are increasing -- an outcome predicted for decades by libertarians.

There are reasons to avoid being in public office these days. I firmly believe there will be at least a metaphorical guillotining of public officials responsible for destroying the American Dream for tens of millions of Americans. And I do not wish to be affiliated with those standing in line for their turn to have the lever pulled on their fate. I have absolutely no political goal other than to be left alone. My whole family and large circle of friends have invested a great deal of time, effort and money to that end. But I don't see wielding the power of elective office as a path to that goal.

While content to focus my efforts at home in Arizona , I have become increasingly aware of those with a great desire to be a “respected member” of the very system we oppose. The claim that one needs positions of power in order to free individuals is very troubling. We should be the Hobbits who do not seek power over others, and are willing to make great investments to ensure being left alone. Changing the hands on the levers of power won’t eliminate the levers. The abandonment of the principled foundation of libertarianism now would be disastrous and leave us with nothing of value to distinguish us from our ideological competition.

And while most libertarians would welcome a return to the size of government allowed by the US Constitution as championed in the Federalist Papers, many recognize that this document created the opportunity for the powerful central government we oppose today. The liberty-minded people of the American Revolution were profoundly ambivalent about the US Constitution, and detailed their concerns in the Anti-Federalist Papers. What good are checks and balances when all three branches of government are aligned against the rights of the individual? The Bill of Rights was the libertarian compromise. These ten “Thou Shalt Nots” of government was the deal made to avoid conflict. But the document has proven to be binding only on the people, in our forced support of our present government, while every single one of the Bill of Rights is constantly violated without hesitation by government. I am certain that I am not the only one wondering when this “social contract” will finally be declared null and void.
-Ernest Hancock

Terri Schiavo, Part 3

2006-06-15T10:33:00.000-05:00

Another important Schiavo column on what really went down.

QandO (see column for links)
Michael Schiavo’s Evolution into a Republican Kos Kid: Harbinger for Libertarians?
GUEST POST by Mona

"They [the “Save Terri!” movement] asserted that Schiavo's coma may have been caused by abuse from her husband, Michael. With their cries of "medical terrorism" and their comparisons to Nazi Germany, these so-called champions of life created an atmosphere in which some of their supporters made death threats not only to Michael Schiavo but to judges and legislators who had been on the "wrong" side of the dispute.

-Cathy Young
Reason

We libertarians are frequently caricatured as “Republicans who just want to smoke dope and have orgiastic sex.” Actually, we hold fealty to many serious general principles, including: the rule of law, basic human rights, federalism, and, yes, the individual adult’s liberty interest in making all manner of personal decisions sans interference from the state; we are also usually skeptical of moralistic social crusades. Many of us, historically, have concluded that our principles and attitudes are best, if imperfectly, upheld by the GOP. Political conditions, however, have changed, and today’s GOP violates libertarian values with promiscuous abandon (but this post focuses on only one of myriad examples of such abandonment). Most intriguingly, we are receiving what could be taken as an invitation from soi disant “libertarian Democrat” Markos Moulitsas that has excited some discussion in our ranks.

Well, I am one libertarian who is cautiously receptive to the Donkey Team’s lure. The canary in the GOP coal mine for me was Michael Schiavo and the (predominantly) GOP grotesqueries imposed on him, his family and his friends during the jihad to “save” his former wife, Terri Schiavo. Not surprisingly, life-long Republican Michael himself seems to agree that the contemporary GOP has become malignant, and he has been both posting a diary at Daily Kos , and last week attended the YearlyKos Convention. What libertarian could blame him? (And please don’t suggest that he could make recourse to the Libertarian Party; Michael is obviously interested in a political force potent enough to evict the current, populist GOP extremists from some branches of the federal government, as am I.)

Let us recall how the Bush/Frist GOP utterly savaged Michael, gleefully joined by its handmaidens at Fox news, the latter of which virtually drove the hysteria , with no little bit of assistance from some pro-Bush blogs. Armed with absurd conspiracy theories, pure lies and faux experts, as well as outrageous and repugnant accusations (“Sean Hannity accused Schiavo of abusing and possibly killing his wife while broadcasting Hannity & Colmes from outside Terri Schiavo's Hospice”), the GOP and its media minions turned a family tragedy that was being competently and properly adjudicated in the Florida Courts by a Republican probate judge, into a fevered national circus.

Most of the Bush-worshipping denizens of the leading conservative journal, National Review, were on board with "saving Terri." But there was one dissenter in the NR stable, and that is John Derbyshire, whose acid review of NR senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru’s execrable book, Party of Death, is as scathing as it is accurate. (Do read the whole thing, and note it was not published at NR.) (h/t David Weigel at Hit ‘n Run) Writes Derb:

... the grotesque carnival surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo last year, when a motley menagerie of quack doctors, bogus “Nobel Prize nominees,” emoting relatives, get-a-life monomaniacs, keening mobs of religious fanatics, death-threat-hissing warriors for “life,” dimwitted TV presenters straining to keep their very best my-puppy-just-died faces on while speaking of “Terri” as if they had known her personally from grade school, pandering politicians, and shyster lawyers all joined forces in a massive effort to convince the American public that [Right to Life] was a thing no sane citizen ought to touch with a barge pole while wearing triple-ply rubber gloves.

Does Ponnuru denounce his co-ideologues’ deranged atmosphere that generated hatred and death threats against Michael Schiavo? Derb again (emphasis in original):

In fact, Ponnuru has nothing to say at all about the monstrous character assassination, carried out by utterly unscrupulous RTL propagandists, of a decent man [Michael Schiavo] who coped humanely and well with a terrible life calamity. Well, not quite nothing: “It cannot be denied that pro-lifers were guilty of some excesses,” Ponnuru murmurs. Some excesses? I would say. Here the author sounds like nothing so much as a Soviet Communist Party apparatchik, circa 1960, offering a grudging admission that Stalin and his cronies might, just once or twice, have been a tad over-zealous in dealing with class enemies…I came away more convinced than ever that Michael Schiavo is a good man criminally traduced by brutal, unprincipled RTL fanatics, from whose number, on the evidence of this chapter, Ponnuru cannot with certainty be excluded.

About the medical charlatanry peddled by the GOP regarding Terri Schiavo’s status, another life-long Republican — physician Elizabeth Whelan, president and founder of the American Council on Science and Health — had this to say at TCS:

While the family video [of Terri] repeatedly shown on television suggests otherwise, her non-functioning cortex precludes cognition, including any ability to interact or communicate with people or show any signs of awareness. Dozens of experts over the years who have examined Ms. Schiavo agree that there is no hope of her recovering — even though her body, face and eyes (if she is given food and hydration) might continue to move for decades to come.

Those are the harsh facts.

Thus it was shocking that Sen. Bill Frist — a heart surgeon before becoming Senate majority leader — went to the Senate floor twice last week to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying that Terri is in a "persistent vegetative state." How did Frist arrive at this diagnosis? From watching the family videotapes.

Frist's comments were picked up by journalists, including FoxNews's Fred Barnes, who cited Sen. Frist as an authority in a debate with Morton Kondracke on The Beltway Boys last week.

The GOP-led federal madness that ensued in the wake of Frist and Fox’s reprehensible antics is well-described by Reason’s Ron Bailey:

After making their video diagnoses, our legislators got busy. After all, a leaked memo from a Republican staffer had also diagnosed Schiavo's plight as "a great political issue" that would help the GOP rally conservative Christians for the 2006 election. In March, three Senators during an extraordinary Palm Sunday session passed "emergency" legislation to throw the Schiavo case into the federal courts by a "unanimous" vote. The members of the House of Representatives rushed back from their Easter holiday to vote 203 to 58 for the bill. Those voting in favor included 156 Republicans and 47 Democrats. And President George W. Bush melodramatically flew back from his Texas ranch to sign the legislation. All for naught, because the federal courts all quickly ruled in favor of Michael Schiavo.

And, just as life-long Republican Dr. Whelan deplored the medical codswallop of the Bush/Frist GOP spewed forth during l’affaire Schiavo, arch-conservative, pro-life, Republican Constitutional Law scholar Douglas Kmiec rejected the GOP’s attack on both the rule of law and federalism as “a constitiutional abomination”:

... Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University and prominent conservative, called it a "constitutional abomination," because, he said, Congress had overstepped its authority.

The Constitution grants to Congress only certain powers, leaving the rest to the states. Kmiec said nothing in the Constitution gave Congress the power to pass the law, which, he said, sets a troubling precedent that Congress can simply order a federal judge to direct a person's fate.

"What Congress has said is, 'We can take that away from you. We can make the decision not yours, but that of a federal judge,'" Kmiec said. "That is a profound thing to say, and not just for the Schiavo case."

Michael certainly will find no GOP restraint from the "federalist lawyers" at Powerline, which declared:

Disgusting... That's the only word to describe the conduct of Michael Schiavo and his crusade to end the life of his wife Terri.

Nor would he encounter anything but shrill, hyperbolic contempt from pro-Bush blogger LaShawn Barber, who, in a post titled Death Culturists Say Michael Schiavo ‘Vindicated’ wrote:

Look at the thing itself, to paraphrase a fictional man-eater paraphrasing Marcus Aurelius. What is it in itself? What is its nature, this culture of death?

It is dark, dank, and putrid. And hungry....

And in another post, instead of denouncing death threats directed at Michael, and the climate that produced them, Barber more than hinted that he deserved them and excuses the “emotions” that drive some to such lawless and vicious behavior:

A man has been arrested for making threats against Michael Schiavo via the Internet. In that case, he shouldn’t be the only one. How many people have said or written such things about Schiavo in the past week out of emotion? Should they all be arrested?”

(In fairness, it must be noted that a comparative handful of pro-Bush bloggers were disgusted by the Schiavo mania and the slander of Michael Schiavo, as reflected by these collected quotes and links at The Politburo Diktat. And, pro-Bush blogger Jeff Goldstein, with whom I disagree about a great deal, wrote: “…an autopsy could very well prove that Michael Schiavo abused his wife—or, more likely, such a procedure will clear Michael Schiavo of some of the more pernicious pieces of conjecture I’ve heard floated during the ongoing coverage of this case.” )

But, it was it was a left-of-center blogger, Matt Stoller, who interviewed the Republican Michael Schiavo at Stoller’s MyDD blog, and from that interview I leave newly minted Kos Kid, Michael Schiavo, with both a challenge to Republicans (which might also apply to libertarians), and the last word:

Interfering with families' rights to make private, personal decisions shouldn't be any politician's platform.

There are many good Republicans - where I work, in my family and all over the place. And many of them were sickened by what they saw their party doing to the rights of individuals and families. But the people leading the Republican party in Washington D.C. and in Florida today aren't like the Republicans I know.

The leaders of that Republican party are, in my opinion, out of touch, mean spirited and very selfish. To do what they did just so they can win re-election is the lowest kind of politics. And it cost them the support of at least this Republican.

I have gotten hundreds of letters and emails from other Republicans who agree with me and many of them have joined me in leaving the party.

My message to moderate Republicans is: Pay attention. Learn what these people are doing in your name and with your votes.

Terri Schiavo, Part 2

2006-06-15T10:21:00.000-05:00

Over time I have lost my luster for Dennis Prager, the most well-known religious moralist on the right. This is a person who stands by a pro-life position on the Schiavo case, but on his radio program has openly admitted to being for early-term abortions, a contradiction right there.

atheism.about.com (see column for links)
Facts and Lies about Religion in the Terri Schiavo Case
The forces opposed to removing Terri Schiavo's gastric tube are almost uniformly religious in their perspective. Unfortunately for them, a significant number of those who support Michael Schiavo are also religious in their perspective. How can the Christian Right attack others in the usual manner, i.e. pretend that they are immoral and godless?

Dennis Prager rummages around in the trash and comes up with:

"[C]hances are that if you affirm Judeo-Christian values, you have opposed pulling the feeding tubes from the severely brain damaged woman's body. Why? Because if there is anything that Judeo-Christian values stand for, it is choosing life and rejecting death."

If this is even vaguely true, then why do most people in a population that is primarily Christian agree that they would want the tubes removed if they were in Terri Schiavo's condition and would act similarly to how Michael Schiavo has done? Why do so many people in a population that is primarily Christian make similar decisions about removing gastric tubes and ventilators every single day?

Perhaps Dennis Prager would argue that all those people don't "really" affirm "Judeo-Christian values" (because he's just the person to determine what qualifies as genuine and false adherence, genuine and false interpretations). Well, if anyone were to be thought of as affirming "Judeo-Christian values," it would probably be a Jesuit priest — right?

Well, here's what the Rev. John J. Paris, a bioethics professor at Boston College, has to say:

"The church doctrine, and it’s been consistent for 400 years, is that one is not morally obliged to undergo any intervention. ... What the right-to-lifers want to say is the pope said you must always use artificial nutrition and fluids for patients in persistent vegetative state—and there’s no exception. The Florida bishops say that’s not what the church has taught and that’s surely not what this means.

Richard McCormick, who was the great Catholic moral theologian of the last 25 years, wrote a brilliant article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1974 called “To Save or Let Die.” He said there are two great heresies in our age (and heresy is a strong word in theology—these are false doctrines). One is that life is an absolute good and the other is that death is an absolute evil. We believe that life was created and is a good, but a limited good. Therefore the obligation to sustain it is a limited one. The parameters that mark off those limits are your capacities to function as a human."

I've caught Dennis Prager misrepresenting the truth before — he's not above ignoring facts in order to serve his religious or political agenda. His misrepresentations are naturally popular with religious conservatives who, it seems, don't bother to think critically about what he says.

In this case, the agenda is both religious and political: he and others need to portray themselves as the only ones defending "real" religious morality while their opponents are, by implication, godless and immoral secularists. They can't come right out and say that last bit because they know that most of the people opposing them are anything but godless or secularists, but they can push their position by claiming (without supporting arguments) that their position is the only truly moral one.

Terri Schiavo, Part 1

2006-06-15T10:10:00.000-05:00

Like I said before, now seems like a good time to jump off the Republican ticket, let alone the abyss called the two-party system.

Blatherwatch
No Rush Limbaugh--liberals are not “gleeful” about the death of Terri Schiavo.

We have not “gotten our wish,” that she be dead nor, as Big Pants accused, will we see this shameful event as freeing us up to work on “saving Scott Peterson,” the convicted killer at the locus of the last prurient 24/7 cable channel snore-orgy.

It’s not glee that fills my heart today, but relief. Relief that Terri Schiavo’s poor carcass will finally be put to rest.

Relief that her family, now useless to the political and media axe-grinders, ox-gorers and ideological opportunists, can simply be grieving husband, parents and siblings.

These shameful opportunistic ghouls propped up this woman like Frankenstein and used her body like a whore’s. It was top-down equal opportunity opportunism.

President Bush: rushed back early to DC from Texas like Roy Rogers riding Trigger all night bringing the doc to the rancher’s dying wife. As usual from the faux Texan--it was all hat, no cattle--or, as Frank Rich wrote in the NY Times:

The same Mr. Bush who couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation during the darkening summer of 2001, not even when he received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," flew from his Crawford ranch to Washington to sign Congress's Schiavo bill into law. The bill could have been flown to him in Texas, but his ceremonial arrival and departure by helicopter on the White House lawn allowed him to showboat as if he had just landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Tom Delay: a moral midget with a heart of carnival glass and a meanstreak the width of the Rio Grande, needed a values-rich issue to change the subject from his disturbing and deepening ethics problems in Congress.

Dr. Bill Frist: is Senate Majority Leader, a heart surgeon, who stunningly made a grave neurological diagnosis of Schiavo from videos of her running relentlessly on Fox News. And oh yeah--he’s running for President.

Randall Terry: slithered out from under his rock to flack his pro-life point of view by spokespeeping for the parents. You’ll remember him as the anti-abortion media whore of Operation Rescue, repeatedly jailed in the ‘90’s for well-publicized attacks on abortion clinics. The clownish, homophobic, evangelical Christian needed press redemption after his IRS problems; his son’s very public coming out as a gay; and, according to the Washington Post, his censure by his Binghamton, NY church in 2000 for a "pattern of repeated and sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women."

Sean Hannity: is always on the lookout for stories that he can give the appearance of controlling. With skillful earnestness, tiny Irish lips, deeply-felt smarm, great hair, and a lot of impressive sheeves of paper, he seemed to be in charge of the moral, legal, and family matters for the Schindlers. I almost felt sorry for MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough pitifully begging over the air to the Schindlers to talk to him. As a "friend of the family," Hannity had them exclusively, heartbreakingly, endlessly, tediously. The sad part is that Fox drove the so-called story that highjacked real news for the better part of two weeks.

Jesse Jackson: It was revolting to see the craven Jackson, and Hannity fellating each other in a circle of mutual self-promotion. He's usually Hannity's favorite example of liberal depravity, flawed black leadership. and here’s-what’s-wrong-with-the-Negros. Jackson, stranger to neither media whoring nor pimping, insinuated himself at the last minute into the Schiavo case sucking the air out of the room for the lifeless politicians and media suck-ups milling about hoping to get some juice from the circus. The Rev got his face in front of every camera; and in the end, gained nothing but some very temporary favor from the religious right.

'Decline of the Republican Party' Part 5

2006-05-23T09:28:00.000-05:00

It was Reagan, not Congress

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
National Debt by President
The national debt peaked at 120% of GDP in 1946 due to the war effort, but Roosevelt, Truman, Ike, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon and Carter all did their part to bring the national debt back to pre-war levels. By the beginning of 1981, the national debt had fallen to 32.5% of GDP. Then, Reagan took office and the national debt took off. It rose non-stop for 12 years to 66.3% at the end of Bush's term, erasing 25 years of progress in paying down the national debt.

From the White House: The Reagan-Bush Debt Explained
The traditional pattern of running large deficits only in times of war or economic downturns was broken during much of the 1980s. In 1982, [Reagan's 1st budget year] partly in response to a recession, large tax cuts were enacted. However, these were accompanied by substantial increases in defense spending. Although reductions were made to nondefense spending, they were not sufficient to offset the impact on the deficit. As a result, deficits averaging $206 billion were incurred between 1983 and 1992. These unprecedented peacetime deficits increased debt held by the public from $789 billion in 1981 to $3.0 trillion (48.1% of GDP) in 1992.

http://zfacts.com/p/55.html
The most popular national-debt web sites continue the same confusions that caused Reagan to believe the national debt was higher than ever when it was at its lowest point since before World War II. Here is what you see when you look at the debt in nominal dollars.

Brillig (named for Alice in Wonderland) has been reminded of inflation and has corrected for it by adding the following graph. But this still ignores population growth and that fact that the country has gotten a lot richer in the last 50 years. The result is still tremendously misleading, but you can see the Reagan rise and the Clinton dip.

The nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) takes all of these effects into account. It grows with inflation, population and increased income. By comparing the national debt to GDP, we get a fair check on whether it is growing or shrinking relative to what we can afford. That is why the White House web site give gross national debt as a percentage of GDP, which is what I have plotted on the page above.

The Heritage Foundation
Historical Context
The 7.9 percent of GDP spent on discretionary programs in 2005 was not far off the historical average. Discretionary spending topped 10 percent of GDP from World War II through the early 1980s, before falling to 6.3 percent in 2000, and then spiking back up to 7.9 percent in 2005.

Defense spending has driven much of these fluctuations. From 9.3 percent of GDP in 1962, it typically remained over 5 percent until the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Then, after dropping all the way down to 3.0 percent of GDP in 2000, the War on Terrorism has pushed it back up to 4.1 percent.

Non-defense discretionary spending has remained more stable over the past few decades. After dropping to 3.2 percent of GDP in 1999, it has since surged to 3.9 percent in 2005.

Recent Large Spending Increases
Conventional wisdom holds that non-defense discretionary spending has been cut to make room for defense spending increases. Conventional wisdom is wrong. According to OMB Historical Table 8.2, non-defense discretionary outlays – adjusted for inflation –surged by 34 percent between 1999 and 2005. That is the largest six-year expansion since the 1970s.

One way to compare current discretionary spending trends is by presidential administration:

Overall discretionary outlays rose 2.3 percent annually under President Clinton, compared to 9.7 percent annually under President Bush. Defense was virtually frozen in nominal dollars under President Clinton, and has averaged 12 percent annual growth under President Bush. Non-defense discretionary outlays rose 4 percent annually under President Clinton, versus 8 percent annually under President Bush.

Let me re-emphasize that last point: Non-defense discretionary spending has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton. Examples of discretionary spending increases between 2001 and 2006 include the following:

Education is up 62 percent, or 10 percent annually; International affairs is up 74 percent, or 12 percent annually; Health research and regulation is up 57 percent, or 9 percent annually; Veterans’ benefits are up 46 percent, or 8 percent annually; Science and basic research is up 40 percent, or 7 percent annually. and Overall non-defense discretionary outlays are up 46 percent, or 7.8 percent annually.

Budgets are about making trade-offs among competing priorities, and these recent guns and butter budgets raise serious questions about federal priorities. To enact the largest six-year non-defense discretionary spending hike, at the same time funding a war, has placed federal spending on an unsustainable path. Last week’s harsh reactions to the President’s budget proposal shows that certain constituencies have now grown accustomed to large annual spending increases, and consider even a temporary freeze at these higher spending levels to be out of bounds.

Large Entitlements Threaten Discretionary Programs
Discretionary spending faces a perilous future. The reason is not because the President’s budget proposal forecasts discretionary spending cuts through 2011. Discretionary spending is budgeted on a yearly basis, and any projected discretionary spending numbers after 2007 hold no statutory weight, but serve only as temporary placeholders to make future budget deficits appear smaller. These out-year numbers are typically dismissed by the White House when writing subsequent budget requests.

The real reason for concern comes from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, whose steep growth will likely crowd out all other spending.

The math is simple. Annual spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – what I call the “big three entitlements” – is projected to leap by 10.5 percent of GDP between now and 2050. That money will have to come from somewhere. The entire 7.9 percent of GDP currently spent on discretionary programs will be at risk.

It is possible that Congress will raise taxes to pay for this spending. However, Congress would have to keep raising taxes every year until they reach the current equivalent of $11,000 per household above current levels to fund those entitlement costs.

Assuming that Congress balks at such large tax hikes, it becomes more likely that discretionary spending will have to be substantially reduced to make room for those entitlements. Competition for scarce budget resources will become increasingly intense, and the big three entitlements will leave smaller and smaller crumbs for discretionary spending. Overall, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending increases are projected to squeeze out the entire non-defense discretionary budget by 2020, and the entire discretionary budget (including defense) by 2034.

The message is clear: If you prioritize spending on education, health research, veterans’ health care, homeland, security, defense or the environment – the single biggest threat to these programs is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that within a decade, the big three entitlements will be growing $172 billion each year – which will be more than the entire combined budgets of the Departments of Education and Justice at that time. At that point, it will become difficult to maintain even a shell of current discretionary programs. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will swallow almost all of the tax dollars.

'Decline of the Republican Party' Part 4

2006-05-20T12:46:00.000-05:00

A recent local Minnesota pre-poll showed 52 percent would vote within the two-party system, and the other 48 percent would vote either independent or not at all. An interneter told me the RNP is a "bad idea" while the DNP has "no ideas". I responded with, "Promoting a bad idea on the basis of no idea is not a good idea." I've come to realize the RNP's vision is simply to not be Democratic. Blah. Third party, or any "other" party, anyone? Lets really shake up the political format.

Townhall
What next for conservatives
Nov 17, 2005
by George Will

(excerpt)
The conservative coalition, which is coming unglued for many reasons, will rapidly disintegrate if limited-government conservatives become convinced that social conservatives are unwilling to concentrate their character-building and soul-saving energies on the private institutions that mediate between individuals and government, and instead try to conscript government into sectarian crusades.

But, then, the limited-government impulse is a spent force in a Republican Party that cannot muster congressional majorities to cut the growth of Medicaid from 7.3 percent to 7 percent next year. That "cut'' was too draconian for some Republican "moderates.''

But, then, most Republicans are moderates as that term is used by persons for whom it is an encomium: Moderates are people amiably untroubled by Washington's single-minded devotion to rent-seeking -- to bending government for the advantage of private factions.

Conservatives have won seven of 10 presidential elections, yet government waxes, with per household federal spending more than $22,000 per year, the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. Federal spending -- including a 100 percent increase in education spending since 2001 -- has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton, 65 percent of it unrelated to national security.

In 1991, the 546 pork projects in the 13 appropriation bills cost $3.1 billion. In 2005, the 13,997 pork projects cost $27.3 billion for things like improving the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio (Packard, an automobile brand, died in 1958).

Washington subsidizes the cost of water to encourage farmers to produce surpluses that trigger a gusher of government spending to support prices. It is almost comforting that $2 billion is spent each year paying farmers not to produce. Farm subsidies, most of which go to agribusinesses and affluent farmers, are just part of the $60 billion in corporate welfare that dwarfs the $29 billion budget of the Department of Homeland Security.

Brian Riedl of The Heritage Foundation reports that Congress responded to the Korean War by setting priorities, cutting one-fourth of all nonwar spending in one year. Recently the House failed to approve an unusually ambitious effort to cut government growth. This is today's ambitiousness: attempting -- probably unsuccessfully -- to cut government growth by $54 billion over five years.

That is $10.8 billion a year from five budgets projected to total $12.5 trillion, of which $54 billion is four-tenths of 1 percent. War is hell but, on the home front, it is indistinguishable from peace, except that the government is more undisciplined than ever.

Lew Rockwell
Four Years Growth
by Laurence M. Vance

(excerpt)
The Republicans gained control of the Congress in the third year of Clinton’s first term. They had complete control of the 104th Congress (1995–1997), held on to control in the 105th Congress (1997–1999), and remained in power during the 106th Congress (1999–2001) through the end of Clinton’s presidency. After George Bush was inaugurated in 2001, he had a Republican-controlled 107th Congress (2001–2003) until May 24, 2001, when Jim Jeffords (R-VT) switched from Republican to Independent, changing the Senate from 50/50 to 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and 1 Independent. The House remained in Republican hands. The 108th Congress (2003–2005) was once again solidly Republican, giving the Republicans an absolute majority in Congress and the White House for the last two years of Bush’s first term.

This means that the Republican Party has no excuse for the size and scope of the federal government as it exists right now. Republicans can’t blame anything on the Democrats like they did for the fifty years before they gained control of the Congress.

Now that we are at the end of Bush’s first four years, a simple question needs to be asked: Is the government at the end of Bush’s first term in any way smaller or less expensive than the government at the beginning of his first term. If it is, then Bush and the Republican Party told the truth, but if it isn’t, then Bush’s rhetoric was just hot air and the 2000 Republican Party Platform wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. (See also What a Republican Majority Has Not Meant.)

Milken Institute
How Republicans Became Defenders of Big Government
by Stephen Slivinski

(excerpt)
The Price of United Government
Why the big change under W? Because the Republicans own both the House and Senate. Divided government, with at least one house of Congress controlled by the President's opposition, tends to keep spending under control. As a onetime Reagan economic advisor William Niskanen noted, "The only two long periods of fiscal restraint [since World War II] were the Eisenhower administration and the Clinton administration, during both of which the opposition party controlled Congress."

'Decline of the Republican Party' Part 3

2006-05-19T09:18:00.000-05:00

The American Enterprise
Unlimited Government
by Christopher DeMuth

(excerpt)
Government bloat 1980-2005
Well, what difference does all of this make? Why in the age of the Internet, globalization, and al-Qaeda should we attend fastidiously to a document written more than two centuries ago, in radically different circumstances, that itself contains many artful fudges and reflects many political compromises on issues that long ago lost their salience? Here are three reasons why we should be much more fastidious than we are.

First, the American political order is very old and very successful, and tolerable Constitutional adherence has already seen us through many epochs and crises. Have you heard the joke about the student who went to the reference librarian and asked for a copy of the French Constitution? “I’m sorry,” the librarian replied, “we don’t keep periodicals here.” Ours is the oldest written Constitution, and our nation, for all of its problems and shortcomings, has been an unprecedented success. For most of our 216 years, other countries have been places of continuous political upheaval and oppression, punctuated by periods of mass violence. Progress and stability are cardinal virtues where political systems are concerned; when you find yourself in possession of them, hold fast to your institutional inheritance.

Second, the principle of limited government is not a bit less urgent today than it was two centuries ago. It has now been 25 years since Ronald Reagan arrived in Washington announcing his intention to “check and reverse the growth of government.” That quarter century has been governed mainly by Republican Presidents, and increasingly by Republican legislatures, and even the one Democratic President declared that “the era of big government is over.” Yet the federal government’s annual domestic spending doubled during the period, from about $900 billion to about $1.8 trillion (in 2000 dollars). Today the federal government’s fiscal imbalance—the excess of projected future expenditures over projected future revenues—is close to $70 trillion. About $20 trillion of this enormous sum was tacked on just in 2003, with the addition of a massive, unfunded Medicare entitlement to prescription drug benefits. Increasing taxes to pay for our standing policy commitments would move U.S. rates to the levels prevailing in today’s socialist European nations.

In recent years, with the Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress, domestic expenditures (even excluding post–9/11 “homeland security” spending) have been growing faster than during the previous two decades of divided government, and the incidence of pork-barrel projects has reached an all-time high. The 2001-2005 period marks the transformation of the Republican Party from its traditional role as a win-or-lose guardian of limited government to that of a majority governing party just as comfortable with big government as the Democrats, only with different spending priorities.

Perhaps the best illustration of this transformation is the Department of Education. Following the Department’s creation under President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Republican leaders routinely called for its abolition, and the 1996 GOP platform did so explicitly on Constitutional grounds. Then, in 2000, the party dropped its platform pledge. And by 2004 the Bush administration was campaigning for re-election boasting of a “huge, historic, gargantuan increase in federal education spending.” The claim was correct: the Department’s annual budget grew 83 percent after inflation during President Bush’s first term, by far the greatest rate of increase since its creation.

And the expenditure and debt figures offered here seriously understate the extent of recent government growth. That is because they ignore the burst of regulations whose costs are borne largely by the private sector. As with domestic spending, off-budget regulatory growth has been particularly pronounced in the recent years of unified Republican government. Examples include the institution of national “corporate governance” and accounting regulation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, national school testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s issuance of a profusion of new rules throughout the financial services sector, the Department of Justice’s use of aggressive new legal theories to prosecute “economic crimes” and establish new forms of federal crime, and the national regulatory regimes established by state attorney general litigation described earlier. In 2005, political leaders of both parties proposed national price controls for gasoline, heating oil and gas, and pharmaceuticals. The bipartisan deregulation movement of the late 1970s and ’80s has been supplanted by new, equally bipartisan enthusiasm for regulation.

These developments have not come without resistance, but the nature and futility of that resistance is highly instructive. With the decline in Constitutional adherence, political leaders (mainly Republican) have been searching for several decades now for substitute, sub-Constitutional devices for curbing government growth. During President Reagan’s first term, I participated in lively White House debates where some promoted a “starve the beast” strategy of continuous tax reductions (reasoning that swelling government deficits would produce pressure for spending restraint), while others favored a “serve the check” strategy of matching taxes to current spending (on the theory that charging voters the full costs of government, rather than bucking some of them to our grandchildren through borrowing, would create a constituency for spending control). Reagan came down unhesitatingly for tax reductions, with auspicious political and economic results that made tax cutting the new mantra among all practicing Republicans.

In the Congress, Senator Phil Gramm devoted much of his public career to devising budget rules that would oblige his colleagues to make difficult spending choices they would rather avoid. More recently, House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s theme of an “opportunity society” and President George W. Bush’s theme of an “ownership society” have aimed to popularize the personal benefits of shifting insurance and subsidy programs from government administration to private institutions and markets. But these and other expedients have had little durable effect. It seems that, when accepted external constraints on government action are abandoned, there is no solution within the political system to the problem of government’s turning “every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself.”

'Decline of the Republican Party' Part 2

2006-05-18T15:27:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't say I agree with every word of Lew's, but it's the gist of what he says that's important. The Republicans have never actually in history been a "small government" party. When I think about it, why would any administration seek small government considering all their agenda is is to reduce individual freedoms for their party's gain? I'd also make the argument that the Democrats are actually better at balancing a budget in the last 25 years because of the taxes (which are not good but unavoidable since citizens no longer are in control of their own money). I can say though that any gov't (Reagan and Bush Jr.) that spends as excessively, if not more, than the Dems, and continues deep tax cuts, spells greater national debt.

Anyhow, this cat & mouse game talk of these two party's is pointless in my book. I am not voting for the Repukes on the basis that Hillary Clinton "will ruin America" with her concealed socialism agenda. That tag will just continue with the next DNP candidate, and the next, and the next...I can't wait another 50 years for "the promise" of a better tomorrow in all its lustered facade.

I recommend you read the entire link. Interesting stuff.

Lew Rockwell
1. The party began as a coalition of Americans who wanted to expand federal power. Its heritage was with the Hamiltonian Federalist Party, which more or less transformed into the big-government Whig Party. When the Whig Party became defunct, the Republican Party emerged to include centralist big-government Americans and other opponents of the Democrats without a party.

The party also absorbed many folks from the Free Soil Party, which was, itself, a loose coalition of Americans who opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. Some were genuinely anti-slavery, and even a few abolitionists, with nowhere else to go, joined the Free Soil movement. But the Free Soilers, by and large, only opposed slavery because they found it unfair that free white laborers should have to compete with black slaves. They wanted to keep blacks out of the West. Free Soilers and Republicans who were authentic abolitionists were rare and without influence, much like the libertarians in the GOP today.

2. There were surely some early Republicans with good intentions, with a greater interest in liberty and equality for blacks than in pillaging through the federal government. However, the party as an institution was always about expanding the central state and nationalizing sectors of the economy – and such goals, however well-intentioned or falsely associated with the more noble principles of abolition and equality under the law, undoubtedly had little to do with America’s founding principles of Constitutional and decentralized, limited government.

In the late 19th century the president most sensitive to liberty was the Democrat Grover Cleveland, who, in the 1880s and 1890s, defended the gold standard, reduced tariffs, relied heavily on his veto pen, and rooted out corruption. When the Republicans took over with William McKinley in 1897, they continued their trademark trend of expanding government and using subsidies and tariffs to benefit Big Business. In 1898, they took America on its first step toward global empire – the Spanish-American War.

3. Enter Ronald Reagan – a man that personifies the deceptive façades and realities of the modern Republican Party. Reagan began acquiring his undeserved good reputation as a champion of liberty in the 1950s, when General Electric hired him to tour the country and talk about free enterprise – a topic that neither Reagan, a devout New Dealer and former president of the Screen Actors Guild Union, nor General Electric, a top player in the military-industrial complex, had a true, heart-felt passion for or interest in.

As governor of California, Reagan signed into law the largest tax increase in state history as well as the most egregious modern gun control law in state history – the 1967 Mulford Act, authored by a Republican, which prohibited the carrying of firearms on one’s person or in a vehicle or on a public street. The California budget grew at a much faster rate under Reagan than under either Democrat Pat Brown before him or Democrat Jerry Brown after him.

As president, Reagan increased government spending through the roof. Federal spending totaled $590 billion in fiscal year 1980; by 1988, Reagan’s last year, it rose to $1.14 trillion. Under Reagan, the national debt climbed from less than $800 billion to more than $2 trillion. Although some people like to attribute this to "defense spending," that’s largely a myth, and irrelevant to the question of sheer government size, anyway.

Reagan cut taxes on high-income brackets, but he also dramatically raised payroll taxes, causing tax revenues to go up. At any rate, his spending nearly doubled the size of government. Since all spending increases are tax increases, whether in the form of direct taxation or inflation, Reagan must be seen as a tax raiser. Unfortunately, this doesn’t register with all conservatives, who learned from Reagan the neo-Keynsian mantra that "deficits don’t matter."

Reagan also pumped up the War on Drugs. The number of drug offenders in federal prison rose from about six thousand in 1980 to more than twenty-two thousand in 1988; the percentage of inmates in federal prison for drug offenses increased from 25% to 44% during Reagan’s two terms.

In spite of his lip service to free trade, Reagan was an ardent protectionist who strengthened the fraudulent Export-Import Bank and imposed horrendous tariffs and quotas on everything from electronics to clothespins to motorcycles to sugar. Despite his getting credit for deregulation, he only continued what Carter had begun. Despite his promises to eliminate the Departments of Energy and Education as well as the Selective Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, President Reagan abolished none of these, or any other major bureaucracies, and actually inflated them, for the most part.

Reagan was also a shameless interventionist, bombing Libya, militarily assisting both Iran and its enemy Iraq, illegally supporting thugs in Latin America, and invading Grenada. Despite the Cold War mythology, the USSR fell under the weight of central planning, not because of Reagan. It is absurd to credit Reagan’s central planning as a paragon of economic liberty that defeated Communism by example, or to think his militarism kept Americans safe.

4. 2000 rolled around with George W. Bush, who had been quite Reaganesque in his big-government polices as governor of Texas, carrying the banner of the Republicans and proposing a centrist agenda of "compassionate conservatism." On the one hand, he advocated a "humbler" foreign policy, lower taxes, and a modest Social Security "privatization" program. On the other hand, he proposed expanding Medicare and greater national involvement in education.

The two parties squared off in one of the closest presidential races in history. Sick of Clinton and fearful of Gore, many libertarians supported Bush, falling for the often-asserted nonsense that the Republicans, once they controlled both the White House and Congress, would finally deliver on promises of smaller government and greater individual liberty.

Now that Bush has taken power, and the Republicans dominate Congress and the Supreme Court, we see once again what fans of smaller government can expect from the GOP: the very opposite of liberty, big government in all directions. Endless war, Medicare expansions, protectionism, enormous agricultural welfare, the Patriot Act, campaign finance censorship, education nationalization, the end of due process, and half-a-trillion dollars a year in deficit spending.

Most small-government conservatives and libertarians feel betrayed by Bush, and yet are thinking of lending him their helping hands on election day. They hope the Republican Party will return to its supposed roots in small government and liberty. They hope that Bush will improve in his second term.

'Decline of the Republican Party' Part 1

2006-05-18T11:18:00.000-05:00

This is 1-3 of 6 steps on the demise of the Republican Party. I cut it off at 3 because the remainder starts promoting Libertarianism, and I wanted to focus on what your vote goes to.

"If government growth were a videotape, liberals would be pushing the 'Fast Forward' button, moderates the 'Forward' button, Republican Politicians would talk about hitting the 'Pause' button, while they left the tape on 'Forward'. Libertarians are the only people trying to push the 'Rewind' button."

With the Bush administrations spendaholicisms, the changes might be that the RNP have fully committed themselves to 'Forward' or 'Fast Forward' themselves. The days of "fiscal responsibility" (what a joke) are truly over, if it ever existed in the first place. (According to 20/20's independent/libertarian John Stossel, gov't has done nothing but grow each and every presidential term over the last 75 years.)

http://www.lp.org/lpn/9705-Jorgensen.html
Why Republican politicians keep selling out freedom

By Jo Jorgensen

Republican Politicians give us the political equivalent of 1-900 Phone Sex. They tell us that we're special. They ask us what we really want -- and tell us that they want it, too. Then they start breathing heavy and getting excited by what we want. They tell us their fantasy for us. They tease us and tempt us. They arouse our passions. They tell us how much they want it and how good it's going to be.

When we hang up from the 1-900 Republican Tax Cut Fantasy Line, we realize three things: They cost us a lot of money; the real thing is a lot more satisfying; and they're never going to come across.

There are many fine Republican voters. Many fine Barry Goldwater Republicans. Many fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party.

But where are the Republican Politicians who aggressively pursue de-regulation, sizable tax cuts, and radical reductions of government?

Why do Republican Politicians keep selling out freedom?

Individual freedom and government power are polar opposites. More government means less freedom. More taxes, more regulations, more laws, more policies, more programs, more government employees, and more government spending. . .all grow at the expense of our freedom.

More individual freedom means less government.

Voting for more government is voting for less freedom.

Republican Politicians regularly vote for more government.

Republican Politicians regularly voted for the Nixon Federal Budgets, the Ford Budgets, the Reagan Budgets, and the Bush Budgets. Each budget was larger than the previous year's federal budget.

Ronald Reagan's lowest deficit was higher than Jimmy Carter's highest deficit.

In eight years as President, Ronald Reagan never even proposed a balanced budget.

In eight years as President, Ronald Reagan proposed higher federal spending every single year.

And Republican Politicians voted with Reagan. They voted for higher federal spending and higher federal debt.

Then, for four more years, Republican Politicians supported George Bush's spending hikes, increases to the federal debt. . .and even the Bush TAX HIKES.

Republican Politicians voted for more government power. More government power means less individual freedom.

Why do Republican Politicians sell out freedom?

FIRST, We do not sell out our most precious values.

Since Republican Politicians are selling out freedom for government power, we know that freedom is not sacred to them.

In "Dead Right," David Frum says:

"Conservatives are not libertarians. They do not believe that maximum personal liberty is a good in and of itself, without regard to its consequences. 'The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please,' wrote Edmund Burke, the hero of American conservatives, 'We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.'"

Libertarians always put freedom first.

Republican Politicians sometimes put "National Security" first. Sometimes they put "Public Order" or "the Public Interest" first. Sometimes they put "Character" or "Virtue" first. Sometimes they put "Western Civilization" or "Religion" or "American Values" first.

Sometimes Republican Politicians put "Special Interests" in their districts first.

We cannot add to government programs, we cannot add to government priorities without subtracting from freedom. When Republican Politicians give government responsibility for other values, they take away freedom.

SECOND, Politics is priorities. Although many Republican Politicians evangelically preach the doctrine of cutting taxes, cutting back government and cutting out government waste -- they go Brain Dead when you ask them exactly what they'll cut out of the Federal Budget.

In 1992, Policy Review, a publication of the Heritage Foundation, asked 20 moderate-to-conservative Republican Senators what they would do to cut $25 Billion from the federal budget. That was less than 2 percent of the budget.

Only 5 of the 20 Republican Politicians responded. And only Hank Brown of Colorado could find $25 Billion to cut from the federal government.

Republican Politicians now have more important priorities than cutting back Big Government.

Conservative author George Will wrote, "A conservative doctrine of the welfare state is required if conservatives are even to be included in the contemporary political conversation."

Years ago, Irving Kristol said, "The welfare state is with us, for better or worse, and. . .conservatives should try to make it better rather than worse."

Newt Gingrich personally added a revealing sentence to the 1992 Republican platform. Gingrich said that Republicans must try to, and I quote, "transform the bureaucratic welfare state into a government that is customer-friendly, cost-effective and improving constantly."

Think about a 'customer-friendly, cost-effective and improving constantly' Internal Revenue Service. How about the Drug Enforcement Administration? Or a lean and mean Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?

Republican Politicians think we are badly taxed, not over-taxed. Badly regulated, not over-regulated. Badly governed, not over-governed.

If you back them into a corner, Republican Politicians will say they want to cut waste from the budget. I've been through the federal budget. There is no line item labeled 'waste'.

I have a message for the Republican Politicians: Stop trying to be all things to all people. Stand up and tell the truth. Exactly what are you going to cut out of the budget?

They have higher priorities than freedom. They are trying to make government efficient and effective. They are streamlining statism.

In the words of Fred Barnes, these Republican Politicians are "Big Government Conservatives." They no longer seek to dramatically reduce the size and power of government. They seek to use that power to re-shape America in the image of their conservative values.

THIRD, the Republican Political Strategy is to slow down or stop government growth, not turn it around.

Decades ago, William F. Buckley, Jr. said, "A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop'."

George Bush said, "Read my lips: no new taxes."

Nancy Reagan said, "Just say 'No'."

Slow-growth statism or even stand-still statism is a loser strategy. One expands and empowers the government. The other preserves and protects government.

"Holding the line" on taxes and government is a prescription for failure. On D-Day, we didn't want to "hold the line" at the English Channel. We wanted to move the line forward. To free Europe of Nazi domination.

"Holding the line" on government means protecting and respecting all the new taxes, new spending, new bureaucracies, new laws and new policies that have been added to government since the Constitution was first ratified.

"Holding the line" means letting the Big Government advocates keep what they have stolen from us.

We must begin by dramatically cutting the size and scope and power of government. We must move the line forward to freedom.

We've had enough negativism. We don't want politicians who only say 'No'.

Libertarians just say 'Yes' to huge budget cuts, 'Yes' to dramatic tax cuts, 'Yes' to fiscal restraint. We say 'Yes' to significantly reducing government power. We say 'Yes' to restoring individual freedom and responsibility.

If government growth were a videotape, liberals would be pushing the 'Fast Forward' button, moderates the 'Forward' button, Republican Politicians would talk about hitting the 'Pause' button, while they left the tape on 'Forward'. Libertarians are the only people trying to push the 'Rewind' button.

Ending:

This is the speech that Jo Jorgensen, the LP's 1996 vice presidential candidate, first gave in February 1995, at the height of the so-called Republican Revolution. She encourages members to copy and distribute the speech, with proper attribution.

Libertarian Heritage

2006-05-18T08:34:00.000-05:00

Great introduction on the history of the Libertarian Party here. I'd say it's a motivational piece, and why the two-party system will do nothing but grow and continue to reduce individual freedoms along the way. My recommendation is to get out while you still can because our current system, with the same empty promises year after year, decade after decade, is largely a cess pool that replaces liberty and freedom with regulations and gov't intervention.

Please, if you are seriously tired of our dinosaurific political system, place a vote away from the two-party system. I don't even care if it's for the Libertarian Party. Vote for the politician who will get like 17 votes. If enough Americans voted away from the norm, we could make a significant impact on the current system in place. Of course not all politicians are incompetent, but it would make the whole rethink what they are doing, which judging by my local state gov't is nothing. Thanks

Dennis Prager and homosexuality

2006-05-17T13:22:00.001-05:00

Andrew Sullivan's take on Dennis Prager's 2003 article on homosexuality is far more intelligent than mine. So please take a moment to read his because mine is really only an alternative.

Townhall
Society has the right and obligation to prefer heterosexuality to homosexuality. It is better for children -- they need a mother and a father. And it is better for the individual -- a woman makes a man a better person; and a man does the same for a woman. Advocating heterosexuality as society's ideal no more implies bigotry or "homophobia" than advocating marriage implies bigotry against singles or "single-phobia."

Under libertarian ideology, societies do not have rights. Individuals do.

Societies that regard homosexual sex as the equivalent of heterosexual sex have far more homosexual sex. Ancient Greece esteemed man-boy sex, and consequently had far more of it than modern society.

Societies that allow gay marriage are not claiming any sort of "equivalence". They would be allowing couples the freedom to decide for themselves. Societies will never from what I can see ever view homosexuality as "equal". The issue at hand for heterosexual society is whether or not they can tolerate homosexuality. BTW, Dennis never backed up his assertion with statistical facts.

Religion is an active supporter of suppressing gay marriage through gov't. Gov't is a direct and forceful approach that reduces individual freedoms in the name of fixing those homosexuals who might not be able to be fixed, if you catch my drift. Somewhere along the way religion failed in educating people on their word, and now Dennis Prager and religion believe they have a right and/or duty to utilize gov't to pass laws outlawing homosexual conduct. I'm getting a bit off topic, but the religious right and Republican Party are for the very thing they claim the Democrats are for: more gov't. No matter what way you cut it, it is not true liberty. And as I have either experienced or heard, this approach cannot be mentioned to the religious without denial for the most part. "I'm freeing people from the need to sin" (a true quote) may be a noble gesture under religious ideology, but it is a roundabout way of imposing regulations on the secularist. Outside of violent acts, I'm not convinced it is any of my business to tell homosexuals what they can and cannot do. Sooner or later society will tire of hearing about gay marriage and just come to accept it or tolerate it. (The homosexual movements incorrect move is in trying to push "equality" onto a largely heterosexual society. Liberty is the point in question.)

It is unfair to a child who can be adopted by a married couple to be adopted by a same-sex couple. Children have a basic human right to a mother and a father.

Possibly, probably...but should that decision come down to the child and couple, or Dennis Prager and society? You decide.

The Boy Scouts have the right and the duty not to place gay men in situations where they are alone with boys -- just as the Girl Scouts should not place heterosexual men in positions where they are alone with girls. Yes, most gay men control themselves around boys; but the disproportionate sexual abuse of boys by homosexual priests suggests that some proportion of gays will not be able to control this desire.

It isn't the Boy Scouts' "duty" to anything. In an ideal world without (or less) gov't intervention, they'd have the right to make whatever damn rules they want. Just as homosexuals would have a right to make their own club. If you as a parent have a questionable issue with a scout master, screen them. If you cannot do so, pull your child out, because you have the individual freedom and right to follow your beliefs.

None of these propositions in any way contradicts the opening statement: The homosexual is equal in God's eyes to the heterosexual.

Unfortunately this comes across as more of an insult and is not very convincing. Dennis doesn't even truly believe God loves homosexuals. Otherwise maybe he wouldn't be trying so hard to remove homosexuality from society, or atleast utilizing gov't for religions own failures.

Added later:

If God loves homosexuals too, wouldn't Prager want to just accept them for who they are, or at minimum tolerate them? In essence Prager's entire religious mission in life is under the scope of being a contradiction: a person motivated by the loving message of God while acting in a manner, even acknowledging on occasion such as above, which promotes [legislated] force and hatred.

I do not have all the answers here. All I know is the DNP nor the RNP nor religion nor Dennis Prager believe in true freedom. They all prefer more gov't involvement, not less, and for different reasons.

A funny piece on the Homosexual Agenda...

Pam's House Blends
I know that many of you have heard Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others speak of the "Homosexual Agenda," but no one has ever seen a copy of it. I have finally obtained a copy directly from the Head Homosexual. So we're all up to speed, it follows below:

The Homosexual Agenda:

6:00 am Gym

8:00 am Breakfast

9:00 am Hair appointment

10:00 am Shopping

12:00 PM Brunch

2:00 PM (Here's the really important part)

1) Assume complete control of the US Federal, State and local Governments as well as all other national governments
2) Recruit all straight youngsters to our debauched lifestyle
3) Destroy all healthy heterosexual marriages
4) Replace all school counselors in grades K-12 with agents of Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels
5) Establish planetary chain of "homo breeding gulags" where over -medicated imprisoned straight women are turned into artificially impregnated baby factories to produce prepubescent love slaves for our devotedly pederastic gay leadership
6) Bulldoze all houses of worship
7) Secure total control of the INTERNET and all mass media for the exclusive use of child pornographers.

2:30 PM Get Forty Winks of Beauty Rest to prevent facial wrinkles from stress of world conquest

4:00 PM Cocktails

6:00 PM Light Dinner

8:00 PM Theater

11:00 PM Bed

National debt

2006-05-17T08:58:00.000-05:00

http://www.federalbudget.com/
"Each year since 1969, Congress has spent more money than its income. The Treasury Department has to borrow money to meet Congress's appropriations. The total borrowed is more than $8,000,000,000,000 and growing. Even when government officials claim to have a surplus, they still spend more than they get in. We pay interest on that huge debt."

"In Fiscal Year 2005, the U. S. Government spent $352 Billion of your money on interest payments* to the holders of the National Debt. Compare that to NASA at $15 Billion, Education at $61 Billion, and Department of Transportation at $56 Billion. For the current FY06, the running total is $213 billion spent on interest payments!"

"The interest expense paid on the National Debt is the third largest expense in the federal budget. Only Defense and income redistribution (The Departments of Health and Human Services, HUD, and Agriculture (food stamps)) are higher. Do you have "Compassion" for the lower income earners? (You may note that social spending is the largest item in our federal budget. (Anyone complaining about the run-up of the deficit, should note that almost all of it is going to social spending)."

Nat'l Debt 1950-2005: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdhisto4.htm

Tax can be good:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-416es.html

http://www.greatreality.com/DebtFAQ.htm
Who do we owe this money to?

We owe it to the people and entities that have bought or received U. S. debt instruments, such as Savings Bonds, Treasury Notes or Treasury Bills.
That includes:

* Average folks like us
* Large and small corporations
* Banks
* Pension funds
* Insurance companies
* Various U. S. government entities such as the Social Security Trust Fund
* State and local government entities
* Foreign investors
* Foreign corporations
* Foreign governments
* For more information:
The Public Debt Online (U. S. Treasury, Department of the Public Debt)
Treasury Bulletin (U. S. Treasury, Financial Management Service)

Why do we owe it?

We have this debt because our government (that's you & me) spends more than it collects in taxes. The solutions are:

* Spend less. That's a lot harder than it sounds; most government spending that could be cut is relatively minor. The things that cannot be cut (or would be extremely difficult to cut) are huge.
* Tax more. If we can't (or won't) cut spending, it's our only choice.

Why can't we just cancel the debt?

We can't cancel it (default) because real people would be hurt—lots of real people, very badly hurt.

* Some people say, "It's not really a debt, because we owe it to ourselves." It would be closer to the truth to say we owe it to each other—and it isn't owed equally to all Americans.
* Defaulting on the debt would do great damage to many pension funds, life insurance companies, banks, state, county and municipal governments, and foreign governments.
* When you—or your parents—or your grandparents are ready to retire, and cash in life insurance policies or pension funds, the money must be there. In fact that happens every day. But we don't have the money to pay what's owed, so we borrow more, further adding to the debt.
* A huge amount of the debt is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund. When, in a few years, that fund goes from positive to negative cash flow, the money has to be available. If it hasn't been repaid to the fund at that time, it will have to be raised through additional borrowing, or additional taxation.
* Internationally, the consequences of a default are hard to imagine. World trade as we know it is dependent on stable financial structures and international trust. The U.S. economy is an immense part of the world's financial structure. The world may not trust us politically, but if they couldn't trust us financially, the impact on the world economy, and on our own, would surely be catastrophic.

Why should I have to pay for incompetent government spending, generations ago?

We have to pay the government's debt, because the government is us.

* Most of the past spending was done for us—it really was.
* We benefited from the low taxation that left money in our pockets instead of paying for our government's expenses as we went along.
* Most of that debt was not incurred generations ago. The biggest chunks were incurred as a result of tax cuts in the early 1980s, and in the early 2000s.
* The consequences of default are unthinkable. Our economy, and the world economy would be severely damaged, perhaps destroyed.

What kind of debt is this, exactly?

The instruments of the debt are things like Savings Bonds, Treasury Notes or Treasury Bills.

* When your grandmother bought you a U. S. Savings Bond, she was actually loaning money to the U. S. Government. If you never cashed in that bond, the Government still owes you the money, with interest.
* When your bank needs to invest the money you've deposited in a savings account, they're likely to invest some of it in government securities—the safest investment available to them. In effect, they're loaning your money to the government, which will pay it back with interest, part of which your bank will pay to you when you withdraw the funds.
* When your city government has collected a bunch of sales tax during December, and won't be spending it until they fill potholes in your street in April, they may buy short-term government bonds with the money. Yep—they loan it to the government, and get it repaid with interest when they need it. If they don't buy the bonds directly, they may put the money in a bank. Guess what the bank does with the funds? Uh huh.

Why does the government keep borrowing, when they know they can't pay it back?

We have to borrow, every month.

* Every day, people and institutions cash in government securities. They must be paid. Since we haven't had a surplus since 2001, we have no money to pay them. The only way we can pay them is to borrow more, by selling more securities.
* We're spending more than ever before, for military incursions, for increasingly expensive health care, and for interest on the debt. Our taxes aren't high enough to finance that spending, so we must borrow.

Why is our government pouring money into other countries as aid?

There are several variations on this question, targeting spending on such things as foreign aid, welfare, or congressional salaries. Everyone has a government expenditure he or she loves to hate. The problem is that most of those expenditures are so small that even their elimination would have no significant impact on the deficit.

* Put on a personal level, reducing such expenditures as foreign aid or congressional salaries would save each working American a few cents or a few dollars per year.
* There are really only three expenditures big enough that they have great impact on the budget; they are health care, defense spending and interest on the debt.
* Interest is a single item; the others are categories. Interest on the debt is the biggest single item in the federal budget. If we had no debt, and therefore no interest, our deficits would be easily manageable in the short term. In the late nineties, interest on the debt actually accounted for the entire deficit. The only way we can reduce interest is to reduce the debt.
* Our expenditures for health care are immense, including active and retired military and their dependents, active and retired civilian government employees and their dependents, and Medicare. None of the plans that have been presented on the main political stage in recent years even pretend to reduce expenditures for health care—they only nibble around the edges of the problem, if that.
* It's pretty hard to talk about defense reductions in the midst of a major military incursion.

How can we get out of this mess?

The solutions are:

* Spend less. That's a lot harder than it sounds; most government spending that could be cut is relatively minor. The things that cannot be cut (or would be extremely difficult to cut) are huge.
* Tax more. If we can't—or won't—cut spending, it's our only choice.
* Realistically, we have to do both. In fiscal 2004, the deficit equaled 17.5% of spending. I can't conceive that growth in the economy is going to amount to 17.5% anytime soon. I can't imagine that we can reduce actual spending by 17.5%. So taxation has to be a part of this.
* If we are really ready to sacrifice significant spending programs, perhaps we could cut overall spending by as much as 8% or 9%. But think what that means! The average increase in spending over the past 5 years has been almost 5%. If inflation in the next few years averages 3%, and we stop the increases in spending, and we reduce spending by a real 8%, that totals 16%!! What do you think? Is that 8% reduction realistic? Nah, 1% or 2% is more realistic.
* So we have to increase taxes—we have no choice. Won't that hurt our economy? Probably.

Won't more tax cuts stimulate the economy enough to reduce the deficit?

The short answer is: NO!

* The only tax cut I know of that ever actually increased revenues was in the early 1960s. The situation then was vastly different from now. The highest tax rate in the fifties was actually over 90%. The early sixties tax cuts restructured taxation in fundamental ways, and did indeed stimulate the economy. We were also in the full bloom of post-war recovery. And the tax cut wasn't as big as it sounded, either. Very little income had ever actually been taxed at those enormous rates because most large incomes were well sheltered from extreme taxation.
* The tax cuts of the 1980s and the early 2000s created huge increases in the deficits and the debt.
* There is no room for significant tax cuts now, because even short term deficit increases could be deadly.
* There's another problem with this question as it's asked: it talks of reducing the deficit. Deficit reduction isn't what we need; that only slows the disaster. We must eliminate the deficit. Only when we replace the deficit with surplus, can we begin to reduce the debt. Only debt reduction will reduce the tremendous cost of interest we are paying.

What happens if nothing changes?

This answer isn't as simple as it might seem.

* In the very short term, very little happens if we don't address the problem. That is in fact part of the problem, because it helps us remain complacent. In the short term, your taxes won't go up, because a lot of politicians are dead set against tax increases. But larger and larger portions of your tax money will go to pay interest on the debt, rather than current expenses.
* Interest rates will continue to rise. The government is a huge borrower, getting bigger every month. The amount we borrow impacts interest rates significantly.
* Rising interest rates will increase deficits.
* Increased deficits necessarily increase the debt.
* Increased debt means higher interest payments.
* Higher interest payments create higher deficits.
* As this cycle continues, interest rates must rise further.
* The problem worsens exponentially.
* At some point there is a critical mass effect; the government's appetite for borrowing will exceed the world economy's supply. Then interest rates will soar, and the entire house of cards may well collapse—that's financial collapse—worldwide.
* If that collapse can somehow be avoided, at the very least, we will all have to pay sharply higher taxes than we have ever paid, and for a very long time, to restore worldwide financial stability.

Why do interest rates fluctuate so wildy?

OK, this is a bit complicated.

If you look every month at the interest paid on the debt, you'll see that it is much higher in some months than in others, even though the size of the debt changed very little. The explanation is in the way the Treasury Department sells and redeems securities. They sell securities several times every month. Some securities mature in as little as four weeks, others in as long as thirty years Every month, some securities mature and are redeemed. Some of those will have been sold in the previous month, but some were sold thirty years ago.

Study Table PDO-1, Maturity Schedules of Interest bearing Securities, which is linked from the Treasury Bulletin website. It lists all the market offerings of securities that are still outstanding, and their issue dates and interest rates —all sorted by the dates they mature. Notice that the interest rates on individual lots of securities can be as low as 1.5%, and as high as 14%. Refer also to the Monthly Interest Rate Certification. It shows the interest rates Treasury has recently paid, and expects to pay in the immediate future, on new security offerings. In September '05, these rates ranged from 3.5% to 4.625%.

Each month, some old securities mature, and new securities are sold. If we redeem a lot of old 13% and 14% securities, we replace them with 3.5% and 4.5% securities, and our interest payments go down. On the other hand, if we redeem a bunch of 1.5% and 2% securities, replacing those at the current rates, our interest payments rise.

As obscure as this seems, it is actually extremely important. The chief reason that our deficit fell so dramatically in the late '90s is that we replaced a lot of old, very high-interest debt from the '70s and early '80s, with much lower interest debt. Even though the amount of debt was still increasing, the overall interest payments were reduced. We're still retiring some of that high-interest debt, but there's a lot less of it than there once was. When it's gone, our interest payments will begin to rise, reflecting the rising interest we are paying on new debt. When that happens, the deficit will rise even faster than it has been rising.

Reaganific! Go for growth and skip the debt: http://web2.airmail.net/scsr/Pres_01.htm

Economics in Nat'l Parks

2006-01-09T12:21:00.000-06:00

I used the comment in this topic to make a point: Always deriving environmental protections to economic indicators spells trouble for National Parks. To answer the question: We can do something to try and designate more outerlying areas that allow more motorized recreational activities. I've even gone to the extreme of hypothetically suggesting we reduce the amount of "National" Forest and Park lands for the sake of higher standards within those designated Parks. Why again? Because they were meant to be appreciated for what they are, not what the technologically inclined need. I'd like a little frickin' peace and quiet. Cell phones, snowmobiles, touring planes? When is enough, people? And I'm trying to be serious. This is geared towards the metropolitan resident or technologically conscious individual who isn't necessarily familiar with natural heritages: At what point is it appropriate to stop the need to conquer nature in our behaviors?

Garden Web

In a proposed comprehensive re-write of administrative rules that govern the national parks, powered off-road vehicles would be given increased access to the national park system. Jet skis, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and 4-wheel atv's will be able to enter and use areas that have been historically off-limits. The new rules are proposed by Paul Hoffman, appointed Deputy Secretary of the Interior in 2002. There is opposition to the proposal coming from a group of retired Park Service employees.

My personal sense is that people visit the National Parks to get away from noisy activity, and will be disappointed if they encounter dirt bikes on woodland paths. I find the proposed rules incomprehensible. The concept lacks common sense. Is anyone in charge over there?

See "Island Park News," online, dated September 9, 2005.

Comments
What can we do? The consumer market for Chinese dirt bikes, ATVs, jet skis, etc. must continue to expand or we'll go into a recession.

Paul Hoffman changing National Parks

2006-01-09T12:03:00.000-06:00

Newwest

National Park Service is Being Skinned from the Inside-Out
By Todd Wilkinson, 12-01-05

Editors' Note: The re-writing of boilerplate protective language for the National Park Service by political appointee and Assistant U.S. Interior Department Secretary Paul Hoffman should cause broader public analysis of the climate of fear that exists inside America's most beloved government agency. This is the first of several dispatches from Todd Wilkinson who was written about the National Park Service for the last 20 years. Click here for the entire series

You have to wonder, at least I do, what goes through the minds of high-level civil servants and business executives when they know they’ve been busted.

What are they thinking when they appear in a public forum, getting grilled by members of Congress (or in a court of law), and then deliver lame answers they know full and well are less than honest.?

Such as:
“I have no recollection of what you are talking about.”
“It was an innocent exercise in creative brainstorming.”
“You gotta trust me on this. Really, everything is legit.”
“I was only following orders.”

When Steve Martin, the former Grand Teton National Park Superintendent who now serves as the National Park Service’s Deputy Director in Washington, D.C, appeared recently before a panel of U.S. senators, he struggled mightily to pass the red-face test. But I sympathize with the compromised position he was placed in.

Coming under intense bi-partisan scrutiny lead by U.S. Sens. Craig Thomas, a Wyoming Republican, and Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, he claimed that some of the controversial changes written in to the National Park Service’s operating manual may have been “inadvertent.”

As in, they happened by accident. As in, they just slipped by or were typos. As in, even though the changes would radically alter the primary mission of America’s most beloved government agency, which is charged with protecting our crown jewel wildlands, they were added by some strange occurrence of alchemy.

The bald-faced truth is that nothing about the overhaul of the Park Service’s operating manual was done without radical deliberateness executed by former Cody Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Paul Hoffman.

Mr. Hoffman knows better than to take the public for a bunch of gullible fools.

As an assistant Secretary of the Interior, a politically appointed position, he got his job NOT because he holds any professional expertise in stewarding public lands but simply because he was a former staffer decades ago for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Hoffman couldn’t wait to tinker with the Park Service’s boilerplate language that puts preservation ahead of resource exploitation. None of this is speculation.

His dislike of former Yellowstone Superintendent Mike Finley was well known. His attempts to undermine Finley by threatening him with political retaliation for advancing conservation in Yellowstone are well documented. His frustration that Yellowstone and other parks are guarded by a shield of armor, forged by the words laden in the 1916 Park Service Organic Act, is not a secret.

In addition to Hoffman’s anti-environmental agenda now being exposed (though Park Service workers are afraid to discuss it for fear he will punish them), another problem, lesser known to the public, is the intense pressure coming to bear upon career civil servants like Steve Martin.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a climate of fear as much as an atmosphere of intense intimidation,” says one active Park Service veteran who notes that Hoffman has made it clear “heads will roll” if career rangers challenge his agenda. One has to wonder—am I the only one who does—that when the President of the United States makes a speech justifying our military intervention in Iraq, telling bereaved family members who have lost soldiers that they gave their lives fighting for freedom and Democracy—that before we export liberty perhaps we have to get it right here first.

If fear, harassment and intimidation are not tolerated in the private sector, why does it appear to exist and be condoned in the U.S. government? The great thing about living in a Democracy is that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. Mr. Hoffman deserves to have the benefit of the doubt accorded him because, after all, our soldiers are in Iraq fighting to protect American-style freedom which I assume includes our system of justice. But I have spoken with many civil servants who work for a variety of federal agencies (Park Service, Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service) and they are afraid of what will happen if they don't follow the script being handed to them.

Denis Galvin, who spent three decades defending national parks as a career civil servant under Republican and Democrat administrations, says there’s always politics at work with political appointees but Hoffman’s meddling is unprecedented.

Good people, including Galvin who dedicated their careers to the Park Service and received the highest honors of civil service, are leaving in droves because Hoffman and others in the Bush Administration are forcing them to compromise their principles of what is right and wrong, he says.

“The most obvious quantifiable phenomenon is the number of people who have left the agency,” Galvin says. “They got fed up. That’s a huge loss. The intimidation is more intense today than it ever was before.”

Recently, Park Service Director Fran Mainella circulated a memo to the rank and file demanding that all agency employees, civil service grade GS-13 and higher, devote themselves to carrying out the political agenda of the Bush Administration.

Galvin says it is tantamount to “a loyalty oath”. The performance of employees is judged on how well they implement policy changes being handed down down to them by political appointees like Mr. Hoffman.

In the past, it was customary for an assistant Interior Secretary to approve the appointments of Park Service officials who were part of the “senior executive service” meaning those above GS-15. Hoffman, however, wants to be able to confirm all Park Service posts GS-13 and above which applies to hundreds of employees.

Galvin says it is an insidious attempt to transform the professional culture of the agency by weeding out employees who are committed to the Park Service’s conservation mission that currently takes precedent over the desires of the industrial recreation industry. For example, a park visitor’s desire to experience peace or quietly watch wildlife in a national park is given higher priority over another’s wishes to drive noisy, intrusive, and polluting snowmobiles, jet skis, and ATVs in national parks.

Hoffman would like to tip the balance in the other direction by rewriting the regs. It’s more than profoundly ironic that Mr. Hoffman and others were at the lead of the pack in accusing the Clinton Administration of crafting rules in dark rooms in Washington without soliciting public and professional review. At least with the Clinton Adminstration, agency employees who devoted their professional lives to being public stewards of our landscapes, wildlife, and resources such as clean air and water didn’t flee their agencies because they were afraid to talk.

Denis Galvin knows the difference between then and now. Things were never like this under the administration of the current President’s father, George Herbert Walker Bush.

Deny and I have had several conversations over the years in the halls at the Interior Building in Washington and on the phone. He’s a civil servant I greatly admire. He’s the kind of guy who should’ve been a Park Service Director or been plucked to hold the position that was given to Hoffman.

Updating the Park Service operating manual isn't an uncommon event. Galvin says he was involved in helping to assist with two previous updates that were carried out transparently with agencywide participation and openness. Hoffman’s rewrite, however, was done surreptitiously, he says, noting that he’s studied the changes line by line and there’s nothing “inadvertent” about them.

The unfortunate thing is that people like Steve Martin are being set up as fall guys. That’s not fair and frankly it’s a very Soviet approach to how government, freedom and Democracy are supposed to be run. Martin’s taking the heat for decisions he didn’t make.

Comments
By Robert Hoskins, 12-01-05
We haven't seen such a direct attack on the public trust and public lands since the days before the administration of Theodore Roosevelt a century ago. It's people like Todd Wilkinson who are telling it as it is. Pay attention, folks!

By John Baden, 12-01-05
Good piece by Todd!

In the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, November 16, 2005

National Parks’ Future Lies in Trusts
by John A. Baden, Ph.D.

Creating the national parks was one of America’s best ideas, but inevitable political pressures jeopardize their mission. The parks’ strongest supporters warn of dangers from political management.

Consider a recent New York Times editorial. After noting Americans’ overwhelming support for national parks, the Times opines: “Yet in the past two months we have seen two proposed revisions [of management policy]. The first, written by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary in the Interior Department, was a genuinely scandalous rewriting that would have destroyed the national park system.”

The second draft was only somewhat better. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, “the proposed policies re-define the over-arching duty of the park service, eliminating references to longstanding legal mandates that clearly emphasize preservation of resources.... The replacement statement sets a dangerous precedent that could put enjoyment of resources, including motorized abuse, ahead of conservation.” They warn it would foster increased air and noise pollution due to more jet skis and snowmobiles, as well as expanded livestock grazing: both “high-impact” uses.

As I’ve argued for decades, these treasures deserve better. In today’s rancorous cultural environment, is it naïve folly to trust our parks’ fate to politicians? Political pressures move the Progressive Era’s ideal of management by neutral, scientific experts ever further from reality.

Yellowstone Park was established in 1872. Due to failure to protect its resources, management was turned over to the U.S. Army in 1886, where it remained for some 30 years. The military left the Park in 1918, two years after the National Park Service was established.

When avarice first threatened the Park’s values, the cavalry came to the rescue. At that time, naked private interests tried to stake claims on public resources. Now, their descendents utilize the political process to achieve similar goals. Is this an aberration or the predictable consequences of our institutional arrangements? I believe it’s the latter and that reform is long overdue. Here’s why.

First, the parks will always offer values that attract potential exploiters, folks with little interest in promoting the public interest. Poaching, a huge problem in the 1870s, remains troublesome. And poaching is trivial compared to the ecological damage caused by ORVs. There are multiple opportunities for exploitation, and their value is growing; there have always been huge political incentives to pander.

Second, an increasing proportion of visitors will be from foreign countries, especially China and India. As admissions provide more of the park system’s funding, there will be strong incentives to cater to visitors’ demands. And few of them will draw a sharp philosophical distinction between Disneyland and Yellowstone. The implications are chilling to those who care about the mission of our national parks.

Third, the federal government is facing huge and growing deficits. The park system now carries a maintenance backlog (estimated at roughly $5 billion, twice the entire annual Park Service budget), and it will be ever more difficult to allocate funds to relieve it. Concurrently, there will be seductive opportunities to use the national parks as cash cows. It’s easy to imagine how a budgetary tradeoff between controlling noxious invasive species or vaccinating children might play out.

A public treasure does not inherently require governmental management. Public, nongovernmental trusts present sensible alternatives to federal management. Both Mount Vernon and Monticello are clearly “public” and both are run by trusts rather than government agencies.

Endowment boards, like those running museums, hospitals, and private schools, would operate under a legal charter to steward individual parks. After receiving a one-time Congressional endowment, each park’s individual trust would be “on its own.” The board, established by local environmental groups, business leaders, and citizens, would promote ecologically sensitive economic activities as part of their trustee responsibility.

Creative mechanisms such as a “Friends of Old Faithful” program could entice membership, dues, and democratic feedback from park lovers everywhere. Park trusts would free our parks from their precarious dependency on national politics, encourage long-term planning, and reintroduce accountability in management.

Perhaps Hoffman’s recent assault is an aberration we can ignore. More likely, the dangers to our parks will become more obvious as the threat of commercialization looms larger. Should this occur, those who care most deeply will look for alternatives to political management. Think trusts.

John A. Baden, Ph.D., is Chairman of FREE and Gallatin Writers.

By Brodie Farquhar, 12-01-05
Like Todd, I've been covering Hoffman and the growing commercialization pressures on public lands.
Right after the Hoffman rewrite controversy started, Paul Hoffman spoke before a very appreciative audience: the American Recreation Coaltion--a wide spectrum of businesses that sell outdoor experiences, goods and services, ranging from resorts, ski areas and marinas, to user groups and manufacturers of boats, ATVs, luxury coaches, etc.

Dozens of reporters (myself included) were hounding Interior for an interview with Hoffman. As far as I can tell, no reporter spoke to Hoffman until the Park Service rolled out their toned down version that Todd addressed above.
Scott Silver of Wild Wilderness is probably THE best source about commercialization of public lands, which Scott traces back to a Cato Institute paper about 20 years ago. Scott's admirable detective work traces the idea of privatizing public lands from Cato to PERC to Reason Magazine and thence to some of Bush's top appointees at Interior: Norton and Watson.

The game plan seems to borrow a page from Grover Norquist (starve the federal government until you can drown it in a bathtub): Cut budgets and professional staff (and thereby morale), until recreation fees, volunteers and concessionaires look like a reasonable alternative to severe options like shutting down campgrounds, parks, etc.

In the midst of staggering federal deficits, the option of fully-funding our land and wildlife agencies is quickly dismissed. Extreme ideas like selling public lands to draw down the deficit start sounding rational.
Commercialization of public lands is not the revolution that James Watt advocated (and why he got slapped down). This is an evolutionary, stealth approach that may take decades to unfold.

By Bill Wade, Chair, Coalition of NPS Retirees, 12-02-05
Todd's article is right on target. The real issue here is that the NPS now has a Director who is more concerned about satisfying her political leaders than she is about the values and purposes of the National Park System. With regard to the proposed revisions to the NPS Management Policies, she is now intent on doing everything possible to convince the public (and the employees of the NPS) that this version was "written with the participation of nearly [Note that this qualifier has recently crept into the statement, earlier she was stating that it was "over"] 100 professional National Park Service employees" - a claim the NPS now admits it can't back up. Whether this is intentional misrepresentation or just sloppy public information we don't know. We do know that Mainella has been conspicuously absent from the recent "listening" meetings conducted with various interest groups - leaving that task to Steve Martin and other career employees. Presumably this is to bolster the claim that the management policies being reviewed are the "career professional version," even though they, and we, know it isn't.

By Texas reader, 12-02-05
Thanks Todd for calling what it is: "anti-evironment".

By hal herring, 12-05-05
Todd,
I just got back from Yellowstone, so am late in seeing your excellent and timely stories here. I am fascinated that mainstream journalism is not publishing stories like this everyday-- that perhaps the saturation of extremist views like Hoffman's --and the overwhelming majority of appointed decision-makers on public lands and energy issues that have no credentials other than an extremist anti-enviro or anti-conservation platform (or simply a profit for campaign contributors at any cost) is not the fodder of every publication in America right now. That's a convoluted sentence, yes.
I am not nostalgic for the simpler days of James Watt, but I don't think we ever grasped (then) that Watt was merely the Reagan-enabled visionary, whose visions would come to fruit when business and population pressures (now) created the environment to make them reality under an administration who draws all of its energy from extremist rhetoric-- from religious to right wing business....I would posit that Ms. Norton is no more or less extreme in her views than was her mentor Mr. Watt, but she inhabits a time when such views can more easily be realized. I am, though, nostalgic for the time when I wrote the story, pasted below, for Field and Stream..I don't remember the date of pub. but it was sometime on 2000. A figure like Richard Pombo has been slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born, for a long long time.

Thanks for your work and attention, Todd. Americans, especially westerners, are confronting
what Joseph Conrad,in Heart of Darkness, called "the flabby devils" -- destructive forces that are hard to pin down or fight against, because they involve so many aspects of human nature common to us all--
where need becomes greed, ie. the need for natural gas which has to come out of the Jonah Field, to heat our homes, versus our desire to preserve ecosystems and wildlife, or the need to "recreate " in the National Parks versus the role of the Parks to serve as redoubts of the last wild systems on earth.... so many nuances, so many places for those of us who do not value the natural world or creation at all, to put on the mask of the reasonable advocate for "balance"
ie. unleashing the forces of private business and capitalism on the public lands and parks. Whew.
Hal Herring
Post: #1 Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 9:42 pm
From Field and Stream magazine http://fieldandstream.com/sportsmansissues/index.html No Place Whatsoever by Hal Herring Some say the concept of national public lands is obsolete. Where would that leave sportsman? There are about 630 million acres of federal public land in the United States, managed by the military, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the National Park Service. About 222 million of those acres are in Alaska, but that still leaves a big chunk in the lower 48 states. But the public lands have never been under as much scrutiny, and the source of so much conflict, as they are today. Environmentalists fight the loggers and the miners and the drillers. Hikers hate ATV riders; snowmobilers leave backcountry skiers cussing in clouds of purple exhaust. Ranchers who lease grazing rights run afoul of hunters who say that the forage eaten by cattle could support vast herds of game. Communities surrounded by public lands that produce almost no revenue watch their children leave home for work in the cities. Western politicians yell "federal government!" from their soapboxes, and crowds roar with anger. As when toys are simply taken away from children who won't stop fighting over them, there are plans afoot to solve the conflict over the public lands by simply getting rid of them. Ironically, some of the same representatives that sportsmen have counted on to preserve the right to bear arms and to guarantee our hunting privileges have said that the whole concept of public lands should be questioned. What would this mean for sportsmen? Without public land, hunting and a lot of fishing would be reserved for those who can pay the highest price. Wildlife would be privatized along with the land, owned by whichever landowner could afford to fence it in. There would be vast private wildland preserves bordering virtual moonscapes where all the timber and minerals have been taken away by some international consortium. It could mean a busy economy of land trades and housing developments and pay-to-play recreation. It would mean that there would be no place whatsoever for us to go. The Push to Privatize Selling off the public lands to the highest bidder is not a new idea. Bernard DeVoto, the renowned historian and editor of the journals of Lewis and Clark, spent years writing about the efforts of the timber and grazing interests to transfer federal lands to state ownership -- and then into private hands, since no single state has the budget to manage or maintain them. In his anthology The Easy Chair, published in 1955, DeVoto wrote, "The ultimate objective is to liquidate all public ownership of grazing and forest land in the United Statesäthe plan is to get rid of public lands altogether, turning them over to the states, which can be coerced as the federal government cannot be, and eventually to private ownership." GET INVOLVED Find out about local land-ownership issues in your state by contacting your state wildlife management agency, or get involved by joining the following conservation organizations: The Izaak Walton League of America was founded in 1922 as a national organization of hunters, anglers, and other conservation-minded outdoor enthusiasts who work through volunteer, community-based action and education programs to ensure the sustainable use of America's natural resources. 800-453-5463; http://www.iwla.org The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance comprises individual sportsmen and women and 500 national, regional, and local conservation groups concerned about the future of wildlife and outdoor activities on the 192 million acres of national forests and grasslands. 877-770-8722; http://www.trca.org The National Wildlife Federation, established in 1936, is the largest member-supported wildlife conservation organization, offering a wide array of education and advocacy programs. The NWF works to ensure that any transfer of government lands to private owners is made for the sole benefit of the wildlife and ecosystem. 800-611-1599; http://www.nwf.org The landgrabbers, as DeVoto called them, have never gone away. In 1995, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) cosponsored a bill introduced by Sen. Craig Thomas (R-WY) that would transfer all lands managed by the BLM to the states. Under the plan, the state of Montana would gain control of 8 million acres, including most of the Missouri Breaks, the Rocky Mountain Front, and the C.M. Russell Wildlife Refuge -- some of the most valuable public hunting grounds in the nation. Idaho would gain control of 11 million acres; Wyoming, 17 million. What would happen to all that land? "If the state gets the lands, they will go on the sales block," Montana state Sen. Al Bishop (R-Yellowstone) told a reporter for Time magazine in October 1995. The Montana Wilderness Association campaigned against the bill, running radio and newspaper ads to let the public know what was being proposed. Louise Bruce, then the president of the association, said, "The legislation doesn't stand a chance in the light of day. If the public knows that their land is being threatened, they will be outraged. It's our job to keep letting them know. We will keep pounding on this issue until our lands are safe." The bill failed, in large part because of the rallying of public opinion against it. But Burns, now serving his third term in the Senate, has never changed his stance. "The federal government now controls nearly one-third of the land in the United States," Burns said in an address to Congress last summer. "That is wrong, and was never intended to be as envisioned by the Founders of our nation nor the framers of our Constitution." Montana state Rep. Bob Davies (R-Gallatin) is now pushing for privatization. Davies believes that the federal government does not have the power to own any land inside the states, except for military uses. He has introduced a bill to bring suit against the U.S. government to force the return of 27 million acres of federal land to Montana. "We're not advocating that there be no public lands," says Davies. "We just say they have to turn the lands over to the states. We can manage them much better." Trouble in Nevada The sale of public lands is already established in Nevada, where the federal government owns 87 percent of the land. The antifederal fire has always burned hottest there. In the 1980s, county commissioners in Elko County, Nevada, sparked what came to be called the sagebrush rebellion, by laying claim to all federal lands within the county's boundaries. That term is now commonly used for any opposition to federal regulations and control of public lands in the West, but northern Nevada remains the epicenter of discontent. In July 1994, Elko County Commissioner Dick Carver made national news when he rammed his bulldozer through a gate that closed a road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The same forest was the site of the so-called Shovel Brigade protest last July 4, when citizens gathered to reopen a Forest Service road that had collapsed into the tiny Jarbidge River. The road had been closed by Forest Service officials to protect the southernmost population of bull trout known to exist in the nation. Most of the citizens who participated in those acts were not clamoring for the public lands to be sold to private interests -- they were demanding that local communities be given a stronger voice in managing them. "Most everybody knows that Nevada will never have the budget to manage all that land -- one big range or forest fire would bankrupt us," acknowledges Elsie Dupree of the Nevada Wildlife Federation. "If the state got those lands, there would be a huge sale, and people from all over the world would be here, buying it up for dude ranches or whatever." In Las Vegas, the fastest-growing city in the country, public lands are being sold outright as the city expands into the surrounding desert. "We have a law passed in 1998 that says we can sell any land needed for urban development," explains Bob Stewart, a real estate specialist with the BLM. "Every sale goes through a series of reviews, and sometimes, with rural lands, the value of the land does not pay for the review process. New legislation addresses that problem, allowing us to pay for the reviews with money from more valuable lands and get ready for the next sale." The Ultimate (Final) Solution? In the opinion of some economists, it is time to abandon the concept of public lands altogether and let the market decide where people can hunt, fish, ride their ATVs, or seek the solitude of the forests. "We could auction off all the public lands over the next 20 to 40 years," says Terry Anderson, the executive director of the Political Economy Research Center (PERC), in Bozeman, Montana. If PERC sounds familiar, it's because Gale Norton, Anderson's old friend and former research fellow at the center, is now the secretary of the Department of the Interior, which manages the 630 million acres of public land. "Right now we have federal land managers who have no clear incentives to produce anything," Anderson says. "They feed at the public trough, and they face enormous pressures from special-interest groups -- it doesn't matter if those groups are loggers, or environmentalists, or rock climbers, whoever. There are no clear goals. We do not have the multiple use for which the lands are mandated." In 1999, Anderson coauthored a study titled "How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands," outlining the benefits of divestiture, the term he uses to describe the selling off of what he calls the federal estate. Anderson views the current deadlock over the management of the public lands as yet another demonstration of the failure of socialism. He is a free-market economist first, but he is also a lifelong hunter who believes that converting the public lands to private ownership could lead to better management for wildlife and hunting, as well as for natural resources like timber, oil, minerals, or simply clean water. "Incentives matter," he insists. "If I pay a landowner top dollar to hunt elk on his property, that landowner is going make sure that he's got the best elk habitat possible. If the market demands clean water, he's not going to clear-cut his mountainsides and jeopardize that resource. You can't make those kinds of decisions on the public lands, because there are so many conflicting demands placed on them." What would our country look like if the public lands were sold off to the private sector? "We would see true multiple use of the lands, for one thing," Anderson asserts. "I think you'd see more development, both for natural resources like oil, and for housing and condos. But it would be done with greater sensibility, to keep from degrading the resource. If you own it, you don't want to diminish its value. "People always ask me whether I think places like Yellowstone would be protected, and I think they would be. But in a free market, there's no guarantee. Someone might decide to tap the geysers for energy or build condos at Yellowstone Lake. There are risks involved, but there are also risks in letting the government continue to mismanage these lands." Anderson's office is decorated with photos and trophies of hunts, both in the American West and in Africa, where he recently took a Cape buffalo with a bow. All his hunting, on both continents, is done on private land. "I'm not so satisfied with these pristine corners of the world that are run by government. They are crowded, the parking lots at the trailheads are packed with cars, the hunting is bad. I'd much rather pay a fee to access private, controlled spaces, with better hunting, and better habitat." Some see this way of thinking as a progression to European-style hunting."What Mr. Anderson is talking about with divestiture is turning our national heritage back to the king," rebuts Thomas Power, chairman of the economics department at the University of Montana and a well-known writer and lecturer on natural-resource issues around the West. "If you sell off the commons -- in our case, the public lands -- you are not going to have very much hunting, certainly not for anyone but the wealthy." The Dilemma of the Commons The politics of the last eight years have been confusing for many American sportsmen. Repeated attacks on the Second Amendment drove a lot of outdoorsmen deep into the Republican ranks. Somehow, that movement was perceived by many Republican politicians as a sign that hunters and fishermen were no longer the premier conservationists that they had always been, and that a mandate had been given to them to push issues like the privatization of federal lands, or at least return to a more industrial concept of those lands, even though both of those issues run counter to the interests of most sportsmen. This may also be a sign that as sportsmen's numbers drop, politicians simply pay less attention to their concerns. "The antigovernment, antienvironmental folks have greatly exaggerated the coincidence of interests between themselves and outdoor recreationists," Power says. Under the Bush administration, sportsmen are going to have to shout a little louder to be heard over the voices of industry looking to make up for lost time on the public lands, and they are going to have to convince their elected representatives that just because they are staunch defenders of gun and property rights, they will not tolerate assaults on other freedoms: to wander the public lands, to hunt and fish, and to enjoy the American outdoors and its wildlife. Will the public lands be around for our grandchildren? Only those who now own them can decide.

By Greg, 12-05-05
I'm with Hal: great piece Todd -- and where's the media outrage???

By R Kimpel, 12-07-05
I'm sorry to see this happen to an agency I worked for (NPS,31 yrs)... I hoped that my grandchildren and their offspring can enjoy the parks and public lands as much as we have. Seems Bush/Cheney can be decisive when it comes to fighting for our precious oil supply but are poor judges of who to appoint to the various cabinet posts.

By Herman Smith, 12-12-05
Thanks for the great article, looking forward to the rest of the series.

Remember that Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett was the ED of the Reason Foundation. Check out their papers and articles--Privitization is their agenda. Paul Hoffman is doing exactly what he is authorized to do by Scarlett, Norton, and the White House.

Back after the first election, John Turner was up for a post in DOI. He would have been a great choice for Deputy Secretary or Secretary. Being friends with Cheney you would think he would have been a shoe in, but even those ties could not stop the far right property rights movement--the Chuck Cushman's of the world- of tarring him as an extreme environmentalist. What nonsense. So these are the folks running things now. The media is doing a roten job of exposing their true agenda.

By Ralph Cramer, 12-30-05
Ah, The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Get over it people, change is due, and always painful for those stuck in the past.

It would be nice to see some objective, reasoned analysis on the proposed changes in USPS management, rather than the hysterical polemic that is epidemic in the articles and comments found here.

By Todd Wilkinson, 12-30-05
Dear "Ralph Cramer",
Please tell us more about yourself. Here's an invitation, too, to lay out an objective, reasoned analysis. Please hold forth.

God and Nature

2006-01-03T10:25:00.000-06:00

Noble Savage Hypothesis Refuted

Environmentalists frequently indict the Biblical dominion mandate--that human beings should "subdue" the earth (Gen. 1:28)-for causing the heedless modern exploitation of the natural environment. Other passages are blamed for the advent of genocidal warfare. These indictments follow from the mistaken perception that the Bible encourages us to see the earth, and other people, as objects to exploit and conquer. Some suggest that humans once worshipped a benevolent Mother Earth, and saw nature as a bounteous provider to be loved and respected. But once "patriarchal" religions like Christianity became widespread, Earth and her bounty were supposedly seen as something we were free to exploit as we saw fit.

These arguments against what is taken to be the Bible's teaching about the use of nature run smack into some plain facts. In recent times no one has done a better job of ruining the earth than those who do not, even nominally, obey the Scriptures. After the fall of Communism in the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations, it was discovered that environmental pollution and degradation under Communism generally far surpassed that in capitalist countries (Edwards 1993). The atheism at the foundation of Communism proved to be no protector of the earth's resources. Rather it permitted their ruthless misuse.

More fundamentally, however, environmentalist accusations against the Bible can be answered by actually examining the lives of "primitive" peoples. Since such peoples have usually not been influenced by the Bible, one might suppose that they live in a "natural" state of peaceful coexistence and harmony with their environment.

A recent study (Alvard 1993) casts doubt on this view. After citing a number of earlier studies which demonstrate that aboriginal peoples do not function with an attitude towards the conservation of nature, Alvard examined the Piro Indians of Amazonian Peru. He found that their hunting is guided, not by any pre-Christian reverence for nature, but only by their immediate practical needs.

Furthermore, Alvard warns against confusing one's relative inability to harm the environment (because of primitive technology) with a deliberate choice to avoid harming it:

That these groups live within the limits of their environment is evidence that some sort of apparent equilibrium has been achieved. However, as discussed above, such a circumstance does not rate the hunters the label of conservationists. . . . [T]he appearance of balance between traditional native groups and their environment has more to do with low population densities, lack of markets, and limited technology than it does with any natural harmonious relationship with nature. (p. 384).

We should ask whether the notion of "reverence for Mother Earth" is a genuine phenomenon of anthropology, a true "natural state"--or a hopeful myth that can become a form of idolatry.

A popular corollary to the myth of "Mother Nature" is the claim that, before European contact, warfare among Native American tribes was ritualistic, and relatively free of bloodshed. The warfare became savage, according to this view, only after European Christians armed the Native Americans.

Recent archeological evidence, however (see Bamforth 1994 and Krech 1994) shows that genocidal warfare between native tribes, including such brutal practices as scalping and mutilation, predated the arrival of Europeans. As Bamforth notes:

The Missouri River data, particularly the evidence from Crow Creek, would seem to refute Blick's (1988) assertion that tribal warfare is a post-contact phenomenon on the Plains and, by extension, elsewhere: tribal peoples were clearly capable of engaging in extreme violence without access to European weapons and without the process of cultural change such access brings with it. (p. 108)

Unfortunately, there are Christians numbered among those who carelessly exploit the environment. But one need look no further than the sinful human heart to find reasons for genocidal warfare or the misuse of nature's resources. Since Adam our "state of nature" has been one of sin and its consequences. We ought to be surprised, therefore, not by finding destruction and hatred in nature--but by finding theories that claim humans in their natural state lived in harmony with the earth and each other. Such theories imagine a time that never was.

Web of Creation

Biblical Views of Nature:
Foundations for an Environmental Ethic
by Marcia Bunge

A common perception is that the Bible shows little concern for our relationship to nature and has perhaps even encourages its exploitation. This perception is often supported by reference to the biblical commands to "subdue" the earth and "have dominion" over all living things (Genesis 1:28), which are interpreted to mean that human beings can treat the non-human world in whatever way they please. This interpretation of Genesis 1:28 and the perception that the Bible has little else to say about our relation to the earth have led many people to reject the Bible as a resource for developing a sound environmental ethic.

The view that the Bible has fostered the exploitation of nature is expressed in an influential and often-cited article by Lynn White entitled, "The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis."1 Although several scholars have exposed weaknesses of White's position,2 elements of his argument still prevail in discussions about the Bible and the environment. Alluding to verses in Genesis 1-2, White claims they emphasize that God planned creation "explicitly for [human] benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve [human] purposes."3 For White, Christianity accepted this biblical view of creation, fostering the attitude that human beings transcend nature and may exploit it. He argues that this attitude has shaped the development of modern Western science and technology, which have posed threats to our environment. He concludes that Christianity therefore "bears a huge burden of guilt" for our ecological crisis.

Such interpretations of the Bible and our growing environmental problems have prompted scholars to analyze carefully the biblical view of nature. In contrast to common assumptions, they are discovering that the Bible contains insights that can help form the basis of a sound environmental ethic. Although interpretations of particular passages may vary, they indicate that the Bible affirms the goodness and intrinsic value of all living things; it points out commonalities between human beings and other living things; and it contains the mandate that we treat the natural world with care and respect. Such insights provide powerful grounds for environmental responsibility. This brief essay introduces some of the important biblical passages that have implications for environmental ethics.

Genesis 1-11 contains several fundamental ideas about the natural world and our place in it.4 For example, the opening verses of Genesis clearly state that God is the source of all life and that creation is good. Furthermore, the formation of Adam from "the dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:7) highlights the connection between human beings and the earth because adam, the word for "human being," is a play on adamah, the word for "ground" or "earth." The story of Noah and the flood illustrates God's concern for all creatures because it states that God made the covenant not just with human beings but with "every living thing" and that God desires all creatures to "be fruitful and multiply." The ideas that God is the source of all life, that creation is good, that human beings are connected to the earth, and that God is concerned for all creatures strongly suggest that we are to value and respect the earth and its many forms of life.

Several recent interpretations have shown that Genesis 1:28 and 2:15 call human beings to preserve and protect the earth and its creatures. James Limburg, for example, interprets Genesis 1:28 in this way on the basis of a careful study of the Hebrew word, radah, which is usually translated as "to have dominion" or "to rule."5 By examining the use of this word in other passages in the Old Testament, he finds it is most often used in political contexts to speak about the rule of a king or a nation. Limburg discovers that when the characteristics of the rule are discussed, the biblical texts emphasize a humane and compassionate rule that displays responsibility for others and that results in peace and prosperity. He therefore concludes that Genesis 1:28 does not advocate tyrannical exploitation of nature but rather responsible care of it.

Many of the Psalms, such as Psalm 8, 104, and 148, reaffirm the goodness of creation and provide additional insights into our relation to nature. For example, according to Terence Fretheim,6 many of the Psalms indicate that God is active in nature and intimately involved in every aspect of the natural order. Furthermore, the Psalms suggest that all creatures, not merely human beings, witness to the glory of God. The language of Psalm 148 even seems to suggest that "it is only as all creatures of God join together in the chorus of praise that the elements of the natural order or human beings witness to God as they ought."7 This insight implicitly calls human beings "to relate to the natural order in such a way that nature's praise might show forth with greater clarity."8

Insights relevant to an understanding of our relation to the natural world are also found in Wisdom literature.9 It emphasizes the importance of nature as a medium of God's revelation, for it presupposes that God's wisdom can be revealed through observation of the natural world. At the same time it points out the tremendous diversity and ultimate mystery of God's creation. Other wisdom texts, such as God's first speech from the whirlwind (Job 38 39), indicate that God takes great delight in non-human creatures and did not create them for human benefit alone. Such passages all imply that human beings need to respect nature, to recognize the intrinsic value of its many creatures, to learn from it, and to preserve its incredible diversity.

Passages from letters of the New Testament, such as Romans 8:18-25,Colossians 1:15-23, 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, and Ephesians 1:10, indicate that Christ's redemptive power affects the whole creation. The passage from Romans reveals that Paul had a universal vision of the "liberation of all the creatures of nature, along with human beings" through Christ's death.10 Colossians 1:15-23 also claims that all things will be reconciled through Christ. Even if readers disagree about the nature of this universal reconciliation, the passages express God's concern for the whole creation and suggest that we, in turn, should respect God's handiwork.

All of the biblical passages that command us to love our neighbor also have strong implications for environmental responsibility, even if one does not extend the notion of "neighbor" to include non-human creatures, as some theologians have done. As we better understand the dimensions of our environmental problems, it is clear that they are often connected to social injustices. We cannot adequately show love to our neighbors, therefore, without taking into account the environmental problems that affect them.

The passages outlined above and many others11 provide very strong grounds for respecting nature and its creatures and for living in ways that preserve and protect them. Although certainly not all elements of the Bible depict our relation to the natural world in this way,12 the Bible clearly contains ample grounds for environmental responsibility. It provides valuable insights for building the foundations of an environmental ethic that, if lived out, can help solve today's environmental problems.

Marcia Bunge, PhD., is Assistant Professor of Religion at Luther College in Decorah, lowa. She has authored educational materials included in the booklet Our Children at Risk: Hope for the Future Together, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991. Dr. Bunge has taught courses on sustainable agriculture, environmental ethics, and theological perspectives on the environment, and has participated in various conferences on the subject of theology and ecology.

Trumpeter

Beyond "the Historical Roots":
Genesis and Environmental Ethics

Jay Vest
Arizona State University

SCHOLARS OF WILDERNESS AND ENVIRONmental ethics have declared the Judeo-Christian attitude towards wild nature to be "anthropocentric- anthropomorphic" in disposition. Foremost among these critics, historian Lynn White, Jr. asserts that "the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the creation is precisely that it was planned in every detail for man's use and edification and for no other purpose".1 A doctrine of anthropocentric dominion is thus implied for the Judeo-Christian tradition by these claims.

Christian theologian, Paul Santmire argues, however, that the Judeo-Christian approach to nature is "not ecologically bankrupt" but that it holds an "ambiguous ecological promise." Santmire outlines two motifs that sponsor the Judeo-Christian understandings of nature. These motifs constitute a theology founded upon both spiritual and ecological ways of thinking, according to Santmire. Defining the spiritual motif, Santmire explains, that it "is predicated on a vision of the human spirit rising above nature in order to ascend to a supra mundane communion with God and thenceforth to obey the will of that God in the midst of the ambiguities of mundane history." For Santmire, the ecological motif "is predicated on a vision of the human spirit's rootedness in the world of nature and on the desire of self-consciously embodied selves to celebrate God's presence in, with, and under the whole biophysical order, as the context in which the life of obedience to God is to be pursued." Furthermore, Santmire says, "Ecological is understood here as pertaining to a system of interrelationships between God, humanity, and nature".2

Santmire further identifies metaphors which constitute the two motifs. For Santmire, the spiritual motif is fostered upon a metaphor of ascent which is connected with transcendence of the mundane and awe of "the infinite reaches of sky above" - the abode of God. Santmire's ecological motif is supported by two metaphors: first, the metaphor of fecundity constitutes a vision of the diversity of living forms and material shapes; and lastly, the metaphor of migration to a good land promises a land "where the lamb will lie down with the lion and the streams will flow with honey and all swords will be beaten into plowshares" thus "ending, once and for all, the strife and darkness of this wilderness world".3

In this reflection upon the Judeo-Christian ecological ethos, it alarms me that Santmire identifies primarily agricultural values - fecundity and "good land" - as reflective of an ecological motif. Moreover, such agricultural themes are anthropocentrically utilitarian, and therefore reflective of human instrumental valuation rather than the acknowledgement of intrinsic value. If we are to properly assess the Judeo-Christian understandings of wild nature then we must use wilderness (the place of absolute intrinsic values) as the ecological benchmark. While to an urbanite, the pastoral landscape may appear ecologically more promising than the city, it nevertheless is another anthropocentric approach to wild nature. In consideration of this concern, we must modify Santmire's approach and thereby judge the Judeo-Christian nature ethos against an ecological motif of wilderness, where the metaphor is the "will-of-the-land" and its absolute inherent value. Although the standard of assessment may be shifted, there is no reason, pending further investigation, to deny Santmire's claim to ecological ambiguity for the Judeo-Christian tradition.4

Critics and defenders alike of the Judeo-Christian nature ethos, commonly cite the account of creation in Genesis as supporting their claims. This account of creation offers a positive accounting of Judeo-Christianity with God's reflection upon the value of creation. Moreover, of creation, "God saw that it was good..." (Gen. 1:10) and "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). Furthermore, there is an aesthetic translation of this account which concludes that not only is all creation good but it is concurrently beautiful, very beautiful in God's "eyes".5 Thus in accepting God as Creator and this reflective evaluation of creation, we must recognize that God in fact acknowledges value in all creation.

For my own need of simplistic understanding, why would a God create other non-human animal life and not consider it of value? Granted the human race is atop the food chain, but for a religion to see no intrinsic value in nature other than as a utility isn't exactly respecting what a Creator created in the environment. If all other animal and plant life is only a utility, why give it life, feeling, the need to grow and in the case of the animal kingdom, a brain?

Indeed, God appears to value creation in giving it the blessing to "Be fruitful and multiply..." (Gen. 1:22). This blessing is attributed to creation prior to its association with humanity. It, therefore, appears universally and beneficially intended for all of creation. Hence, all creation is blessed by the Creator.

A serious question, however, remains; is this claim of aesthetic good and/or beauty intrinsically of God? or of creation - i.e., wild nature? Creation is called upon to praise and glorify God (cf. Psalm 148:3-10; Isaiah 55:12; and Micah 6:1-2). Implicit then is a continuing concern by God for creation and creation's ability to respond to God. If creation is able to respond to God and God in turn values it, then one must conclude that all of creation has intrinsic value.

The ambiguity of the Judeo-Christian account of creation emerges with God's especial interest in humanity. Moreover, humankind is graced in his or her creation by God's image or likeness and by her or his dominion over all creation. Hence, this doctrine authorizes an apparent anthropomorphic and anthropocentric ethos. Nevertheless, if humanity is of God's likeness, and given God's delight in the intrinsic value of creation, then we must conclude that humanity is obliged to delight in the intrinsic value of creation or wild nature as does God. To do otherwise would result in a fall from the grace of God. Consequently, the creation of humanity in God's image or likeness, and humanity's dominion over creation constitute a moral covenant of God and humanity with creation; lest God not be God, and humanity fall from God's grace.

On this interpretation, the consequent blessing unto humanity to "replendish" and "subdue" the Earth (Gen. 1:28) remains a matter of serious concern. What is to be made of it in terms of a Judeo-Christian environmental ethos? Dominion may imply humanity's biological subsistence in this case. Moreover, like the other creations, humanity is organic and dependent upon organic matter for biological maintenance. Hence, the dominion power given humanity by God is done so to authorize humanity's biological continuation as it requires subduing life sustaining prey. Many questions remain: Is this biological dominion absolute? Is humanity free of an ecological egalitarianism in his or her biological maintenance? Moreover, does humanity enjoy a unique dominion over and above the rest of creation? In order to address these questions, we must examine the second account of creation.

The second account of creation - Genesis II - may be entirely consistent with the first - Genesis I - given that Genesis II primarily recounts creation as recorded in Genesis I. As an explanation, Genesis II is primarily concerned with humanity's ecological disposition within creation. We are told that the creation did not have a "man to till" it (Gen. 2:5); hence, God created Adam of the dust of the earth and placed him in Eden. But Eden may be something other than a consummate garden, since Adam was put there "to dress it and keep it" (Gen. 2:15). Humanity's purpose in Eden may metaphorically be to protect and preserve it.6

The "tree of life" implies biological maintenance via the tenets previously outlined. Conversely, the "tree of knowledge" implies knowledge of agriculture - e.g. in Genesis III we see that "the tree was good for food" and that woman took the first step (Gen. 3:60). Humanity is expelled from Eden to practice agriculture for violating the tree of knowledge - "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" (Gen. 3:19). The concomitant concern for humanity's nakedness (Gen. 3:19), furthermore, implies the birth of civilization. This account is then the transition from hunter-gather economy to agriculturally centered civilization. Because of a concurrent human population irruption, it is an irreversible commitment to civilization. Hence, "the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken" (Gen. 3:23).7

God's garden - Eden - must therefore not be construed as a consummate agricultural endeavor, but rather, it more properly reflects wilderness and ecological egalitarianism among the species of God's creation therein. Conversely, humanity's invention of agriculturally centered civilization, as sponsored by the "tree of knowledge," constitutes humanity's fall from the grace of God. The birth of agriculturally derived civilization is therefore a sin against the covenant between God, humanity, and creation or wild nature.

Inheriting humanity's fall from the grace of God, Cain and Abel represent humanity's agricultural dominion. Abel - the "keeper of sheep" - reflects nomadic pastorialists and their practice of domestication. Cain as "tiller of the ground" reflects sedentary agricultural practice in concomitant "city-state" civilization. In that God respects Abel's offering and rejects Cain's offering, we must conclude that there is a complex moral standard by which God judges the practice of agriculture. And with Cain's transgression, then humanity is further cursed for her or his violation of creation.

The account of Noah and the deluge-flood completes the logic of humanity's covenant with God and nature. In this account the ground is "not to be cursed for man's sake again nor is every living thing to be smitten again" (Gen. 8:21). Furthermore, the ecological cycles are to continue into perpetuity - "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease" (Gen. 8:22).

While humanity is to continue his or her biological maintenance, the covenant of the Rainbow constitutes an environmental ethic between God, humanity, and all living things (creation) - "the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh" (Gen. 9:15). With God's instructions to preserve all living things from the deluge-flood, it is clear that species extinction is a grievous sin against God. Most emphatically, the covenant of the Rainbow is made by God between humanity, and "every living creature" with "perpetual generations" in mind (Gen. 9:12). In consequence, species extinction is a violation of the Rainbow covenant. This covenant, therefore, implies a most significant regard for ecological egalitarianism and humanity's moral responsibility unto wild nature. God's Rainbow covenant furthermore reflects the intrinsic value which God acknowledges in nature.

The area I believe needing clarifying is it cannot be a sin on humanity for every single extinction of species. It may well be for some of the rather unjustified excesses in commercial development, etc., which take habitats away from species, but given nature itself has killed many alone with the ice age or crashing meteor catastrophies, it cannot.

By this accounting, then, the Judeo-Christian understanding of wilderness is quite positive in affirming an environmental ethic sustaining all creation. Other problems are evidently responsible for the scholarly criticisms directed at the Judeo-Christian tradition. Foremost among these difficulties I believe, has been a serious transmission problem of the Judeo-Christian nature ethos into new cultures and their descendants. Judeo-Christian theologians would be well advised to re-examine their tradition and thereby re-affirm this important environmental ethos.

Republican and Democratic myths

2006-01-01T23:01:00.000-06:00

It probably had to do with being up late, but I couldn't stop giggling over these party myths. Two of the three columns are centered more on both parties while Lew Rockwell utilizes data from Republican House and Senate voting. There is alot there to read, so if you'll excuse me for not knowing where to quit with such interesting reads.

World Net Daily

Truth about Republican, Democratic parties
1999 WorldNetDaily.com

Last week WorldNetDaily columnist David Limbaugh received the question, "Why vote at all, when there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans?" He responded by arguing that the Republicans care more about your freedom than the Democrats do. But to pull this off, he had to resort to a number of myths about the Republican Party. Here are some of them:

Myth: "Had the 1994 Republican Congress failed to reign in spending, we would not be approaching a balanced budget today, something the naysayers said was impossible."

Truth: The last four budgets passed by a Democratic Congress enlarged the federal government by 14.4 percent. The four budgets the Republican Congress passed have enlarged the federal government by 13.9 percent. This could hardly be called "reigning in spending." In fact, the first three Republican budgets increased spending faster than the Democratic budgets.

Myth: "Democratic presidential frontrunner Al Gore's vision of America includes an even more intrusive federal government. Just this week, he promised federal intervention to micromanage such local problems as traffic control. Patrick Henry is rolling over in his grave."

Truth: The federal government already micromanages traffic control -- and rapid transit and local highways and auto specifications and almost everything else related to your car. Republicans voted for these intrusions. Why should you believe they will suddenly start opposing such boondoggles? Calvin Coolidge is rolling over in his grave.

Myth: "Democrats favor injecting more federal money into education and increasing federal control over local school decisions. Republicans favor less federal control and the adoption of school-choice measures with the belief that added competition will improve the quality of public and private schools."

Truth: Democrats and Republicans both take your money. Both believe the federal government should decide how your school system should operate. They argue only over how to spend your money. Neither party says your money shouldn't go to Washington in the first place. Neither suggests getting the federal government completely out of education -- as the Constitution demands. Neither proposes to repeal the income tax, so you can use what you earn to put your child in any school you want.

Myth: "With the tantalizing prospect of budget surpluses, Democrats are already champing at the bit to repeal legislatively imposed spending caps that have been instrumental in bringing the federal budget nearly into balance for the first time in three-plus decades. Republicans insist on adhering to the caps."

Truth: Republican Congressmen have already busted the budget caps -- when they approved the 1999 budget, when they voted the biggest farm subsidies in history (three years after voting to "phase out" farm subsidies), when they vote year after year to make government more expensive for you, more intrusive into your life, more and more like Big Brother.

Myth: "Republicans advocate saving Social Security by programs involving partial privatization. Clinton and his cohorts stringently oppose privatization and favor instead a shell game involving a double counting, accounting scam that uses non-existent budget surpluses (which are actually temporary Social Security surpluses)."

Truth: Talk about a shell game! The Republican con game will have you paying the exorbitant Social Security tax for the rest of your working life -- while the Republicans dangle in front of you the carrot that Social Security will be privatized in some sweet bye and bye. (Republican Sen. Phil Gramm's proposal will privatize Social Security over 60 years!) If you don't believe in reincarnation, the Republicans have nothing to offer you.

Myth: "Republicans advocate overhauling the Medicare system with elements of privatization and reductions in automatic cost increases. ... Clinton Democrats still support socialized medicine."

Truth: Yes, Democrats support socialized medicine -- and so do Republicans. The Republican Congress passed the Kennedy-Kassenbaum bill and the Kennedy-Hatch bill -- each giving the federal government more authority over your health, your doctor, and your insurance company. Is this how Republicans protect us from socialized medicine?

Myth: "Clinton has systematically emasculated the military while expanding our commitments throughout the world."

Truth: President Clinton has been exploiting the precedents set by Ronald Reagan and George Bush -- waging wars unconstitutionally without declarations by Congress. Do you remember the Republican incursions into Libya, Nicaragua, Granada, El Salvador, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Panama, the Philippines? The Republicans invented the idea that any problem in the world is an excuse for the U.S. military to intervene. If Clinton's actions have put us in danger -- and they have -- it's because he's using policies and precedents established by his Republican predecessors.

Myth: "Republicans since Reagan have supported a strategic missile defense initiative to protect the nation against burgeoning nuclear threats from numerous countries."

Truth: Republican Richard Nixon signed the ABM Treaty, outlawing a missile defense. No Republican, not even Ronald Reagan, has done anything concrete to provide such a defense -- which probably would be the one truly sensible military policy. Instead, 15 years after Ronald Reagan raised the missile-defense issue, billions of dollars have been spent and we aren't one step closer. Why didn't Ronald Reagan demand it? Why hasn't the Republican Congress demanded it? Why are we still vulnerable to any two-bit dictator who can get his hands on a nuclear missile? Probably because the vulnerability is used to justify a multitude of big-government military programs that Republicans and Democrats impose upon us.

Myth: "Only after the recent revelations concerning China's theft and development of nuclear delivery technology are the Democrats beginning to come around on this vital issue."

Truth: The Democrats have proposed a sham defense that will make us no safer from a missile attack. As with so many fake reforms, the Republicans support it -- and claim credit for bringing it about.

Myth: "Had defeatist Republicans prevailed in 1980, Ronald Reagan would never have been nominated nor elected ... We might still be fighting the Cold War."

Truth: Historians still argue over what caused the Great Depression; so I'm sure they'll argue beyond our lifetime over what ended the Cold War. The one certain conclusion, that the Republican legend Ronald Reagan started an arms race that bankrupted the Communists -- makes no sense. Why would the Soviets spend more than they have to? Republicans tell us Reagan's missile-defense proposal was too much for the Soviets. Why? The U.S. did nothing to implement it, and the Soviets didn't have to match a non-existent program.

When historians investigate the causes of the Soviet Union's downfall, there are many leads I hope they follow. Why in 1989 did the Hungarian government open its borders to allow East Germans and Hungarians to flee to Austria, causing the Berlin Wall to come down three months later? Why didn't Soviet officials stop their citizens from using telephones and fax machines to get information from the West? Why did Mikhail Gorbachev push Glasnost so far -- while still proclaiming himself a dedicated Communist? Was it simply old age that caused an unworkable 70-year-old system to collapse?

Whatever they find, it won't be that expanding our government, taking away our freedoms, running up huge debts, and copying the Communist system were the keys to winning the Cold War.

Myth: "Conservative Republicans favor tax cuts to spur sustained economic growth, and because they believe the people's money should be restored to them."

Truth: Republicans do nothing to reduce the size of government or restore money to you. Because they won't reduce government spending, the "tax cuts" only rearrange the burden of big government.

Myth: "Had defeatist Republicans prevailed in 1980, Ronald Reagan would never have been ... able to pass legislation reducing top marginal income tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent."

Truth: And four years later Republicans voted to increase tax rates. Government grew by two thirds during Ronald Reagan's eight years as President. The one thing Ronald Reagan did that was both important and good for us was to abolish U.S. price controls on oil and natural gas -- destroying the power of the OPEC cartel. Strangely, the Republicans never mention his one real achievement.

Myth: "Democrats still want to appoint activist federal judges, while Republicans want strict constructionists."

Truth: Republican Presidents have appointed bad judges from Earl Warren to David Souter -- just as Democrats have. Some of the Democratic judges have at least respected parts of the Bill of Rights and protected our civil liberties, while taking away our economic freedoms. Republican judges, on the other hand, have taken away our civil liberties without respecting our economic freedom.

Myth: "And the GOP is pro-life and ardently supportive of the Second Amendment."

Truth: From the Brady Bill to the promised repeal of the assault weapons ban, Republicans have caved in on one Second Amendment issue after another. As for abortion, it's the #1 posturing and fund-raising issue for Republicans, but those who oppose abortion would be hard pressed to discover anything Republican politicians have done to actually reduce abortions in America.

Myth: "Our children deserve to be bequeathed an America that continues to blossom in political freedom and economic prosperity, and that still aspires to be a nation under God."

Truth: If that's true, you'd better get off the Republican plantation before your children grow up. So long as the Republican politicians know they have your vote locked up, they have no incentive to do anything to advance any of the goals they proclaim.

The greatest assets for the Republicans are the Democrats. Republicans make government bigger and take away more of your freedoms -- and then blame it on the Democrats. They try to scare you by pointing to Democrats like Al Gore or Hillary Clinton: "Vote Republican or the bogeymen will get you." The Democrats use the same tactics -- trying to peddle the idea that the Religious Right will steal your children in the middle of the night.

But whichever side scares you most, you never get what you vote for. You vote for Democrats because you want greater personal freedom -- and they reward you by trying to censor the Internet, putting a V-chip in your TV set, and abolishing the Fourth Amendment. Or you vote for Republicans because you want greater economic freedom -- and they reward you by passing bigger highway bills, bigger farm bills, bigger budgets, more corporate welfare, and just plain bigger government.

The parties assume that you and other stalwarts will never abandon them. But they're wrong. Both parties are suffering wholesale desertions -- and the voter turnout sinks lower and lower with every election.

If you really want your vote to count, join the desertions from the two-party system and vote for what you really want. Imagine voting Libertarian and seeing the Libertarian get 10-15 percent of the vote -- scaring the old parties into making real changes.

Myth: "Those who advocate not voting should look at the 1998 congressional elections for proof of the consequences of quitting."

Truth: People who don't vote have come to the sensible understanding that their votes make no difference. Why should they continue voting when they never get what they want?

The consequences of the 1998 congressional elections are simple: government will continue to grow, as it has for the past 70 years -- which is what happens no matter which party wins any election.

Myth: "They should examine Ross Perot's impact on the 1992 presidential election if they are tilting at third-party windmills."

Truth: Ross Perot's 19 percent vote in 1992 proved that Americans desperately want a third party that will break the stranglehold the Republicans and Democrats have imposed on our lives. Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura have helped Americans realize that a real third party, with real proposals to reduce government to a fraction of its present size (unlike Ross Perot's proposals to make big government more efficient), has a chance to win eventually in America.

Myth: "Freedom requires responsibility, and not voting is an abdication of that responsibility. Those who drop out, cop out. Abandoning the fight is no different from joining the other side."

Truth: Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it. It imposes no responsibility to vote for people who take your money and use it to destroy your children's education, your health-care opportunities, and your liberties. In fact, freedom involves no responsibility to vote at all -- certainly when you see no candidate who will provide what you want.

Fortunately, the Libertarian Party is now three times the size it was at this point in the 1996 election cycle. It will be running more than 1,000 candidates in 2000 -- and its presidential campaign should be far better financed and much more visible than its 1996 campaign was. Finally, you will have a real choice.

Republicans will continue to campaign like Libertarians while governing like Democrats. But in 2000 you'll be able to choose the real McCoy -- Libertarians who want to reduce government far enough to free you from the income tax entirely, replacing it with nothing, to free you immediately from the fraudulent 15 percent "Social Security" tax, and to make your neighborhood safe by ending the nightmare of drug prohibition.

Myth: "Just because the Republican Party isn't everything we want it to be is no excuse to quit. We must stay engaged and fight to ensure the party remains conservative."

Truth: Republicans excuse their failings by saying we must elect more conservatives. In the 1950s, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower set up the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and other Democratic-style monstrosities, Republicans said, "We must elect more conservatives." When Republican Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls, the EPA, and dozens of other new big-government programs, Republican stalwarts said, "We must elect more conservatives."

When the quintessential conservative Ronald Reagan, aided by a Republican Senate, never proposed to reduce the size of government by even a single dollar, and as the federal government grew by two thirds in eight years, we were told "We must elect more conservatives."

So for 45 years Republicans have been saying that all will be well as soon as we elect more conservatives. I don't know about you, but I can't wait another 45 years.

Republican politicians are power-junkies -- just as Democrats are. And the "enablers" are those who permit them to indulge their addiction to power -- finding excuses for every life the Republicans wreck with big government.

If you don't want your vote to count, continue voting Democratic or Republican -- rewarding the politicians for stealing more of your money and more of your freedom. If you want your vote to mean something, send a message in 2000: vote Libertarian and hope the Libertarians get 10-15 percent of the vote.

That will reform the Republican and Democratic parties faster than the election of a thousand conservatives.

MSNBC

FIVE DEMOCRATIC MYTHS ABOUT ENTITLEMENTS

1. Because federal benefits go to the poor, reform will amount to a shedding of our social safety net.
We should never forget the critical role that federal benefits have played—and continue to play—in protecting Americans against the hardships of poverty. "I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished," announced President Roosevelt in 1937. Most of the benefits originally paid out through his New Deal programs were directly targeted at alleviating this misery.

However, this is no longer the purpose toward which most benefits are directed. In 2002, out of $1.2 trillion in federal, state and local benefits, the poor received roughly $140 billion, according to the Census Bureau. That's about 12 cents of every full benefit dollar.

2. Even if they don't go to the poor, federal benefits foster equality by going mostly to lower-income households.
In truth, social-welfare programs no longer redistribute wealth in favor of low-income households. Total federal benefits to the affluent are at least as substantial as those to the needy. Among Social Security beneficiaries, for instance, households with incomes of $150,000 or more receive, on average, checks that are twice as large as those of households with incomes of less than $15,000. If our purpose were simply to straighten out the national income distribution, we'd do a better job by mailing our benefit checks to random addresses. Even when we add back in other federal sources, including welfare and food stamps, benefits are distributed evenly across households of all incomes.

3. Federal benefits go to the elderly, who everyone knows are much less well off than younger Americans.
Federal benefits do go mostly to the elderly. And 40 years ago it was true that the elderly were less well off than other demographic groups. But today, thanks in part to all the benefit programs that were expanded on their behalf, the elderly now have a lower poverty rate (10.4%) than any other age group.

4. Social Security and Medicare are earned rights by contract; beneficiaries are only getting back what they paid in.
It seems natural to assume a certain justice about the arrangement. Until one considers timing and demographics, that is. When you start a new pension system, full contributions from covered workers start arriving right away—but benefit payouts remain small for many years until enough workers with enough "credits" begin retiring. During the early years of both Social Security and Medicare, Congress kept tax rates unrealistically low and awarded ever-higher benefits to new retirees who had contributed only for a year or two. That meant that the children of the World War II generation (including the boomers) would have to contribute at much higher tax rates over their entire working lives just to keep benefits flowing to their parents. It's even worse news for today's young Americans, whose payroll tax rate will have to double to fund the demographic tsunami of retiring boomers unless the system is reformed.

5. The future growth in the cost of senior benefits, whatever they may be, can easily be borne by younger generations.
Every year, the social security trustees release an estimate of the system's "actuarial deficit," which many assume represents what we would need in hand today to cover Social Security's cash shortfall over the next 75 years. In 2003, the actuarial deficit officially amounted to $3.5 trillion.

But to arrive at a true estimate, we need to include Medicare as well as Social Security, unless we believe that health-care costs will miraculously turn around and head south on their own. This adds $15.6 trillion. (All of these dollar figures are "present values.") Next, we have to add back in the value of the mythical "trust funds," which aren't going to save the American people one nickel in future tax liabilities. Adds another $1.6 trillion. And if we use an unlimited time horizon, which we must do unless we want our kids to pass this problem along to their own kids, that adds an extra $24 trillion to the actuarial deficit, for a grand total of roughly $45 trillion in 2003, according to research commissioned by the Treasury Department. That exceeds our nation's entire net worth ($42 trillion).

FIVE REPUBLICAN TAX MYTHS ABOUT TAX CUTS

1. Because the American people are overtaxed, they want and deserve our tax cuts.
Are we really overtaxed? Certainly not compared to other developed countries. Of all 27 developed countries (defined by the OECD), the United States is roughly tied with Japan as the least taxed as a share of GDP. Are we overtaxed relative to our past? We'd have to go back to 1968 to find a year when total government revenues were lower as a share of GDP.

Tax cutters often imply that Americans are becoming much more hostile to taxes over time. But this isn't true either. According to two Gallup polls taken in 2003, for example, the share of Americans who say that the federal income tax is "too high" is lower than in any year since 1962.

2. OK, forget the long-term tax burden. Our tax cuts are still a sensible near-term means of stimulating a weak economy back to health.
This argument certainly has much truth to it. The vast majority of economists agree in principle that a tax cut could be a legitimate means to substitute for diminished consumer and investor demand.

I say in principle, because the critical issue here is timing. To be effective, the stimulus must be applied during the early part of a recession. That is, it must put money now in the pockets of people who will spend it now. Over the entire last century, unfortunately, Congress has never been able to time this stimulus very well. The tax cuts typically don't kick in all the way until late in the recession and then continue long after the recession is over. That's certainly true for most of the recent Bush tax cuts. It's why many economists have grown to dislike countercyclical tax cuts in practice.

3. Even when they don't deliver near-term stimulus, tax cuts make the tax code more efficient.
Over the years, many tax reformers have defended their proposals—creating fewer tax brackets, establishing a national value-added or "flat" income tax, or phasing out the taxation of estates or dividends—by citing efficiency advantages.

In theory, we'd be better off with a tax code that raises the same revenue with fewer distortions in economic behavior. But a pure efficiency reform must leave revenue unchanged. Current proposals do not. Reducing the taxation on corporate earnings, for example, may marginally raise private-sector savings—cited by some as an efficiency improvement. Even if it does, the extra savings will be overwhelmed by the loss in federal revenue, which adds directly to the federal debt and, over time, subtracts nearly dollar for dollar from national savings.

4. The critics just don't get it. What our tax cuts are really about is improving "supply side" incentives to work, save and invest.
The marginal tax rate is the rate that applies to the last or highest or "marginal" dollar that you earn in a year. A core proposition of the "supply side" argument for tax reform is that reductions in high marginal tax rates can sometimes have a dramatic and positive impact on economic activity and (even) on revenue.

The reality is that supply-side claims have become a theology, ruling out any reasonable discussion of the evidence. In fact, there's plenty of empirical evidence that when marginal tax rates are not high, the efficiencies you gain by cutting them may be modest and the impact on economic activity may be ambiguous.

5. Let's be honest. This is all about politics. In the long run, our tax cuts will force Congress to cut back spending and, with that, cut back government.
I know several brilliant Republicans who admit to me, in private, that much of the supply-side hype about the economics of tax cuts is not really true. But, they say, it's the only way to reduce government spending in a world in which powerful interest groups, allied with the opposition party, stand ready to punish any attempt to cut off the flow of government largesse.

This is a clever apologia, but it is unfair because nothing excuses holding the next generation hostage on the dubious bet that another party will have the good will to relent. It is cynical because it assumes that Americans no longer share any common values on which open agreement can be reached. I for one refuse to accept this dismal view. And it is hypocritical. One could take the ostensible goal of the tax cutters—smaller government—more seriously if we saw that they were also at least trying to reduce government spending. But we see nothing of the sort. Instead, spending has exploded on their watch.

Lew Rockwell

The results of the index are shocking. The average score in the House was only 46. The average score in the Senate was only 41. The high score in the House (100) was made by Ron Paul (R-TX). The high score in the Senate (80) was made by John Ensign (R-NV). The low score in the House (13) was made by Diane Watson (D-CA). The low score in the Senate (10) was made by two Republicans – John Chafee (R-RI) and George Voinovich (R-OH). The Democratic ticket of Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Edwards (D-NC) have no meaningful score since they were out campaigning so much that they hardly voted. Their overall scores are 15 for Kerry and 35 for Edwards.

So how does this index refute the myth that Republican Party is the party of "conservatism"? Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the only member of the House of Representatives who admits to being a socialist, scored an overall 47 – about average. Former Republican Jim Jeffords (I-VT) scored an overall 37. But 174 Republicans in the House (76%) and 23 Republicans in the Senate (45%) scored less than Sanders. Twenty-one Republicans in the Senate scored the same as or less than the 40 of Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. None of the Republican leadership in the House or the Senate managed to score over 50. House Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) scored a 50. Senate president pro tempore Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) each scored a 40 – tying Senate Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD).

Pneumonic flu

2005-12-30T10:14:00.000-06:00

Interesting read on the flu epidemic that says quarantining infected people actually makes the virus worse.

Washington Post

Quarantine, from the Italian "quarantina," which means "space of 40 days," dates from 15th-century regulations devised in certain Italian cities to control the spread of plague by sequestering those thought to have been exposed to the disease. Along with isolation -- secluding those who are clearly sick -- it can be an effective tool for controlling outbreaks of certain types of disease. In 1910 and 1920, before antibiotics, plague experts in Manchuria controlled several deadly outbreaks of pneumonic plague using quarantine and isolation alone. But pneumonic plague, now rare, spreads in a very different way than flu does. Pneumonic plague germs are coughed out in large droplets that quickly fall to the ground. If you are more than six feet away from a plague patient, you're unlikely to catch the disease. Also, plague patients are typically very ill before they can transmit the germ to others. "There is no disease more susceptible to quarantine than plague," wrote the physician Wu Lien-teh, who helped break the Manchurian epidemics.

Influenza is entirely different. The virus spreads explosively. Coughing, sneezing, or even speaking launches flu particles in an aerosol cloud of tiny droplets, which can drift in the air for some distance. Physician and flu researcher Edwin Kilbourne, who worked with flu patients during the pandemic of 1957-58, points out that people with flu may shed the virus even before they know they're sick -- not much, but enough to transmit the disease. Worse, some 10 to 20 percent of flu patients have subclinical infections; they never look sick at all. Yet they can still spread infection. Faced with a flu pandemic, you'd hardly know where the disease was coming from.

How can you quarantine a disease like that? According to Kilbourne, you can't. "I think it is totally unreasonable on the basis of every pandemic we've had," says Kilbourne. "Every earlier pandemic seeded in multiple foci at the same time. Quarantine simply will not work."

Indeed, a strictly enforced quarantine could do more harm than good. Herding large numbers of possibly infected people together makes it likely that any influenza strain passed among them would actually increase in virulence. Usually, in order to spread, human flu germs need hosts mobile enough to walk around and sneeze on other people. Those flu strains so deadly that they kill or disable their hosts won't get the chance to spread and will die off. This keeps human flu virulence within bounds.

The signal exception is the 1918 flu, which acquired its extreme lethality, according to University of Louisville evolutionary biologist Paul W. Ewald, in the crowded and terrible conditions on the Western Front during World War I. Troops by the train and truckload were constantly being moved in and out of this petri dish, meaning a severely flu-stricken soldier didn't have to move much to infect others.

Suppose that a government official today decided to round up exposed people and move them to a space like the Superdome in New Orleans. It's unlikely that even a crowded Superdome could replicate the conditions on the Western Front. But, depending on how densely packed people were, you could expect the flu strain trapped among them to increase in virulence. You'd be breeding a deadlier flu.

If you let people walk around freely, only those strains mild enough to allow people to stay on their feet would spread easily.

Bush logging

2005-12-29T10:25:00.000-06:00

A Timeline of the Bush Administration's Pro-Logging Policies

Forests

Contrast this with evidence coming out of a trial in Portland, Oregon, concerning timber theft on a massive scale. According to internal documents from the US Forest Service, more than 10% of all trees cut off of the national forests are stolen, usually by timber companies that deliberately log outside the boundaries of timber sales offered by the agency. The annual toll involves hundreds of thousands of trees valued at more than $100 million.

The situation was so rife with theft and fraud that in 1991 Congress set up a Timber Theft Task Force to investigate tree stealing on federal lands. The ten-person team launched three probes: timber theft on the ground, accounting fraud, and complicity and obstruction of justice by Forest Service managers.

The team won an early victory. In 1993, the Columbia River Scaling Bureau, a supposedly independent accounting agency that measures and values timber logged off the national forests in Oregon and Washington, was convicted of fraud. The Bureau deliberately undervalued logs in return for kickbacks from timber companies. The firm was hit with a $3.2 million fine.

But this was just a tune up for much bigger fish, namely the largest privately-owned timber company in the world: Weyerhaeuser. The investigation was code-named "Rodeo." The task force had compiled evidence that Weyerhaeuser had illegally cut more than 88,000 trees off of the Winema National Forest in southern Oregon. The pilfered trees were valued at more than $5 million. Moreover, investigators suspected that managers in at least three different Forest Service offices had gotten wind of the investigation, tipped off Weyerhaeuser, destroyed documents and tried to silence agency whistleblowers.

As the investigation picked up steam in the spring of 1995, the head of the task force, Al Marion, traveled to Denver for a secret meeting with the chief of the Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas, hand-picked for the position by Bill Clinton. Thomas, a wildlife biologist, had won the job after his role in spearheading Option 9, the infamous Clinton forest con job that restarted logging in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Marion outlined the investigation for Thomas and Manny Martinez, his newly-appointed deputy for law enforcement. The lead investigator told Thomas that the evidence was compelling and that there would be a good probability of criminal convictions and recovery of large civil fines.

According to notes from the session taken by Martinez, Thomas told Marion that he would give his team "18 months to finish the cases" and promised them an additional $300,000 to pursue the investigation. In the next few weeks, the team developed new leads suggesting that Weyerhaeuser's tree theft was systematic and may have been occurring on three other national forests in the region. One estimate suggested that Weyerhaeuser might have been illegally logging more than 33,000 trees a month.

Most of the illegal logging done by Weyerhaeuser occurred in so-called salvage sales, where only dead and dying trees were meant to be cut. Instead, Weyerhaeuser crews, often operating at night, logged off thousands of healthy ponderosa pines and hauled them off to mills under cover of darkness.

On other occasions, timber theft investigators alleged, Weyerhaeuser crews logged off green trees in open daylight under the nose of Forest Service officials and then bundled the green trees in with stacks of dead lodgepole pines.

"They bundled the trees, sometimes 20 trees to a bundle," says Dennis Shrader, the lead investigator in the Rodeo case. "I estimated that as many as ten trees per bundle were green trees."

Yet, just as the task force was closing it on its culprits its work came to a crashing halt. Less than a four weeks after the Denver meeting with Jack Ward Thomas, Marion received a bizarre letter from the chief thanking him for his service and disbanding the task force immediately. The letter was hand delivered by Martinez.

Marion and his colleagues were out of a job. Thomas ordered their files seized and locked in a vault, where they remained for the next ten months. Marion retired rather than be relocated to West Virginia. Shrader, the head of the Weyerhaeuser investigation, was reassigned to a desk job in a storage closet in the Portland office of the Forest Service.

Why did Thomas pull the plug? It now seems evident that the order came directly from the White House in order to protect Weyerhaeuser executives, who were longtime friends and backers of Clinton, his chief of staff Mac McLarty and his top White House counsel Bruce Lindsay.

A Bunch of Shrubbish

Near Hood Canal, the Olympic National Park's border is surrounded by the Olympic National Forest. It's a prime spot to see what the National Forest Service has been doing for the past decade, and to compare it to what real, mature, old-growth forest inside the Olympic National Park looks like.

You can literally see the park boundary. You know the moment you've crossed it. The checkerboard of clearcuts alternating with match-stick trees disappears. Inside the park you can feel that you've entered a world that's alive. It's as if you've stepped onto the belly of a giant organism that's breathing, drawing in a slow, deep breath, the ground slowly, infinitesimally swelling beneath your feet. You wait and wait for the exhale, but it never comes, because the breath is still being drawn. It started centuries ago. It makes you feel small and insignificant--no more important than a bird or a beetle or a fish swimming in the Skokomish River.

It takes me back to being a child, and I love it.

In the national forest, however, such places are almost gone. Some popular hiking trails have been obliterated by clearcuts and road-building. The only mature forests--you can't really call them old growth, in comparison to the park's old growth--are left on steep mountainsides, difficult to log, and, in many cases, difficult to hike. They're lovely hikes, nevertheless--what little you can see of the trees as you sweat and strain and scramble upwards, only to be rewarded with a view that shows you just how bad the clearcuts really are.

When Bill Clinton signed the Salvage Logging Rider, it gave the Forest Service permission to "manage" our national forests to largely benefit commercial logging interests. Clearcuts continued unabated, and it was only the work of a few environmental groups suing in the courts and the direct action of environmental activists--those folks the Bush administration have wrongly labeled "ecoterrorists"--who slowed it down. The "thinning" that was done involved taking out the biggest, most commercially viable trees in a stand and leaving behind the small, toothpick trees behind.

Those tiny trees provide no shade to speak of, and so underbrush has multiplied, creating a choking, groundlevel brush that turns tinder-dry during a hot, dry summer like we've had this year. Contrast that with the mature forest in places like the Olympic National Park, where enormous, old-growth trees provide deep shade and the ground is largely bare (it can even be hard to find the trail sometimes, since the dirt path looks the same as the forest floor). Scratch the ground with the heel of your boot, and you find it moist. The air is damp and cool, mushrooms grow easily, and moss clings to the trees, even when the forest hasn't seen rain for over a month. But the forest still has the fog--heavy, dewy, shroud-like fog drawn off the water by the big trees themselves, as if they could summon a drink whenever they feel like it. While the sun burns that moisture right out of the shrubby land and spindly trees in the lower elevations, the national park's old-growth trees hold the moisture, and provide the best safeguard against fire of any kind.

So George W.'s argument that thinning trees off the national forests is bullshit. Such talk is code for "more clearcuts for my pals at Boise Cascade." They now want everything--big trees, little trees, even the stuff they used to consider trash. Anything to keep the mills running.

George W. understands forests about as much as he understands quantum physics. It's the thinning of mature trees over the past decade coupled with the clearcuts on public and private lands that have made this year's savage wildfires possible. George W. is not providing balm to the folks whose houses have been destroyed. No, he's lining his pocket with contributions from commercial logging interests.

As George W. stands in a burned-out area, kicking ash with the toe of his expensive cowboy boots, you can bet he's never seen a real rainforest. He doesn't have the time. His tour to Oregon and California is filled with million-dollar fundraising dinners for Republican candidates, all scheduled in quick succession to raise as much money as possible before the new, stricter campaign finance rules take effect. The camera bulbs flash, the TV screens flicker, the sound bites air, and the newspapers run his words verbatim without a hint of irony or question.

Meanwhile, the real story goes untold. Facts are not important. A spokesman from the Pacific Biodiversity Institute in Winthrop, Washington, does a little investigation of his own and finds that over the past decade, only 20% of the lands burned in wildfires was national forest land. The rest were private lands, tribal lands, and other types of public lands--and much of those were grasslands and areas covered in shrubs or other low-growing vegetation. This study has largely been ignored.

We better start paying attention, making noise, speaking the truth. We need to go out and see for ourselves what the Forest Service and commercial logging interests--the real ecoterrorists--have already done to our lands.

If we don't, our national forest lands could soon be reduced to shrublands, as the Shrub-in-Chief obviously intends.

Washington Post

"The Bush administration, in one of its biggest environmental decisions, moved yesterday to open nearly one-third of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging and other commercial ventures.

The 58.5 million acres involved, mainly in Alaska and in western states, had been put off limits to development by President Bill Clinton eight days before he left office in January 2001."

The Age

"A new regulation put forth by the Bush Administration this week would allow the building of roads in many of the most remote, pristine areas of the country's national forests and open them to logging and mining.

The policy change is aimed at so-called roadless areas - huge tracts of national forests that have been accorded protection because they have special ecological significance, such as harbouring headwaters of streams.

Affected are 23.7 million hectares of America's 77 million hectares of national forest, including 27,500 hectares of the 305,000-hectare Chattahoochee National Forest in northern Georgia."

Bush environment quotes

2005-12-28T21:51:00.000-06:00

The first I'm sure made the "Bushisms" book, and the second I can actually forgive him for his self-serving ignorance. Otherwise I'll just end up breaking my computer monitor. I'd have some more from his appointees, but they seem to be elusive with their glossy vocabulary. BWAHAHAHA...

Anvari
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
...George W. Bush

Greenpeace
"We need to thin our forests in America."
—Bush, on the evil of forests, Aug. 11, 2003
Source: The Arizona Republic, "In Arizona, Bush Touts His Idea to Thin Forests," Aug. 12, 2003.

Bush environmental humor

2005-12-28T16:46:00.000-06:00

freepressed

'Healthy forests are empty forests'
President Bush's Healthy Forests initiative to eliminate tree scourge from national parks.
Bush gives one of his signature shit-eatin' grins to timber industry lobbyists after signing the initiative.

Washington, D.C.--Trees are a fire hazard and must be cut down, extolled President Bush as he signed his Healthy Forests initiative into law last week.

“We have to protect our national forests from those vengeful, tall, good smellin’ things called trees,” said President Bush. “At some point in our nation’s history, our public land became over run with elms, pine, maples, cedars and all other manner of trees. Well, it’s time to clear ‘em out and take the land back.”

The Healthy Forests Bill is the first major legislation over the country’s national forests in 30 years.

“And I’m the one who gets to make it,” Bush said.

The bill will increase the timber and brush that can be taken from public land and makes it easier to skirt the endangered species act.

“Imagine how safe all of our trees will be when there aren’t any left,” said Andrew Card, White House, Chief of Staff. Bush assured environmental groups that the program would only apply to underbrush and deadwood like the logs shown above.

Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo) who sponsored the house bill of the legislation said that the healthy forest initiative was long overdue.

“Many of my constituents have written saying that they can’t enjoy our national forests because trees block their view. Well, this will take care of that.”

Licking their chops, members of the timber industry that were at the signing, unveiled a “healthy forest thresher”, that would be able to cut down trees at ten times the rate of a normal chainsaw.

“The Healthy Forests act is a positive step for all of the Americans who have been clamoring to see our irreplaceable national forests gutted and logged,” said Lewis Donnybrook, President of Allied Timber Associates.

Sen. Ron Whydon (D-Ore) who backed the bill agreed.

“The signing of this bill shows what can happen when we put aside partisanship and cave into the Timber lobby,” he said.

Old growth forests in California, Washington, Montana and other western states will be exempted, if the trees are able to register with the National Forestry Department.
The president was so eager to get rid of the trees that he began clearing brush from a national forest in Virginia immediately following the signing ceremony. Killin' trees is Bush's favorite hobby.

“We wanted to give the trees a ‘voice’ so that all of the tree huggers would shut their yaps,” Card said.

Upon being told that trees could neither write nor move, Card said, “Well, I guess there won’t be very many that are exempted.”

Environmentalists expressed concerned about the scope of the bill.

“I don’t think that there are enough of us to sit in all of the trees that are going to be cut down,” said Larry Leo, president of the Montana Sierra Club.

A study done by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that the timber industry donated $14 million to political campaigns in the last three years. More than 80 percent has gone to Republicans.

“This law won’t prevent every fire but once we cut down all of the trees it will,” President Bush said.

The Onion

WASHINGTON, DC–Vowing to "restore the pristine splendor of America's natural treasures," President Bush Monday unveiled "Project: National Parks Clean-Up," an ambitious program to remove all toxic petrochemical deposits from national parks by 2004.

Alaska's Denali National Park, one of the many wildlife refuges temporarily closed by Bush (inset).

"Places like Yellowstone and Yosemite were once pure, unspoiled wilderness," Bush said at a White House press conference. "But over the course of the past 10 million years, we have allowed them to become polluted with toxic fossil-fuel deposits, turning a blind eye to the steady build-up of vast quantities of dangerous pollutants. It's time to end this terrible neglect."

Continued Bush: "A comprehensive survey of our parks, conducted by a team of top geologists specially commissioned by me, has discovered giant pockets of petroleum, coal, and other 'fossil poisons' beneath an alarming 38 percent of our national parks' surface area. Though a majority of these poisons are buried under several million tons of rock strata, should they ever seep to the surface and spread into the surrounding areas, they would spell disaster for the parks' precious ecosystems."

To underscore the severity of the crisis, Bush produced a chart illustrating survey results for Yellowstone National Park, where a "staggeringly huge" toxic-petroleum deposit was discovered.

"This amount represents the equivalent of 40,000 supertankers worth of oil," said Bush, gesturing toward a line on the chart. "To put the dangers into perspective, consider this: If these 'petro-poisons' should ever spill out into the park itself, the resulting environmental disaster would be 40,000 times worse than the damage caused by the wreck of the Exxon Valdez."

"We cannot allow such a thing to happen," Bush said. "We must remove this oil now, before it's too late."

An EPA oil-removal pump begins preliminary cleaning of Kings Canyon National Park in California.

Under the Bush plan, 7.2 billion tons of toxic petroleum would be removed by the target date of January 2004. Unlike other federal environmental clean-up initiatives, administration officials say the plan would pay for itself, offsetting costs through the sale of petroleum byproducts produced as a result of the clean-up process.

The clean-up, EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman said, may even prove profitable, a prospect that has attracted the participation of private industry. Already, many U.S. companies have expressed interest in lending assistance, and it is hoped that these companies will carry out much, or perhaps all, of the clean-up effort.

Though "Project: National Parks Clean-Up" represents Bush's first major environmental initiative since taking office, supporters are quick to point that he has been a longtime champion of petroleum removal.

"As governor of Texas, Bush fought tirelessly to protect the state's subterranean environment through a series of massive petrochemical-deposit clean-up projects," Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton said. "Under his governorship, more tons of petroleum-based subterranean environmental contaminants were removed in Texas than in all the national Superfund clean-up sites combined. The Democrats talk a good game about the importance of cleaning up the environment, but when it comes to actually eliminating the threat of enormous oil deposits lurking under the surface of our nation, no one can hold a candle to George W. Bush."

Thus far, reaction has been mixed. Some have said it is unrealistic for the president to try to remove so much petroleum so quickly. Others, such as Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), have charged that the president is caving in to pressure from environmentalists, arguing that the government's energies would be better directed toward improving the military.

But despite such criticism, Bush stressed that the urgency of removing the oil deposits should take precedence over everything else.

"Nothing is more important than the legacy we leave future generations," Bush said. "The costs of this project pale in comparison to the importance of safeguarding our planet's ecosystem. Our primary mission must be to protect and foster our nation's most precious natural resource: oil. I mean, the environment."

Indy Media

OREGON WILDERNESS PLAN EXEMPLIFIES BEST OF BUSH POLICY
Senator's bravery in the face of public opinion earns him award; new
Forest Service mascot unveiled

The Bush campaign is awarding its first annual "Healthy Forestry"
award to Senator Gordon Smith, R-OR, for finding a way to convert
19,000 acres of prized wilderness into a highly valuable tree farm.

Converting the partially burnt Siskiyou "roadless areas" to tree
farming, despite 70% public opposition to "old growth" logging, will
mean not only the creation of several dozen temporary jobs, but also
will guarantee that the area will never again be subject to "old
growth" and "roadless" restrictions, and will remain forever open to
logging regardless of public opinion.

Sen. Smith has announced that to make this happen, he will attach a
"rider" to a disaster relief or other "must pass" Senate bill,
requiring that the Siskiyou area be logged immediately and replanted
with thousands of timber trees, bypassing Nature's slow, inefficient,
and unprofitable process of recovery. The rider will also stipulate
that it "shall not be subject to judicial review by any court of the
United States"--thus preventing ecoterrorists from using the courts
to interfere with the health of the forestry industry. (See
this
for more information.)

OLD PROBLEMS, NEW SOLUTIONS
Even some ecoterrorists acknowledge that burnt old-growth trees can
be hazardous to wildlife, as their rotting limbs can easily fall on
innocent elk or deer. But the agreement ends there. By stubbornly
refusing to let burnt old-growth forests build jobs, ecoterrorists
have made it increasingly difficult for the forestry industry to turn
a profit from America's last few bits of nonproductive landscape.

Sen. Smith was inspired in devising his rider by the earlier, 1995
"salvage rider," which for one year allowed virtually unregulated
logging to occur on wilderness lands throughout the Pacific Northwest.

By again moving the issue out of the courts, Sen. Smith's rider
suggests a way to bypass such opposition in a more permanent way: a
"rider" that will open not just one region, but the entire
federally-controlled National Parks System, for selective logging use.

The amount of useful acreage in Yellowstone and Yosemite alone, for
example, would more than equal the contested areas of the Siskiyou.
Such forests aren't quite as valuable to either the timber industry
or to ecologists as those in the Siskiyou, but logging our National
Parks would mean replacing many smaller, time-consuming local battles
with one bigger one more likely to be won.

To popularize this idea, the Bush campaign has unveiled a new mascot
for the USDA Forest Service: Smokey the Log. Smokey the Log is a
replacement for Smokey the Bear, as bears have no use and are
therefore not appropriate in the modern forest-use context. On a
recent canvassing tour, Smokey the Log collected numerous signatures
in favor of logging our National Parks
(http://www.CheneyBush.com/smokey/petition/) and received
endorsements from Congressional Candidate Jim Feldkamp
(http://www.CheneyBush.com/smokey/feldkamp/) and former Oregon
governor Victor G. Atiyeh (http://www.CheneyBush.com/smokey/atiyeh/).

Bush cares about our National Parks?

2005-12-28T11:52:00.000-06:00

As a conservationist/environmentalist, I'm constantly reminded by conservatives of the extremism that has taken over the cause. The luxury or bias of calling wacko environmentalists "anti-people" while those who show little to no proven record or regard for such as "anti-environment" are not. An oxymoron if I ever did see one. Because there is the continual conflict between environmental protections and economic development, I'm offering a basic hypothetical plan that some would regard as being rather insane. A perspective to the people who say that the Bush administration and citizens in general "of course!" believe in and care for environmental protections.

Our National Parks are the keystone or model of sustainability on the American landscape. They symbolize an environment that is [suppose to be] free from capital commodity, like logging. I've not even included National Forests because what is or isn't within law and land parameters is difficult to distinguish (let alone more revealing in volume of instances). But National Parks, assuming each state agrees on land dimensions, is special beyond compare to those otherwise targeted land resources.

The radical notion in my hypothetical is lets say National Parks should be protected to their fullest while allowing the remainder of the American landscape to be exploited for capital gain however the public and private sectors so choose. Lets take it a step further and say National Parks should be relooked at and shortened to allot only one park in each state that encompasses no more than 5 percent of that states land mass. No environmental regulations, no lawsuits, no questions over private property, nothing. Lets also assume the Bush administration is simply deregulating whats been overregulated by environmental policy. This way I'm not accusing him of any wrongdoings otherwise and am only focusing on his record with those keystone National Parks, and in a few minor instances, National Monuments and Rainforests. The point being: Is this not a deal served on a platter for big business economics? And would Americans unending consumption habits be met while granting my wishes of the tightest restrictions on National Parks usage (aka no expansion of sporting recreations)?

The data I'm presenting, which could have continued on even longer, shows in my mind the Bush administration really doesn't care about the environment much other than as a commodity. If the National Parks can be tapped into than nothing on the American landscape is off limits. And if Bush or his administration really do care about environmental protections, than it is in my opinion more of the "not in my backyard" mentality. My lifelong question to human consumption as always is: When is enough?

White House

President Bush's Initiative Against Illegal Logging

"... I've also ordered the Secretary of State to develop a new initiative to help developing countries stop illegal logging, a practice that destroys biodiversity and releases millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."
-President George W. Bush, Global Climate Change remarks, February 14, 2002.

What is Illegal Logging?

Illegal logging is generally understood to mean timber that is harvested, transported, processed or sold in contravention of a country's laws. Illegal logging destroys forest ecosystems, robs national governments and local communities of needed revenues, undercuts prices of legally harvested forest products on the world market, finances regional conflict and acts as a disincentive to sustainable forest management.

International trade in illegally harvested timber and timber traded in violation of Parties' obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) exacerbates the problem. Illegal logging is also a primary factor in the escalating African bush meat crisis, opening up vast areas to illicit hunting to feed loggers and for commercial sale in urban centers.

Underlying causes of illegal logging and related corruption are rooted in a lack of strong institutions based on democratic principles: rule of law, participatory and transparent decision-making, public accountability, clear land tenure and property rights and due process for dispute settlement.

The World Bank estimates that illegal logging results in annual losses in developing countries of $10-15 billion worldwide.
-A Revised Forest Strategy for the World Bank Group, October 2002

US Info

More than 270 million people visited the United States' national parks last year, inspired by their beauty and wildness. Our country's park system, once described as America's "best idea," includes 388 parks and encompasses some 34 million hectares, an area roughly the size of Germany. In addition, the United States has established 545 national wildlife refuges, protecting more than 36.4 million hectares to benefit wildlife, fisheries, and biodiversity. The government manages another 186 million hectares of protected land, including national forests, wilderness areas, and marine sanctuaries.

Defenders Action Fund

After five years as governor, George W. Bush left the state of Texas ranked 50th in air quality and 47th in water quality.

WCD

-The potential changes would allow cellphone towers and low-flying tour planes and would liberalize rules that prohibited mining, according to Bill Wade, former superintendent at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Larry Whalon, chief of resource management at Mojave National Preserve, said the changes would take away managers' ability to use laws such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act to oppose new developments in parks.

-The proposed changes would alter the definition of impairment from "an impact to any park resource or value [that] may constitute an impairment" to one that can be proved to "permanently and irreversibly adversely [affect] a resource or value." Critics say the new definition would set a standard that is impossibly high.

-He noted that seemingly obscure issues such as the requirement for maintaining a dark night sky and preserving quiet would no longer be emphasized.

-"We know how important these things are for animals," Galvin said. "Birds use the night sky to navigate and animals need to hear each other. This version, as I understand it, doesn't recognize the biological values of those things and it eliminates them as visitor amenities."

Voice Yourself

Most of us think of America's national parks as everlasting places, parts of the bedrock of how we know our own country. But they are shaped and protected by an underlying body of legislation, which is distilled into a basic policy document that governs their operation. Over time, that document has slowly evolved, but it has always stayed true to the fundamental principle of leaving the parks unimpaired for future generations. That has meant, in part, sacrificing some of the ways we might use the parks today in order to protect them for tomorrow.

Recently, a secret draft revision of the national park system's basic management policy document has been circulating within the Interior Department. It was prepared, without consultation within the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary at Interior who once ran the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyo., was a Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and has no park service experience.

Within national park circles, this rewrite of park rules has been met with profound dismay, for it essentially undermines the protected status of the national parks. The document makes it perfectly clear that this rewrite was not prompted by a compelling change in the park system's circumstances. It was prompted by a change in political circumstances - the opportunity to craft a vision of the national parks that suits the Bush administration.

Some of Mr. Hoffman's changes are trivial, although even apparently subtle changes in wording - from "protect" to "conserve," for instance - soften the standard used to judge the environmental effects of park policy.

But there is nothing subtle about the main thrust of this rewrite. It is a frontal attack on the idea of "impairment." According to the act that established the national parks, preventing impairment of park resources - including the landscape, wildlife and such intangibles as the soundscape of Yellowstone, for instance - is the "fundamental purpose." In Mr. Hoffman's world, it is now merely one of the purposes.

Mr. Hoffman's rewrite would open up nearly every park in the nation to off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and Jet Skis. According to his revision, the use of such vehicles would become one of the parks' purposes. To accommodate such activities, he redefines impairment to mean an irreversible impact. To prove that an activity is impairing the parks, under Mr. Hoffman's rules, you would have to prove that it is doing so irreversibly - a very high standard of proof. This would have a genuinely erosive effect on the standards used to protect the national parks.

The pattern prevails throughout this 194-page document - easing the rules that limit how visitors use the parks and toughening the standard of proof needed to block those uses. Behind this pattern, too, there is a fundamental shift in how the parks are regarded. If the laws establishing the national park system were fundamentally forward-looking - if their mission, first and foremost, was protecting the parks for the future - Mr. Hoffman's revisions place a new, unwelcome and unnecessary emphasis on the present, on what he calls "opportunities for visitors to use and enjoy their parks."

There is no question that we go to national parks to use and enjoy them. But part of the enjoyment of being in a place like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon is knowing that no matter how much it changes in the natural processes of time, it will continue to exist substantially unchanged.

There are other issues too. Mr. Hoffman would explicitly allow the sale of religious merchandise, and he removes from the policy document any reference to evolution or evolutionary processes. He does everything possible to strip away a scientific basis for park management. His rules would essentially require park superintendents to subordinate the management of their parks to local and state agendas. He also envisions a much wider range of commercial activity within the parks.

Do you see what's going on here? The mindset of environmentalists is vastly different than those who accuse otherwise. Even though National Parks were intended for tourism, they were not intended to let the flood gates open to catering to groups interests and shaping them to meet every sporting interest. The intent was for visitors to appreciate them for what they are or "as is". My vision for the parks is rather utopian because of what is happening and will progress in the future on the remainder of the American landscape. I'm against snowmobile use because supporters ideal on the National Parks is not much different than the land in their backyard. If we allow snowmobiles, then jetskis, then skiing... what's next? The Park Service is being molded into an amusement park to meet the needs of the technological baby boomers. I'm offending the needs of the public. Well if you want skiing, go to Aspen, CO. Jet skis? Find a lake in your state. There's plenty of them.

As I've said before, you should be f'n lucky there's paved roads in the National Parks. If I'd had a vote in it, there would have been only dirt roads. I've had this debate before I'm tuning out minority groups needs. Well if the rest of the American landscape isn't off limits, including the areas that have been designated as worthy of protection, then are they not infringing on my rights to appreciate one of the last remnants of land that isn't conquered by human footprints? (You'll note that one of the only reasons why logging in National Forests is limited is because of environmental lawsuits.) I tell ya, it angers me so deeply I can hardly speak with people who disagree. We are of different dimensions.

Literal Politics

*Justice Will Not Defend Parkland: The Bush Justice Department has not and will not defend the government rule protecting 60 million acres of national parkland coveted by timber and oil companies. "The rule was three years in the making and involved 600 public hearings and 1.6 million public comments, most of them favorable....The sad truth is that the administration would like nothing better than a court order requiring it to rewrite the plan so as to accommodate the very development that Mr. Clinton — and the public — had hoped to prevent."

*Snowmobile Study: Bush has agreed to "more study" on the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park, caving into the snowmobile manufacturers (that critical constituency). Clinton had ordered the phase-out of snowmobiles in the park based on public comments and pollution concerns.

*Snowmobiles in Yellowstone: The Interior Department proposes to backs off on regulations to phase out snowmobile use in Yellowstone Park. The vehicles are being phased out because the yahoos who want to ride them around the park were abusing the privilege, harassing wildlife and other visitors. Beginning in early 1998 and continuing through early 2001, tens of thousands of Americans participated in a public review of winter transportation problems in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. After 22 public hearings and more than 64,000 comments, a clear majority favored a National Park Service plan to phase out snowmobiles from both parks.

Sites where the Bush Environmental Disaster Brigade want to drill for oil:

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The Great Lakes

Rocky Mountain National Park

Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks

The Upper Missouri Breaks in Montana

Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in Utah

Vermillion Basin in northwestern Colorado

The Gulf of Mexico (despite protests from brother and Florida governor, Jeb Bush)

Wilderness Society

WEAKENING PROTECTION OF NATIONAL MONUMENTS
On taking office in 2001, Interior Secretary Gale Norton eagerly sought to reduce the protection for the national monuments created during the Clinton years. The president told reporters that he thought some of the monuments would be good places to drill for oil. These ideas received a cold response from citizens and the media, and Congress responded with legislation temporarily banning energy leasing within monument boundaries. (That protection lasts through 2004.) But the administration didn't stop taking shots at the national monuments-or the 26-million-acre National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) of which the monuments are a spectacular part. Until final management plans are issued for new monuments and other NLCS conservation areas (a process that is underway at many, but can take three to four years), their management is governed by interim guidelines-which the administration has been changing as they please with little oversight. These changes are allowing more road and power line construction under new rights-of-way regulations and more off-road vehicle use in sensitive areas. These monuments also are threatened by the Interior Department's policies on RS 2477 and wilderness designation (dealt with in other paragraphs).

Bush Environment

Bush administration opens national park to drilling (11/22/02)

US Senator Patrick Leahy

Drilling in national parks. On November 21, 2002, the Administration approved natural gas drilling in Padre Island National Seashore in Texas, the nation's longest stretch of undeveloped beach.

Environmental reviews. On November 15, 2002, the Administration announced it would attempt to make it easier to exempt from environmental reviews, activities that it sees as having an insignificant effect on national parks, national monuments, and other public lands.

Snowmobiles. On November 5, 2002, the Administration proposed to increase by more than 35 percent the number of snowmobiles allowed in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

Newswire

WASHINGTON, DC, July 30, 2004 (ENS) – At least 23 national parks will be negatively impacted if the Bush administration enacts its proposed revision of the roadless rule, park advocacy groups said in a new report. The 23 parks are in 16 states – they include Mount Rainier, Olympic and Yellowstone National Parks.

The Bush plan introduced earlier this month would force states to petition the federal government to enforce the roadless rule, which currently bans roadbuilding and logging in some 58.5 million acres of remote and unspoiled public land.

In their report, "Collateral Damage: How the Bush Administration’s Repeal of the Roadless Rule Threatens National Parks," the advocacy groups say the parks directly at risk are visited by more than 40 million Americans each year – more than a third of all visits to U.S. national parks, monuments and parkways.

The proposal would turn "our national parks into front row seats for the destruction of our national forests," said Campaign to Protect America's Lands Director Peter Altman.

"Worse, the parks themselves will suffer from the collateral damage of timber clear-cuts, destroyed wildlife habitats and migratory corridors, streams destroyed by sediment, and the noise and stench of industrial development," Altman said.

About 20 percent of all roadless forest areas that could lose federal protection under the proposal either directly border or are near national parks and monuments, according to the report released by Altman’s group and the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees.

Envirolink

BUSH ADMINISTRATION REMOVES PROTECTIONS FROM THE ALASKAN RAINFOREST

On December 23, the Bush administration announced that they were revoking
roadless area protections from the Tongass National Forest. We need your
help in making sure that the Bush administration's decision is revealed for
what it was -- an outrageous gift to the timber industry.

This past summer when the Bush administration proposed to exempt the Tongass
National Forest from the landmark Roadless Area Conservation Rule and sought
the public's input, more than a quarter of million comments were delivered
to Forest Service. Nearly unanimously Americans opposed removing protections
from the Tongass which contains the world's largest remaining tracts of
coastal temperate rainforest. Less than one percent of the comments received
by the Forest Service favored exempting the Tongass from the Roadless Rule.

Instead of listening to the public's opposition to their plan to exempt the
Tongass from the Roadless Rule, the Bush administration chose to listen
instead to their allies in the timber industry.

Endangering Our Nat'l Parks

-The government has already spent $16 million on the outsourcing study, to which they will add another estimated $110 million over the next three years, according to a CPAL report. Note that that's not $16 million spent on doing the outsourcing itself; just on the study to see what privatization might save. The conclusions that these very well-paid contractors came to: privatization could save taxpayers a whopping $600,000. Subtract that from the $16 million spent on the study, and total net cost to the taxpayer: $15.4 million.

- "I will ensure that the federal government meets its responsibilities by devoting $5 billion to eliminate the backlog in maintenance and improvements at our national park." Wouldn't it be nice if a president said that?

Well one did—or at least he said it on his road to the White House. It was part of a stump speech George W. Bush gave on Oct 27, 2000, less than two weeks before the election.

Bush's team came up with $5 billion figure from the 1998 General Accounting Office estimate that, in addition to the regular annual costs to run America's National Parks, monuments, historic structures, and trails, it would take and extra $4.9 billion just top fix the crumbling facilities at parks and national monuments. This is called the backlog.

Bush crows that he's taken care of 900 backlog projects to the tune of $2.9 billion. Wouldn't that, too, be nice? Too bad it's a lie.

Of that $2.9 billion supposedly spent on the backlog, only "roughly $200 million to $300 million" was money spent above and beyond the regular maintenance costs according to Deputy Park Service Director Donald Murphy in his testimony before Congress last July. The remaining $2.6 billion or so was just regular park spending, not the backlog.

And those 900 projects supposedly addressed actually number 840, according to the Campaign to Protect America's lands. Fine, I won't quibble over the Administration's rounding up by 60. The problem is, the vast majority of those weren't backlog projects, but rather emergency ones (safety repairs, raw sewage cleanup and the like).

Sustainability Institute

The Environment President Whittles Away the National Parks

One of the many performance records George Bush would rather we didn't focus on between now and the coming election is the degradation under his stewardship of our national lands.

The operating principles of the Bush and Reagan administrations are being revealed by an increasing number of National Park Service and Forest Service employees who have been given orders to allow private abuses of public lands, and who have resisted. Consequently they have been defamed, transferred, or fired. Now they are telling their stories in public.

One of the most impressive of these whistleblowers is Lorraine Mintzmyer, former director of the Rocky Mountain Region of the National Park Service. Last April she retired after 32 years in the Park Service, to avoid further "punishment and humiliation." A month later she delivered a speech at Yellowstone that has been reverberating in environmental circles ever since.

Picture a doughnut, said Mintzmyer, the hole being a national park, the doughnut being a ring of surrounding public land. For example, Yellowstone Park consists of 2.2 million acres in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, part of an ecosystem of 18 million acres, 80 percent of which is owned by you, me, all of us.

Mining, energy development, logging, grazing, housing are forbidden or strongly regulated in the park, less so in the doughnut. There are twelve thousand mining claims, for example, in the greater Yellowstone area. One of them is two miles northeast of the park border and calls for two open-pit mines, one underground mine, a mill, a tailings pile, and a cyanide leach system. Near another edge of the park a new-age group called the Church Universal and Triumphant has bought a former ranch of Malcolm Forbes and is planning a geothermal development. (In every part of the world where geothermal energy has been tapped, it has PERMANENTLY destroyed nearby active geysers.)

Just as the Reagan and Bush administrations failed to regulate the banking industry, so they failed to regulate the private interests who want access to valuable public resources. "There is simply too much taking," says Mintzmyer. "The parks are being choked to death by the actions of ... special interests and their political patrons.... Water-borne wastes flow out of the doughnut into the parks, the winds carry noxious chemicals out of the doughnut and into the parks."

"Each user of that doughnut seeks just one little favor from a congressman every few years, wants the Department of the Interior to loosen up one little law, or writes to the president and asks him to kill just one little document. In the end, they are slowly destroying our parks."

One of the casualties of the steady corruption has been information. Reports are falsified or buried. Mintzmyer says, "It is impossible to know whether the base-level data were tinkered with.... Any study after 1983, and definitely after 1988, must be suspected of being scientifically or professionally unreliable."

There is nothing new about politicians helping friends to raid commonly owned wealth. What is new in the past decade is the weakening of the federal agencies charged with preventing that from happening. Says Mintzmyer: "The politicians, congressmen, and executives have ... taken over the upper parts of the agency.... There is no longer any abiity on the part of the agency to protect its lower level people. They can be targeted and neutralized without real resistance."

The Forest Service is a main target. Clearcuts in the Targhee National Forest go right up to the border of Yellowstone Park, creating a straight-line edge that can be seen from outer space. Logging in many national forests is proceeding at rates well above the sustainable cuts mandated by law. Overcutting, hidden by what one Wilderness Society spokesman calls "a carefully orchestrated Forest Service coverup," is now coming to light in forest after forest.

Handouts to logging companies cost us not only our forests, their wildlife, and their protection of water tables and streams, but also our tax money. The Forest Service charges below-market fees for timber concessions and obligingly builds logging roads at public expense. The network of federal logging roads is now longer than the interstate highway system -- 6600 miles, with another 900 planned. The Forest Service earns from timber concessions 34 cents for every dollar it spends supporting loggers. In the Yellowstone area in 1990 it lost $12.6 million.

Mintzmyer: "A bunch of special interest people ... meet with three or four congressional delegations, ... get the assistant secretaries from two agencies to attend, ... have no invitations, nothing in writing, no minutes, no notes.... It's done on the phone, in closed, private meetings, and over lunch."

There is also a direct channel through the president's Council on Competitiveness, chaired by Dan Quayle, which exists to waive federal regulations for select corporations. The Council refuses to release information about its operations, even to Congress.

In her speech Lorraine Mintzmyer listed measures to protect the national lands, including proper accounting for economic and ecological losses, and a "sunshine act" that would forbid private meetings between influence peddlers and special interests.

The best protection, of course, would be to elect a chief executive who implements the law, as he is constitutionally bound to do -- and who is not inclined to give away public assets for private benefit.

(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College.)

Americans conserved at the gas pump?

2005-12-27T22:17:00.000-06:00

I couldn't find a great deal of information that highlighted this, so if you have links to more please let me know. It suggest however the frustration from a conservation standpoint and how Americans consumption appetite is without end. I assumed Americans would've conserved gas over falls high prices to help encourage the price market shift downward. In fact, it was the opposite, and one that is a disappointed criticism directed at Americans in general.

Contra Costa Times

As overall gasoline consumption has increased despite record prices, premium fuel has taken a hit. Nationwide, daily volume of high-octane gasoline sold in the first nine months of this year fell 6.4 percent from the same period last year, while purchases of mid-grade gasoline dropped 3.6 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Energy Department. The volume of regular gasoline sold rose 4.3 percent.

Mercury News

Driving habits haven't changed as gas prices rise, then drop
Q I think gas prices will have to go a lot higher ($5-plus) to see a significant shift from driving alone to taking transit.
A Sadly, you may be right.

Q The price of gas didn't affect my driving a bit. And with that four-lane from Gilroy to San Jose and back -- 85 all the way, baby!
A The gas tank has hit empty.

Environmental leaps of faith and science

2005-12-27T11:55:00.000-06:00

Theocracy Watch:God hates environmentalists

Sirico turns the environmental movement's notion of stewardship on its head. A January 2000 report in The Daily Camera noted that as far back as 1994, in a much-circulated piece written for the National Review, Father Sirico "question[ed] the motives and hinting at the perhaps-unconscious pagan nature of the creation care movement [pro-environmental religious]. He argues that true Christians believe that the earth is a 'gift from God for our use' and that nature has no intrinsic value beyond utility." Sirico wrote, "There is no commandment against polluting or mixing trash - that is taken care of by civil law - but there is a very straightforward one about worshipping false idols."

Though the American public overwhelmingly believes there should be environmental protections. It could be said that environmental protections are a reflection of human nature because of their connotative spiritual and philosophical values. Father Sirico has a faith and spiritual belief in a god but noone in what the Creator created (environment). Somehow this doesn't seem to be an accurate or honest telling of scripture and conflicting with The Bible's writing of humans as caretakers of the environment.

Dr. Richard Land, President-Treasurer of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and author of the book, "The Earth is the Lord's," agrees with vice president Dick Cheney that the United States must increase energy production unless it wants a substantial reduction in the lifestyle of most Americans. Focus on the Family's CitizenLink reports that Land commented by quoting scripture: "In Genesis, chapter 2, God told Adam that He put him in the garden to 'till it' and to 'keep it.' The word 'keep' means to guard and protect; the word 'till' means to cause it to be developed and to cause it to give forth its fruit.'"

For years, Religious Right groups have anchored their views on environmental issues in Genesis 1:28. "Because nature is wild," explains Nina George Hacker in Concerned Women for America's Family Voice, "we [humans] were given the authority to 'subdue' it for life's necessities." In past years, this reading of the Bible frequently left the Religious right open to charges that they were justifying the raping, plundering, and stripping of the earth's resources. In the Bush era this belief serves the agenda of the right-wing think tanks and oil interests who designed Bush's energy extraction extravaganza.

I can almost say with certainty that this person lives in or near a metropolitan area. If there's one thing I've learned: I don't trust environmental visions coming from city people who do not live amongst or visit dense nature. The Wise Use movement (my interpretation being a little different), which knows nothing of the environment, still champions themselves as knowing what's best for the. A backwards notion when you consider 'to appreciate nature, humans must be amongst nature'.

Theocracy Watch

One of their latest efforts involves Valle Vidal, a part of the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico, which the Bush administration and the energy industry want opened to coal-bed methane development. The "Yellowstone of the southern Rockies" was given to the nation by Pennzoil in 1982 on condition it be managed as a wildlife habitat. It is currently home to the largest elk herd in New Mexico. But who cares? As Dobson and Bush believe, "God put human beings on the earth to 'subdue it' and to 'have dominion' over the animals."

Grist: Interview with Department of Interior's Lynn Scarlett

Q: What is your response to critics' concerns about ties to industry within the Bush administration? Is it fair to assume that a longtime history as an industry lobbyist -- say, in the case of Steven Griles -- indicates a bias?

A: If you actually look at the people this president has appointed, they represent a broad array of backgrounds as public-sector lawyers, think-tank analysts, and some have backgrounds working with companies. What we see in the media is that people's backgrounds are weighted heavily toward industry, and that's not a true reflection of the mix of appointees. And those people who do have backgrounds with the private sector, that's a good thing, because that gives them substantial management backgrounds and knowledge. The problem is that many of the critics have looked very selectively and focused only on those in industry, and said "A-ha! This is evidence of a uni-dimensional perspective."

Q: But many of those with industry backgrounds are in the highest-level positions making huge and far-reaching decisions, including your bosses, Gale Norton and Griles. Not to mention the president and vice president.

A: The idea that somehow the ideas that someone has are simply a reflection of who they worked for -- as opposed to having some other knowledge base and framework -- is a mistake. It's a very simplistic notion to assume that the world is made up of some abstract group called industry that has, lock, stock, and barrel, the same policy perspectives on any issue. Just as it would be a mistake to say everyone who holds dearly environmental values -- whether they're from The Nature Conservancy or the Natural Resources Defense Council or Ducks Unlimited -- hold the same perspective on everything.

I usually prefer decisions that better the environment be made by people with records in environmental fields, not industry. This is the most elementary understanding of hiring people FOR the environment, and suffice to say is lipstick service.

Logging Old Growth Forests to Stop Global Warming

This afternoon I attended a briefing entitled "Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in Russia: Current Status and Outlook," sponsored by a Moscow-based outfit called the National Carbon Sequestration Foundation.

One of the speakers was an official with the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia who suggested that the use of forests as carbon sinks would be a critical part of Russia's efforts to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions and the key to any future negotiations.

That wasn't the interesting part, however.

Unless the translator got things horribly wrong, the official said that part of Russia's strategy for reducing net carbon dioxide emissions would be to begin significant new logging operations in remote parts of Russia. The rationale is that older trees emit greenhouse gases while younger trees consume them. The wood fiber would then be used to meet some of Russia's energy needs.

Yes, he's talking about logging old growth forests.

The Sierra Club must love these guys.

And, speaking of environmental organizations, the Ministry official was asked why it is that the Russian government has been sharply restricting the activities of foreign-based environmental organizations within Russia.

His response was something like this: It's not that we think that the activities of foreign environmental groups should be limited, but that we have a sufficient number of groups with the expertise on these issues domestically.

Only in the former Soviet Union.

National Parks report

2005-12-25T00:33:00.000-06:00

Nope. I was wrong about teaching land conservation. It has to be taught on a broad scale level for the Nat'l Parks to be protected themselves. (The doom & gloom forecast is there in trouble then via the technology interest age. I know. A little predictable on that conclusion.)

The second link makes for a theory of mine: Sure, people should care about National Parks protections. But doesn't more visitors create more park problems?

Alternative Journal

The second weakness in Searle's analysis is his tendency to focus too narrowly on national parks rather than recognizing that conservation is something that must play across the whole Canadian landscape. Of course, because of their fundamental mandate for ecological integrity, national parks must demonstrate the highest standard of conservation practice. But if Canada puts all its hopes for biodiversity conservation and ecological health into the tiny four percent of our land mass that is enclosed in national park boundaries, we simply have no hope. I found myself frustrated from time to time by the degree to which Searle's vision seemed to be confined inside park boundaries. Fundamentally, all land is sacred. National parks should not necessarily be treated as more sacred; they should be the places where we study to understand the sacredness of our native land, and then take those insights home with us. If Canadians fail to sustain Canada, no amount of protection will sustain our parks.

NRVOC

Camping Trips Decline in some National Parks;
Boomers to Blame
Tourism experts say the Baby Boomers' preference for cushier vacations, including traveling by recreational vehicle (RV), is contributing to a decline in campers, RVers and other visitors at national parks nationwide.

According to an Associated Press report, Maine's Acadia National Park saw annual visitation fall 15% from 1999 to 2004. Only 72,000 people camped out there last year, a drop of 22% in the past decade. Nationwide, camping at national parks fell 12% between 1999 and 2004.

The aging population is just part of the reason, said Jim Gramann, a professor at Texas A&M University and the visiting chief social scientist for the National Park Service. Other factors include hectic lifestyles, competing recreational options, an uncertain economy, a drop in international visitors, shorter vacations and even an increase in ethnic populations unfamiliar with the park system.

"As people get older they may stop visiting parks for health reasons or because they've already been, and the younger visitors who are more technologically sophisticated and who have grown up in a digital environment may not be attracted," he said. "People are asking 'Do you have wireless in your campground?'"

Boomers are opting for recreational vehicles, dude ranches and lodges. They're also taking amenity-filled vacations on cruise ships and buying vacation homes near the beach or mountains, said Derrick Crandall, president of the American Recreation Coalition in Washington, D.C.

The declines don't mean the parks are deserted. There were 276.9 million visits to the National Park System last year.

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee reported the following visits:
Visitation

* Total Recreation Visits for FY 2004- 9,205,037
* Total Recreation Visits for FY 2003- 9,189,543
* Total Recreation Visits for FY 2002- 9,215,812

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a wildlands sanctuary preserving the world's finest examples of plant and animal diversity in a temperate deciduous forest. This wild landscape, rich with traces of its human past, calls visitors back again and again.

Much of the Smokies can be enjoyed from your vehicle and from accessible facilities and programs. Activities range from viewing scenery to exploring the intricacies of the forest floor to learning about the resourceful people who made a living from this wilderness.

Auto Tours - The park's backroads offer a chance to escape traffic and explore remote areas. A road guide and self-guided auto tour booklets are available for several popular, and a few quieter destinations in the park including Cades Cove, Newfound Gap Road, Roaring Fork, Tremont, and Cataloochee.

Trails - Most trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park are steep and rugged. However, a new accessible trail made possible through a public-private partnership is located on Newfound Gap Road, just south of Sugarlands Visitor Center. Accessible interpretive exhibits located along the one-half mile paved trail describe the unique historic and natural features as the trail winds through second growth forest along the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River. Clay tactile exhibits, a large print brochure, and porcelain enamel wayside exhibits are available on site. Look for the tracks of a black bear that wandered across the freshly poured concrete when the trail was built!

Visitation is down sharply in Maine's rugged North Woods, a region that has drawn people for decades to climb Mount Katahdin, fish for trout and salmon, hunt deer and moose, and camp. And people who do visit the North Maine Woods aren't staying as long, said Al Cowperthwaite, whose organization handles camping reservations for the region. "People still like to have a remote experience, but they want to do it in three days and be back home connected to the Internet and their cell phones that are ingrained in our society these days," Cowperthwaite said. That's especially true for kids, said Butch Street, who runs the National Park Service's statistics office. "These kids are looking for high-powered stuff, and the idea of watching a sunset is boring for them," Street said. "I don't think they understand that the idea is to give your mind a break."

Edward Abbey on National Parks

2005-12-24T18:52:00.000-06:00

Abbey did quite a bit of good for people environmentally in his book Desert Solitaire, and radical, destructive, and vandalistic in The Monkey Wrench Gang. On the National Parks issue though, I couldn't agree with him more. First roads for cars. Now snowmobiles. What next? An airport?

(Added later)

My whole point being is when is enough? The purpose of National Parks to my understanding was to appreciate them for what they are and not as a place that accomodates every groups interest. I don't mean to sound utopian, but that is my concern even if it means being such.

What Nat'l Parks say to me is this is an area of land we people have designated as something special, even more monumental than other landscapes in America. These are the one areas that humanity isn't above nature, but nature above humanity. These are areas that will be left in their natural state. Why? Because every other known area of land on the American landscape is open to some type of human footprint being left. You as citizens should feel fortunate and blessed paved roads are allowed so we can visit and appreciate them with modern conveniences like the automobile. Now snowmobiles? See that all the time in my geograph. How about skiing? I can get that in Aspen. What the f'n hell is this?! The Olympics or something where every sport imaginable (including the conjured up ones) is needing representation.

I just got done talking with a dear friend on this matter. He always makes me think twice about my environmental beliefs because he said why is my way of thinking better than anyone elses? Well, it isn't. But my counter suggestion to humanity is we already have a say, a footprint left on every other piece of American landscape. If their logging in National Parks and Forests, what's next? I guess my friend was right in the sense accomodations can be made to an extent with each group, but something inside me tells me Edward Abbey was right regarding "industrial tourism." The more it is made into an "amusement", the more the spiritual and philosophical principles fade. To me the park system should be appreciated "as is", not shaped into the varying people interests for money generation. The rest of the American landscape is already largely viewed as a commodity.

Ecotopia
On Development in the National Parks
There are some who frankly and boldly advocate the eradication of the last remnants of wilderness and the complete subjugation of nature to the requirements of -- not man -- but industry. This is a courageous view, admirable in its simplicity and power, and with the weight of all modern history behind it. It is also quite insane. I cannot attempt to deal with it here.
"Industrial Tourism and the National Parks'' in Desert Solitaire

A Proposal for the National Parks
No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs -- anything -- but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Let us behave accordingly.
"Industrial Tourism and the National Parks' in Desert Solitaire

Global Warming: + History, - Technobabble

2005-12-09T01:13:00.000-06:00

Finally! Something I can understand! Though still ignorant of what the real truth is...

Human Events

Global Warming Is Real, So Get Over It
by Richard Lessner
Posted Dec 5, 2005

Global warming is a reality. It’s an observable, measurable, empirical, scientific fact. Let’s all say it together: “Prince Charles, Ted Turner, Al Gore -- you’re all right! The climate is getting hotter.”

Yes, the Earth is warming, but human activity has nothing to do with it. The Earth’s climate has been growing warmer since the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, long before the internal combustion engine, Exxon, SUVs, Halliburton, Democrat congressmen, or other alleged human sources of so-called greenhouse gasses.

The problem with the global warming fear-mongers is their utter lack of historical or geophysical perspective. They’re not unlike Charlie Brown’s sister Sally, who opened a Sunday school essay: “In Church History, it’s important to start at the beginning. Our pastor was born in . . .” For the global warming crowd, the history of the Earth’s climate apparently began the day they were born and any deviation from their lifetime’s experienced “norm” is met with arm-waving, garment-rending, hair-on-fire hysterics. Every hurricane, heat wave, drought, or snow storm is loudly boomed as nature lashing out and striking back at industrial society.

When the climate doomsayers point to North America’s receding glaciers, for example, as evidence of human-induced global warming, they conveniently neglect to observe that 12,000 years ago everything from Wisconsin and Massachusetts north to the pole was covered by a mile-thick sheet of ice. Canada was one vast hockey rink. The retreat of the ice sheet opened a corridor for Siberians to migrate into North America by walking across the Bering land bridge. As the ice caps melted due to global warming the ocean level rose hundreds of feet. Vast coastal areas disappeared under rising seas, submerging the land bridge beneath the Bering Sea and cutting off Asia from America, along with its human and animal populations.

Where once polar bears frolicked in what today is central Illinois, the bruins now have skedaddled along with the glacial ice sheets to Hudson’s Bay. Was this a disaster for the bears? Hardly. It’s all part of the normal climatic cycle of global warming and cooling that has been taking place for several million years. Animals and humans long since have learned to adapt to such climate changes, some of which occurred with startling rapidity. The onset of an Ice Age can occur in as short a span as a few decades, and periods of warming can unfold just as suddenly. So an increase of a degree or two over a century, as the meeting of the climatically challenged in Montreal this week predict, is scarcely cause for panic.

Among scientists it’s hotly debated why about 3 million years ago the Earth suddenly entered into an extended cycle of advancing and retreating Ice Ages each lasting from 40,000 to100,000 years. By contrast, during the 100 million year-long Age of the Dinosaurs, the planet was very much warmer than it is today. While T Rex roamed present-day Montana looking for a tasty Hadrosaurus to dine on, the Earth had no polar ice caps at all.

Some scientists now believe the current cycle of Ice Ages was triggered when the tectonic plate carrying the India subcontinent crashed into Asia, thrusting up the Himalayas and disturbing the global air currents that control the weather. Other climatologists have detected a relationship between the relative brightness of the sun and Earth’s climate. The sun goes through lengthy cycles of sunspot activity, and the changing amount of solar radiation reaching our planet has an enormous influence on climate, many times greater than any imaginable human industrial activity. Moreover, our entire solar system oscillates up and down, above and below the plane of the Milky Way, over a period of 600,000 years in a galactic waltz that may influence the global climate. Volcanic eruptions also dramatically alter Earth’s climate. A single large eruption can lower the global temperature by several degrees. The 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia produced “a year without summer.” Some really huge eruptions have been big enough to spark a new Ice Age.

Human beings, afflicted with temporal myopia, habitually view their immediate circumstances as “normal” and look upon any departure from the perceived “norm” as abnormal, something extraordinary to be feared. But in fact, even over the relatively brief course of human history the climate has undergone significant change. A centuries-long period of unusually warm weather called the Medieval Optimum lasted from A.D. 900 to A.D. 1300. During this period agriculture flourished and populations boomed. England rivaled France in wine production. Vikings colonized North America.

Beginning around 1350, however, the Earth was plunged into the Little Ice Age that stretched into the middle of the 19th Century. Crops failed, famine and disease swept Europe. American newspapers, journals and diaries of the 17th and 18th centuries routinely recorded bitterly cold winters (much colder than those of the 20th Century), prodigious blizzards, and northern rivers freezing solid. The Little Ice Age drove the Viking colonies out of Greenland and Newfoundland. The Thames and the Hudson froze solid. Remember Washington’s heroic crossing of the ice-choked Delaware in December 1776 to attack the Hessians at Trenton? We’re still warming up from this mini-Ice Age and doing just fine, thank you.

The global warming militants persist in talking about “normal” and “abnormal” weather. But there is no such thing as “normal” climate. The Earth’s climate is constantly changing, heating up and cooling down. Sea levels rise and fall. Polar caps advance and retreat.

Our planet’s atmosphere is an incredibly dynamic and complex engine the intricate workings of which we only dimly understand. Since climatologists cannot agree what caused the sudden onset of the Ice Age cycle, computerized predictions about what the climate will be in future decades are simply guesswork dressed up to appear scientific. A single large volcanic eruption, another Krakatoa for instance, can reverse all the data and institute a period of global cooling, as such events have repeatedly done in our not too distant past.

Super volcanoes, mega-earthquakes, tsunamis, enormous landslides, Ice Ages, sudden changes in climate, ever meteor impacts – all these things are normal, if infrequent, events in our planet’s physical history. They only appear unusual because their period of occurrence tends to exceed the typical human lifespan. Hence when they do occur they appear unnatural or extraordinary, like last December’s tsunami in the Indian Ocean or this year’s hurricanes. Once people blamed such natural events on devils or demons; now we blame Big Oil and the family mini-van.

Mr. Lessner is a senior associate at Capital City Partners, a Washington consulting firm. He is the former executive director of the American Conservative Union and editorial pager editor of The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., and holds a doctorate in history from Baylor University.

Revisiting 'Dennis Prager on the environment' part 3

2005-12-08T13:50:00.000-06:00

I remember a quote Dennis Prager once said about the worlds values: They are backwards. For example, people who are anti-war and fighting terrorism eventually breed more evil because they do not defeat it when the chance is available. There are many other examples Prager used that I cannot think of off the top of my head. The irony for me is Prager's ideology on the environment appears to be caught in that same cycle of backwardness found in my two articles (1, 2). In detail, those who believe in a Creator naturally have to believe natures design came from the same Creator. Being Dennis' tone in his criticisms of nature worship appear to want his readership to not place value on nature other than as a human commodity, is it not backwards for a religious man to hold a spiritual value to a Creator but not for what the Creator created (nature)?

For the Right the opposition is in opposing a leftist ideal while right and wrong take a backseat. Another backwardness from my perspective can be found in todays conservative ideals being opposite to a Republican man by the name of Teddy Roosevelt who was once the creditor of placing protections on National Parks and Forests. Because to be "conservative" is also to be a "conservationist." They go hand-in-hand. And now it is the Left who are the conservatives and conservationists on the environment. The key operative as I've said before is the passion is overwhelmingly on the Left's side. "Antienvironment" is a word I chose to not use because of how the Left can overheighten its meaning. However, I'm not in total disagreement. The Right's disdain for the Left is so great it has carried over into their outlook on the environment. It is viewed as an economic commodity, and any other view, particularly spiritual, is viewed as leftist drivel. The Right are so focused on adamently being against the Left, they've lost touch with the philosophical idea of wanting to protect nature like Roosevelt envisioned. Because it actually benefits humanity. Consumption in the form of technology in America is held at such high a premium value, it is no wonder those who feel a connection to nature are accused of being granola-munching nuts. There really is no plan for the environment in developing nations either. No outline to set aside protections for Nat'l Parks and Forests while allowing the bulk of the remainder of the American landscape to be open to business. Being some of these areas are already logged in, I find that to be a pretty good but sad indicator of what America thinks of our Nat'l monuments and heritages.

After three years of conservative radio, I've come to realize the Right basically believe they are always, well, right. In other words, extremism or excessiveness always exist in the Left, but never in themselves. It is rather backwards again for the conservative party to be choffing at those who believe we need environmental protections. Because when the REP's (Republicans for Environmental Protection) President Martha Marks endorsed Robert Devine's (a Democratic supporter) book, Bush Versus the Environment, I knew that was rather odd and telling. She said:

It is unfortunate that a book like this needed to be written, but it truly did; I wish it were not so. I recommend it to all those who believe, as I do, that protecting this beautiful planet we call home should not be a partisan affair.

Amen.

Throught it all, the one small principle of satisfaction I have is knowing the Prager's of the world, no matter how hard they try to seperate God from Nature, can never be above it. Natural resources are in our clothing, our computers, the vehicles we drive. It is even in more visible abundance in city's everywhere in the form of trees to clean the air. No matter how hard agendas are pushed to exploit it, nature will still always be there. That while some agendas are trying to impress that it can be removed from our conscious, our subconscious will always at some point or another gravitate back to nature in the form of amongst other things, the need for a walk to revitalize. Even in the metropolitan areas where dense nature is scarce, it isn't pavement and buildings that calms and makes us whole again, it is the planted trees on the boulevard and blue sky or sparkling twilight.

Unlike the religious Dennis Prager, I can thank God for that.

---

[As a side note, I've played this game in my mind where maybe the Bush administration would be consider the robber barons (or positive description if you believe they are simply unregulating what's been overregulated) of yesteryear for profits while Teddy Roosevelt as Robin Hood for the principle of returning land to Indians. Oh well. Tuche.]

---

Outlook

Outlook 4/9/01
By John Leo
An unnatural stand
Why don't conservatives care about saving the planet?

After a speech I gave to a conservative group in New York, a man rose and asked: Didn't I think all the alarm about global warming was just another example of the politically correct agenda of the left? I said no, the evidence of a drastic warming trend seemed overwhelming to me. I missed the opportunity to say that the "no consensus on warming" crowd now sounds a lot like the tobacco lobby arguing that the link between smoking and lung cancer has not yet been established. Even without this observation, the questioner deemed my response incorrect. So he asked again to give me a fresh chance to get things right. I said I didn't understand why social conservatives are generally hostile to environmental concern. Shouldn't conserving come naturally to conservatives?

Apparently not. Economic conservatives, for whom the Wall Street Journal is the primary spokesman, are dismissive of most environmentalism. When President Bush announced he would not abide by the Kyoto protocol calling on America to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the Journal hailed him for "refusing to bow before the environmentalist holy of holies." Derisive references to environmentalism as a quasi religion of the softheaded tend to play well among social and religious conservatives, who generally don't respond to arguments from big business. These references remind all conservatives that the most extreme environmentalism does look a bit like an ersatz Earth religion, with humans as the poisonous intruders who shouldn't be here. But why do social and religious conservatives so often fall in line with business executives who dismiss all environmentalists as wackos?

Hippie horror. One reason is that environmentalism rose out of the same 1960s agitation that social conservatives believe was so ruinous to the general culture. Some environmentalists give the impression that the movement is simply part of the left, thus managing to alienate potential supporters on the right. This is a major strategic mistake, but an understandable one, given the hostility to the environment that Republicans have exhibited over the past 20 years. And issues of class are a factor, too. Environmentalists tend to be well-off, with the luxury of worrying about the snail darter and the state of the global environment in 2050. When a candidate like Al Gore appears, it is relatively easy for Republicans to connect the dots and associate environmentalism with elite Democratic stances that appall so many conservatives. The result is that on every level, the party with the most social conservatives contains the fewest environmentalists. In Congress, the most notable Republican effort in this field is attaching antienvironmental riders to appropriations bills. Martha Marks, head of REP America, refers to herself as "the president of what a few jokers have called the world's funniest oxymoron: Republicans for Environmental Protection."

The absence of a meaningful environmental constituency explains why it was so easy for the new administration to back off the Kyoto agreement and support drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and (ominously) other wilderness areas. The undermining of Christie Todd Whitman as head of the Environmental Protection Agency apparently began early. Word came she was known around the White House as "Brownie," a sarcastic reference to President Clinton's EPA chief, Carol Browner, who was predictably unpopular among many big-name Republicans. Is this a show of contempt for Whitman, her agency, or both?

Republican antienvironmentalism dates only from the Reagan years. As opinion rose against big government and heavy regulation, particularly in the West, environmental protection was demonized as a symbol of Washington's overbearing power. By the time of Newt Gingrich's poll-tested Contract with America, antienvironmentalism was part of the Republican canon. Environmental historian William Cronon writes that the contract "came to grief in good measure because most Americans continue to believe that protecting the environment is a good thing." Newt now thinks so, too, and has admitted that Republicans are "malpositioned" on the environment.

George W. Bush is probably too moderate to emerge as a version of the old antienvironmental Newt. But even in narrow partisan terms, the Republicans should be careful. Wirthlin Worldwide, a polling firm associated with Republican causes, reports that "2 out of 3 Americans say we need to protect the environment no matter what it costs." In 1999, Zogby International, another pollster heavily used by the GOP, surveyed probable Republican primary voters in five key states and found about as much support for "protect environment" (92.8 percent) as for "encourage family values" (93.4 percent). And an Environmental Defense Fund poll says that young adults (18 to 25) are "remarkably skeptical" about environmental progress over the past 30 years, with 62 percent believing that conditions are now worse than in 1970. Republicans may count on the old rule of thumb: Everybody supports the environment in polls, but it's nobody's primary concern in the voting booth. But if I were running the party, I don't think I would tie myself closely to the losing side of a broad national argument.

SF Gate

This is the GOP credo: You're either with us 100 percent, or you're a commie hippie homo who should move to France. And there are few things a conservative fears more than being ostracized by the party.

The truth is, no matter which party you align yourself with, nowadays it takes more guts, more outright nerve, to care about this planet, to work to strip your life of the plastic and the poisonous and minimize your waste and your impact, eat more consciously and support local farming and cherish the flora and fauna, than it ever could be to load up the Escalade with Malaysian-made crap you bought at Wal-Mart that's now 89 cents cheaper because it's made in a sweatshop and not at the local factory that was forced to shut down.

This, then, is the ultimate BushCo credo: No sanctity. No reverence for that which is larger and more ancient and more divine. No concern for that which provides beauty and nourishment and sustenance. Mother Nature is not a source of life and inspiration and vital health -- she's just a lowly wench who needs to be put in her place.

And this, then, is the only possible response: If there was any better time in American history to proudly announce yourself as an environmentalist, this is it. It really doesn't matter where you stand on other issues. Because when that beautiful bitch Mother Nature really begins to strike back, nothing else will matter.

Researchers expose the psychology of the illiberal “liberal” mind

2005-12-08T00:29:00.000-06:00

Alec Rawls

Grounds for a theory
Without intending to, our four professors give a pretty good answer to this question. In laying out what characteristics they think define their opposite numbers (conservatives) the professors are actually are laying out, in photo-negative, their own self conceptions. Apparently this has been a major activity amongst left academics for five decades. By compiling this activity the professors in effect compile decades of self dissection by illiberal “liberals.”

The results support a compelling theory of illiberal “liberalism.” Starting at the bare psychological level, “liberals” (illiberals, if you want to get rid of the quotes) build a world view based on squeamish reluctance to pass moral judgment, (what can be called non-judgmentalism or moral relativism). Of course we already know that political “liberals” are often squeamish about moral judgment. What the good professors do is lay it out for us, from premises to implications.

This provides a framework for understanding the real conflict in America today. On one side, conservatives embrace of a body of moral understanding that yields principles and judgments. On the other side is “liberal” antipathy to judgment and principle. If there is a “liberal” principle, this is it: to try to turn moral skepticism into a principle.

Certainly there are exceptions, and these will be discussed, but our four professors make a strong case. Not only does their meta-analysis of a number of earlier surveys indicate that liberals do indeed abhor principle in principle, but their so-called “liberal” positions demonstrate utter cluelessness about the substance of principled moral understanding. Rejection of principle turns, not surprisingly, into unprincipled thought and behavior, supporting what is presumed to be right via demagogic manipulation, unconcerned with reason, evidence or truth.

Examining this clash between principle and un-principle is a worthwhile exercise. In addition to demolishing a slanderous line of left-academic research, it also goes directly to the heart of the terrible political divides that rend America and the world today: not just conservatism vs. illiberal “liberalism,” but also Christian vs. secular morality and even the West vs. our Islamist enemy. Everything comes down to principle vs. rejection of principle, trust in truth vs. demagogic manipulation of lies. All must either learn to trust in truth, or be defeated by it.

Illiberals and non-judgmentalism
Sulloway is right. The theory is utterly revealing, not about conservatism, but about the liberty hating “liberalism” that he and his comrades subscribe to and see as opposed to conservatism. Look closely at the list of psychological traits that, in the history of illiberal thought, are taken to define conservatism: against ambiguity, against uncertainty, in favor of closure. What this parade of bogeymen actually charges is that conservatives come to conclusions! They resolve uncertainty and ambiguity and achieve closure, and we all know how that happens. Resolution comes from compiling understanding, so as to arrive at applicable moral and practical principles.

Anathema! The professors, and the body of “liberal” theorizing that they summarize, in effect declare their own abhorrence at these building blocks of principle: they embrace ambiguity, they embrace uncertainty, they resist closure. At least they are consistent. This abjuring of judgment is also their underlying theoretical presumption: that positions are arrived at via psychological tic rather than by following reason and evidence and developing understanding.

No wonder these researchers have no clue what any conservative or even liberal principles might be. They don’t themselves have ANY principles, or even understand what a principle is, or how one might be arrived at. That is what their embrace of ambiguity and uncertainty and non-closure means. They are unable or unwilling to move forward in their understanding of right and sense. For five decades, “liberals” have actually been calling themselves stupid. They have been bragging about not being able to resolve anything. Just imagine how complex their minds must be, holding all evidence in a state of perpetual incomprehension. These guys must be real studs, to be able figure out nothing at all and still get jobs at top universities.

Of course no one can actually be non-judgmental, or a moral relativist, but it is perfectly possible to be unprincipled in one’s judgments, and this is what moral skepticism leads to.

Why illiberalism?
If “liberals” embrace non-judgmentalism, it could explain their illiberalism. Those who are squeamish about moral implications cannot share in the moral understanding on which this nation was founded. In particular, they cannot grasp how liberty works or what makes it important. Liberty is what allows people to make progress in the discovery and pursuit of value. It enables the development of moral principle and empowers people to act on their moral progress. If one denies the possibility of moral principle and moral progress, liberty becomes much less important.

We certainly see this with our four deaf mice. Ronald Reagan=Adolph Hitler, and no bell rings. Liberty has no presence in their minds, just as we should expect when liberty is grounded, not in a theory of right, but in a denial that there is any such thing as right. When there is no comprehension of the moral underpinnings of liberty, “liberalism” can even segue into its opposite. Any other concern, having an actual presence in the illiberal mind, will trump liberty.

This theory of illiberal “liberalism” as non-judgmentalism is plausible as an account of academic illiberalism because, as Jost et al. show, left-academicians have been systematically declaring themselves to be pro-uncertainty, pro-ambiguity and anti-closure for many years. They have declared their moral skepticism so we know that the theory fits them. The question is whether non-judgmentalism accounts for “liberalism” more broadly. This seems plausible, given that non-judgmentalism is something of a secular religion amongst those who call themselves “liberal” in America.

Sources of non-judgmentalism
One major source of non-judgmentalism is our system of socialized primary and secondary education, which cannot help but teach moral relativism to children. It is not for government to tell the people how to think straight morally, and any attempt to do so elicits angry protests from those parents who reject whatever particular moral lesson the schools might teach. As a result, the schools by default end up teaching that there is no right and wrong, only difference. They end up teaching non-judgmentalism, or moral relativism.[22]

At the college and university level, moral philosophers may reject moral skepticism and moral relativism, but they are vastly outnumbered by the forces of political correctness, which most certainly do embrace non-judgmentalism. Academia is waging a war on the very concept of merit, which is charged to be inherently racist, sexist, classist, etecetera.[23] Our various victim-studies departments all teach that there is no moral truth, only power, which these departments wield ruthlessly to keep out any who would follow or teach sense and reason. Entire departments of literature and sociology have been taken over by leftist majorities that deny that there is any such thing as sense and reason, only socially constructed ideology, designed to manipulate people into submitting to oppression, which in turn justifies the leftists own demagogic manipulation of ideology.[24] Numerous law schools indulge an ideology that there is no truth, only your own world view, which is just as valid as anyone else’s (and a proper grounds for suit) whether it bears any relation to evidence in the world or not.[25]

From kindergarten to professorship, rejection of moral judgment dominates our educational system. Thus it makes sense that illiberal “liberals” would be the educated urban elites, together with those minority populations that have been taught to see liberty as oppression, and have been bribed into believing it with promises of redress for supposed victim status. On this rough check, the theory works. Non-judgmentalism has broad sources and broad influence that coincide pretty much with the location of illiberal “liberalism” in American society.

Revisiting 'Dennis Prager on the environment' Part 2

2005-12-07T10:53:00.000-06:00

Townhall

The Judeo-Christian responses are clear: Nature has been created for man's use; and on its own, without man, it has no meaning. Dolphins are adorable because human beings find them adorable. Without people to appreciate them or the role they play in the earth's ecosystem to enable human life, they are no more adorable or meaningful than a rock on Pluto.

That is the point of the Creation story -- everything was made in order to prepare the way for the creation of man (and woman, for those whose college education leads them to confuse the generic "man" with "male"). God declared each day's creation "good," but declared the sixth day's creation of man as "very good."

Critics find three biblical notions about nature unacceptable: that man shall lord over it; that it was created solely for man and therefore has no intrinsic value; and that it is not sacred.

Like I stated before, Dennis Prager doesn't appreciate or love nature judging by his tone, and he doesn't want you to, either. I must say, he uses an awful big paint brush. Prager is pushing a heavy pro-consumer (liberal) conservative economic agenda. The omittance that humanity needs some nature to consume for growth, development, and progress, while still being caretakers of the environment as surely God would want, is simply untrustworthy. "No intrinsic value"? Unbelievable.

As regards man "subduing and conquering nature," this was one of the revolutionary ideas of the Old Testament that made Western medical and other scientific progress possible. For all ancient civilizations, nature (or the equally capricious and amoral gods of nature) ruled man. The Book of Genesis came along to teach the opposite -- man is to rule nature.

Only by ruling and conquering nature will man develop cures for nature's diseases. We will conquer cancer; cancer will not conquer us. And only rational beings, not irrational gods of nature, can do so. Judeo-Christian values are the primary reason science and modern medicine developed in the West. A rational God designed nature, and rational human beings can therefore perceive it and, yes, conquer it.

I really do not appreciate or feel comfortable with the "subduing and conquering nature" (without limits?) bit. Prager is being deceitful, and the use of the action word "revolutionary" is an over-exaggeration to sway his readers. There's just enough truth in it to be useful while avoiding any criticisms. A half-truth. For someone who has spent years reading and studying The Bible and Torah, do you expect me to believe Mr. Prager is accurately telling God's plan for nature and humanity? We must conquer it. End of story. I don't even know what to say? The tone is like something out of a brainwashing book. It is so monolithic and insensitive. He actually scares me on the topic.

He also is aligning "irrational" to "gods of nature" while those "rational" to "conquering nature." Uh, is it possible that in some far off faint way those who "conquer nature" without limits and respect for it are also "irrational"? A problem often found in developing nations and conservative-leaning consumer economic agendas.

The notion that it is secularism, not Judeo-Christian values, that enabled scientific inquiry constitutes perhaps the greatest propaganda victory in history. Virtually every great scientist from Sir Isaac Newton to the beginning of 20th century saw scientific inquiry as the study of divine design.

Here Prager wants religion to be above and take credit for science. Scientific fact constantly shows humanity is dependent upon nature, not above it like humanity is atop the food chain in the animal kingdom. A mistake he should know better considering he once said on his program neither can take whole credit for explaining universal existence.

As for the modern secular objection to the Judeo-Christian notion of man as the pinnacle and purpose of nature, one can only say woe unto mankind if that objection prevails. When man is reduced to being part of the natural world, his status is reduced to that of a dolphin. It is one of the great ironies of the contemporary world that humanists render human life largely worthless while God-centered Jews and Christians render human life infinitely sacred. Man's worth is entirely dependent on a God-based view of the world. Without God, man is another part of the ecosystem, and often a lousy one at that.

Man isn't the purpose of nature. If anything nature is the purpose of man. Nature and the environment existed billions of years before humanity stepped upon the earth. Humanity exists amongst it but not above it for survival. How Prager somehow thinks humanity can exist outside it is beyond me because nature and the environment are spread throughout the universe.

(Added later)

If humanity is above nature as Mr. Prager hints at, then can someone explain to me why humanity would die off without nature (natural resources) while nature would continue on without humanity?

So let's say what cannot be said in sophisticated company: Nature was created as the vehicle by which God created the human being, and in order to give emotional, aesthetic and biological sustenance to mankind. Nature in and of itself has no purpose without the existence of human beings to appreciate it. In the words of the Talmud, every person should look at the world and say, "The world was created for me."

More cutting-and-pasting his arguement. Again, nature carried on just fine without human existence. It always has. Why it is dependent on human existence now isn't an accurate telling. Saying "The world was created for me" is bewildering, self-serving, and dishonest to the truth in religious text.

Does this mean that the biblical view of nature gives man the right to pollute the earth or to abuse animals? Absolutely not. Abusing animals is forbidden in the Torah: The ban on eating the limb of a living animal, the ban on placing two animals of different sizes on the same yoke and the ban on working animals seven days a week are just a few examples. To cause gratuitous suffering to an animal is a grave sin. As for polluting the earth, this, too, is religiously prohibited. If the purpose of nature is to ennoble human life and to bear witness to God's magnificence, by what understanding of this concept can a religious person defend polluting nature?

Here Prager is showing a different face to 'cover all the bases' from criticism. He's trying, as one critic put it, to express some form of "duality." Using "to conquer nature" when it fits one agenda while using a speck of compassion and environmental stewarship (found in The Bible) when necessary to portray another image.

We are indeed to be responsible stewards of nature, but for our sake, not its.

Another half-truth which Prager uses for absolutes and not a common middle ground that expresses environmental responsibility.

I'm putting up some of the old quotes because I feel these people expressed their criticisms far better than I ever could:

Middle Ear

-Whenever I'm informed that my life lacks value because it is not eternal, I think that it a strange kind of economy that assigns greater worth to what is in abundance while devaluing that which is precious and rare.

So this guy can pretty much blow me.

-Ugh. To say nothing of the notion of the Covenant in Judeo-Christian tradition (not to the exclusion of similar notions in other traditions). Dolphins, like all nature, are good and beautiful because G-d created them. And we should preserve them, as Noah preserved the animals, because G-d created them. And to say that something is beautiful only if and to the extent that humans find it so isn't religiosity, it's solipsism and nihilism.

Whatta schmuck.

-In the words of the Talmud, every person should look at the world and say, "The world was created for me."

I'm reasonably familiar with this---the original telling is that the rabbi said something along the lines of: "There are two truths, and you should keep both of them in your pocket, to bring out from time to time as you need each of them. The first, that the whole world was created for you. The second, that you are but dust and ashes."

It's one of my favorite religious lessons, expressing duality and goodness, complexity and simplicity, all in one little story. Somehow, repeating only one of them? doesn't seem to me to be a faithful retelling.

-The key notion for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is stewardship. Humans have dominion only as G-d's local managers. The world isn't made for human consumption, but for temporary use in accord with G-d's plan. Since G-d made various creatures, environments, etc., humans are not entitled to capriciously destroy them.

On the science/history note, Prager is a moron. Newton was a Unitarian who was denied a position at Cambridge because he denied the doctrine of the Trinity (and implicitly the divinity of Jesus). Funny who Prager left that part out.

-I'm with paul: the description of scientists who are also religious is patronizing in the least, and a blatant mischaracterization. Part of both the study of God (theology) and the study of nature (science) is humility; reading the evidence in a way that conforms exclusively to a preconceived worldview and selectively ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit in is arrogant in the extreme. One has to assume some pretty awful things about the Creator to look at the universe and try to ram it into a form commensurate with the "literal" reading of Genesis. This "literal" reading is based on shoddy reasoning itself, turning two different creation stories (even the name used for God is different, if I remember my Hebrew class correctly) into one narrative.

The scientific evidence seems to say that biodiversity is a good thing for the planet, which is consistent with the religious view of stewardship.

-Jesse, I'm not seeing Prager fall victim to the central conceit of creationism-- namely that it is designed "just so." Rather, Prager seems to be making the argument that as rational beings, we can understand it. Now, his precise theological argument-- that we must use that understanding to dominate it-- is one that you can feel free to argue over on its theological merits, but I don't think he's falling victim to any of the standard creationist canards, and the starting point of his argument isn't anything that simply a generic belief in a god who created the universe would lead to.

The thing he misses, however, is the concept of humans as caretakers of the earth. He seems to be more concerned about the fact that abusing the earth is a personal sin than about the fact that abusing the earth also hurts others and shows a general disrespect for creation in general.

He also misses the truth of other parts of the old testament-- namely that nature will inevitably, inexorably wear us all down-- ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that. His attitude to the world owes more to the conceits of the Englightenment and what classical writers of Greece called hubris. He's just dressing it up in "Judeo-Christian moral values," because he wants to claim that his personal opinions are somehow the same worldview of a millenia-old religious tradition.

Again, do I really believe Prager, with his years of experience studying the various books of The Bible, doesn't know "humans as caretakers of the earth"? That it just somehow slipped his memory? He's pushing a political agenda.

Saint Augustine has more on the matter:

The sin (defined as "missing the mark") of Dennis Prager is to selectively elevate portions of sacred text which justify conservative politics (the death penalty, "defense of marriage", exploitation of the environment) and to ignore the vast witness of both Testaments which, for example, condemn the abuse of the poor by the rich. To paraphrase Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical, in speaking of these believers: "I don't question their good faith; I question their bad theology." To say that scripture is "divinely inspired" is simply to say that God, not the written word, is divine. There is a danger in idolatry, including biblio-idolatry. Such narrow and uncritical reading of scripture leads not to God but to human enmity and strife.

Revisiting 'Dennis Prager on the environment' Part 1

2005-12-07T02:05:00.000-06:00

Townhall

In every society on earth, people venerated nature and worshipped nature gods. There were gods of thunder and gods of rain. Mountains were worshipped, as were rivers, animals and every natural force known to man. In ancient Egypt, for example, gods included the Nile River, the frog, sun, wind, gazelle, bull, cow, serpent, moon and crocodile.

Then came Genesis, which announced that a supernatural God, i.e., a god who existed outside of nature, created nature. Nothing about nature was divine.

If the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park are not divine in some way even if not the divinest of the divine, then I'm lost on this one.

(Added later)

Funny again how Prager doesn't mention that a "God" created nature, and we can love and appreciate God's gift to us without the need to have ritual dances for our sacred environmental fixtures.

Professor Nahum Sarna, the author of what I consider one of the two most important commentaries on Genesis and Exodus, puts it this way: "The revolutionary Israelite concept of God entails His being wholly separate from the world of His creation and wholly other than what the human mind can conceive or the human imagination depict."

But if "a" God created the Earth and Nature, how can they be wholly seperate from him to begin with? It is a part of the creators blueprint.

This was extremely difficult for men to assimilate then. And as society drifts from Judeo-Christian values, it is becoming difficult to assimilate again today. Major elements in secular Western society are returning to a form of nature worship. Animals are elevated to equality with people, and the natural environment is increasingly regarded as sacred. The most extreme expressions of nature worship actually view human beings as essentially blights on nature.

Even among some who consider themselves religious, and especially among those who consider themselves "spiritual" rather than religious, nature is regarded as divine, and God is deemed as dwelling within it.

Environmentalists who consider themselves "spiritual" but not "religious" are in my estimation missing the point like I stated above. Since in my mind a supernatural power created Nature (and its powerful wonders), there is no doubt in my mind it is religious as well as spiritual. So to be spiritual is to be religious because of godly creation. It's just that spiritualists are in denial of religious creation in the form of nature.

It is quite understandable that people who rely on feelings more than reason to form their spiritual beliefs would deify nature. It is easier -- indeed more natural -- to worship natural beauty than an invisible and morally demanding God.

Here Prager is trying to say that if you have "feelings" towards nature, they must be irrational. He often uses this scenario when comparing liberals to conservatives and secularists to non-secularists. Of course he never mentions that humans naturally have all kinds of feelings when witnessing some of the more extraordinary wonders of nature.

What is puzzling is that many people who claim to rely more on reason would do so. Nature is unworthy of worship. Nature, after all, is always amoral and usually cruel. Nature has no moral laws, only the amoral law of survival of the fittest.

Theoretically speaking this is where I see Prager using a 'dumbed down' or acts of an unknowing and innocent tone. Frankly, I don't even believe he believes his words. People appreciate nature despite its obvious violence because there is much beauty in it. Prager is presenting his "it's a cruel world" so one-sided, words cannot express my anger for his deception.

Why would people who value compassion, kindness or justice venerate nature? The notions of justice and caring for the weak are unique to humanity. In the rest of nature, the weak are to be killed. The individual means nothing in nature; the individual is everything to humans. A hospital, for example, is a profoundly unnatural, indeed antinatural, creation; to expend precious resources on keeping the most frail alive is simply against nature.

I like my old answer:

"Because those same qualities are found in Nature just as Dennis says they are not. A pack of lions devouring a large prey is vicious and unforgiving. Yet when the meal is over, watching a mother lion clean her younger offspring of blood is "compassion" and "kindness" while creating "justice" in Nature by keeping a balance in the ecosystem for the survival of the fittest."

The romanticizing of nature, let alone the ascribing of divinity to it, involves ignoring what really happens in nature. I doubt that those American schoolchildren who conducted a campaign on behalf of freeing a killer whale (the whale in the film "Free Willy") ever saw films of actual killer whale behavior. There are National Geographic videos that show, among other things, killer whales tossing a terrified baby seal back and forth before finally killing it. Perhaps American schoolchildren should see those films and then petition killer whales not to treat baby seals sadistically.

The need to bring in naive schoolchildren into making ones point isn't convincing and pardon, is cheap. Of course children are not aware of the true predatory nature of whales. Yet adults, the studied age group on nature, appreciate it despite its violence. Guess which age group Prager excluded from his persuasion?

If you care about good and evil, you cannot worship nature. And since that is what God most cares about, nature worship is antithetical to Judeo-Christian values.

Nature surely reflects the divine. It is in no way divine. Only nature's Creator is.

Well, theoretically speaking again, it looks to me like Dennis Prager doesn't want you to enjoy nature at all. And frankly Dennis has no interest in the environment. (He lives in if not the most developed county in America, one of the most in LA. In other words, he doesn't live near nature.) After three years of listening to his program, he hasn't actually expressed any interest other than his passion towards environmental extremism (a leftist reactionary phenomenon). He has no pro-environmental positions (and the key operative, no passion towards the subject). I find much of his column rather self-serving to his party's ideology. No realization, or intentionally not wanting you the reader to realize, that the environment actually benefits humanity in ways (spiritual) other than just as a useful commodity.

Dennis Prager's entire writings on the environment can be diffused simply on the basis that God created nature. A religious person persuading people to dislike or to be against or find nothing of value in nature goes against a higher powers plan of environmental creation and the dependency humanity has upon it for survival.

I'm reminded of a beautiful quote Pharyngula once said on the environment:

...dolphins are great and beautiful creatures, as are spiders and sea anemones and scrub pines and E. coli. The universe is a wonderful place, huge and complex and diverse and largely independent of my existence, and I am greatly privileged to be one small but precious voice singing in a mighty cosmic choir. Embracing the majesty of existence does not make me a smaller man.

Bush discretionary spending

2005-12-06T16:46:00.000-06:00

I do subscribe to the conspiracy theory that nearly all presidents in history should've been impeached for one thing or another. Sure, they never do, but for the Bush administration it should've not been for WMD, but spending.

Defending Spending: Bush's Bloopers

That's an average annual growth rate of 2.4% during Clinton's eight years, compared to an average of 11.8% during Bush's first three.

'Conservative' Bush Spends More than 'Liberal' Presidents Clinton, CarterL

But the real truth is that national defense is far from being responsible for all of the spending increases. According to the new numbers, defense spending will have risen by about 34 percent since Bush came into office. But, at the same time, non-defense discretionary spending will have skyrocketed by almost 28 percent. Government agencies that Republicans were calling to be abolished less than 10 years ago, such as education and labor, have enjoyed jaw-dropping spending increases under Bush of 70 percent and 65 percent respectively.

Then...

The White House spinmeisters insist that we keep the size of the deficit "in perspective." Sure it's appropriate that the budget deficit should be measured against the relative size of the economy. Today, the projected budget deficit represents 4.2 percent of the nation's GDP. Thus the folks in the Bush administration pat themselves on the back while they remind us that in the 1980s the economy handled deficits of 6 percent. So what? Apparently this administration seems to think that achieving low standards instead of the lowest is supposed to be comforting.

That the nation's budgetary situation continues to deteriorate is because the administration's fiscal policy has been decidedly more about politics than policy. Even the tax cuts, which happened to be good policy, were still political in nature considering their appeal to the Republican's conservative base. At the same time, the politicos running the Bush reelection machine have consistently tried to placate or silence the liberals and special interests by throwing money at their every whim and desire. In mathematical terms, the administration calculates that satiated conservatives plus silenced liberals equals reelection.

How else can one explain the administration publishing a glossy report criticizing farm programs and then proceeding to sign a farm bill that expands those same programs? How else can one explain the administration acknowledging that entitlements are going to bankrupt the nation if left unreformed yet pushing the largest historical expansion in Medicare one year before the election? Such blatant political maneuvering can only be described as Clintonian.

But perhaps we are being unfair to former President Clinton. After all, in inflation-adjusted terms, Clinton had overseen a total spending increase of only 3.5 percent at the same point in his administration. More importantly, after his first three years in office, non-defense discretionary spending actually went down by 0.7 percent. This is contrasted by Bush's three-year total spending increase of 15.6 percent and a 20.8 percent explosion in non-defense discretionary spending.

Bush Budget Reveals Serious Overspending Problems

The biggest spending administration in decades. With Bush's budget plan for FY2004, real non-defense discretionary outlays will rise 18.0 percent in his first three years in office (FY2002-FY2004). That growth far exceeds the first three years of any recent presidential term, including Ronald Reagan's first term (-13.5 percent), Reagan's second term (-3.2 percent), George H. Bush's term (11.6 percent), Bill Clinton's first term (-0.7 percent), and Clinton's second term (8.2 percent). When Reagan came to office and pursued a large defense build-up, he essentially froze non-defense discretionary outlays, which were $150 billion in FY1981 and just $151 billion three years later in FY1984 (in current dollars).

A spending freeze would eliminate the deficit. The FY2004 budget would increase discretionary outlays from $791 billion in FY2003 to $926 billion by FY2008. If, instead, discretionary outlays were frozen at the FY2003 level, the deficit would plunge to just $55 billion by FY2008. The budget could be balanced even more quickly with reforms to cut rapidly growing entitlement costs. If total outlays were frozen at the FY2003 level, the budget would essentially be balanced in just two years (by FY2005).

Spending increases dwarf proposed tax cuts. The administration proposes to increase total federal outlays by $89 billion in FY2004, $114 billion in FY2005, and more than $100 billion each year thereafter. As spending increases accumulate, annual outlays are expected to be $571 billion greater in FY2008 than in FY2003. By contrast, the tax cuts in the administration's growth package have a tiny effect on future budgets. By FY2008, the Bush growth package tax cuts would reduce federal revenues by just $50 billion annually in FY2008.

Only 2 of 21 major departments and agencies are cut. Only 2 of the 21 major federal departments -- Justice and Labor -- would receive an actual cut in discretionary budget authority in FY2004. While most departments receive small increases this year, many have had substantial growth in recent years. For example, the Department of Education budget has jumped from $40.1 billion in FY2001 to $53.1 billion in FY2004. During the same period, the Health and Human Services budget increased from $54.2 billion to $66.2 billion, State and International Assistance from $20.4 billion to $27.4 billion, and Veterans Affairs from $22.4 billion to $28.1 billion.

Almost $400 billion for state and local governments. State officials are demanding a federal government bailout to make up for their poor fiscal management. Yet the budget shows that total federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments increased from $285 billion in FY2000 to $384 billion in FY2003. The administration has resisted as large a bailout as states want, but grants are still expected to rise to $399 billion in FY2004.

Bush vs. Clinton for FY2004. When former President Clinton introduced his FY2000 budget, he proposed that non-defense discretionary spending for FY2004 should be $335 billion, as shown in Figure 1. President Bush is now proposing that non-defense discretionary outlays rise to $429 billion in FY2004, or almost $100 billion greater than Clinton's original plan. The sad fact is that the administration and Congress do not adhere to out-year budget plans, as they always spend far more than originally proposed. Unless the Bush administration pursues major program cuts and terminations, its 2.3 percent proposed annual average growth in non-defense discretionary outlays (FY2004-FY2008) is very optimistic.

Bush Beats Johnson: Comparing the Presidents

-As it turns out, George W. Bush is one of the biggest spenders of them all. In fact, he is an even bigger spender than Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.

-The increase in discretionary spending--that is, all nonentitlement programs--in Bush's first term was 48.5 percent in nominal terms. That's more than twice as large as the increase in discretionary spending during Clinton's entire two terms (21.6 percent), and just higher than Lyndon Johnson's entire discretionary spending spree (48.3 percent).

-Bush has expanded federal nonentitlement programs in his first term almost twice as fast each year as Lyndon Johnson did during his entire presidency.

Bush Beats LBJ on Spending

...While the data show that all presidents presided over net increases in spending, George W. Bush is shown to be one of the biggest spenders of them all, even outpacing Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.

An excerpt from the report: "The increase in discretionary spending - that is, all nonentitlement programs - in Bush's first term was 48.5 percent in nominal terms. That's more than twice as large as the increase in discretionary spending during Clinton's entire two terms (21.6 percent), and just higher than Lyndon Johnson's entire discretionary spending spree (48.3 percent).

2005 Budget Proposal

Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies:

The budget proposes to cut 150 programs, but the fine print shows that these cuts will only reduce 2006 spending by 0.8 percent.

The administration is still not serious about cutting spending: 2 of the 5 pages of the budget overview tout 37 new spending initiatives.

The Bush budget underscores how out-of-control federal spending is. The budget is being billed as the tighest yet, but overall spending is projected to rise 3.6 percent in 2006 even without further money for Iraq.

Despite his promises, Bush's budget does not realistically cut the deficit in half by 2009.

Cato Institute

Total federal outlays will rise 29 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 according to the president's fiscal year 2005 budget released in February. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of the government's return to massive budget deficits."
"Nondefense discretionary outlays will increase about 36 percent during President Bush's first term in office."
"In FY2005, total outlays will be up an astounding $547 billion from FY2001, when Bush came into office.

Hit and Run

Over the past two weeks, I've written or co-written a couple of things about how George W. Bush outspent Lyndon Baines Johnson in his first four budgets. To recap: When it comes to inflation-adjusted increases in discretionary spending (comprising most defense and nonentitlement spending), Dubya beats LBJ like Sam Houston beat Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto.

The gap becomes even bigger when you stretch the comparisons out to the first five years of each prez's budgets. Here are numbers for all recent presidents who oversaw at least five budgets prepared by American Enterprise Institute analyst Veronique de Rugy. All are based on Office of Management and Budget and all are adjusted for inflation. The Bush figure for fiscal year 2005 is based on OMB midsession review numbers; the figure for fiscal year 2006 is based on the OMB midsession review of the budget Bush submitted earlier this year (if anything, the final figures will be higher than his provisional budget):

First Five Years, Percentage Changes in Real Discretionary Spending

LBJ: 25.2%
Nixon: -16.5%
Reagan: 11.9%
Clinton: -8.2%
Bush: 35.2%

Read 'em and weep.

On Spending, Bush Is No Reagan

Journalists and Troops divide

2005-11-30T08:06:00.000-06:00

Fred On Everything

Soldiers And Reporters
By A Well-Known Traitor
November 29, 2005

Much email comes my way, from military folk both current and retired, assuring me that the press consists of leftist commy anti-American liberal tree-hugging cowardly backstabbers who probably like the French and would date Jane Fonda. It is an old song. Having spent decades covering the armed forces, I have seen much of the Pentagon and the press. Things are a tad more complex. A few thoughts:

The military, particularly the officer corps, wants not reporting but cheerleading. The very idea of an uncontrolled press is repugnant. Thus officers try to keep reporters away from enlisted men, who are less political and tend to say things that, while true, are not policy. Thus the edgy, wary hostility in the presence of reporters. The truth of what a reporter writes doesn’t matter to them, only whether it is “positive.”

The reasons for this sensitivity are in part practical, given that wars cannot long be fought without the support of the public. There are deeper reasons. First, there is the military’s stark with-us-or-against-us outlook. Second, the intense loyalty to the group that characterizes military men. Third, an authoritarian structure to which reporters seem an uncontrolled rabble. “Uncontrolled” is the key word.

The military believes that the press should be part of the team. Its job should be not to report but to support. “Are they Americans, or aren’t they?” To see what the command thinks the press should be, read a base newspaper. It will be a cross between a PR handout and a Weekly Reader.

Reporters do not see their job as cheerleading, this being the work of PR people, whom they despise. Correspondents by nature are not team players but salaried freelances who compete with, instead of cooperating with, their colleagues. Glory hounds, they want to break the big story themselves. Instead of being loyal to any group, they are suspicious of all groups. They do not respect authority. Frequently incompetent, they are pushy, demanding, and irritating. The military is afraid of them. You hate what you fear.

In short, they are everything the military detests. If they did their jobs perfectly, which neither they nor soldiers do, the military would still loathe them.

Further, soldiers with exceptions are insular, reporters greatly less so. Consider. A kid who goes to West Point lives for four years, in formative late adolescence, with relentless military indoctrination. This is not in all respects bad. It tends to produce a personally honest, public-spirited, responsible man who makes an admirable citizen. These same men can run a carrier battle group, as difficult and impressive a thing as I have ever seen done, and they can do it only because they obey, make sacrifices, and respect the group.

The young cadet then goes to Fort Hood, say, for three years in which he is almost exclusively in the company of other soldiers. Next, three years in an armored division in Germany (the rotations may have changed) during which he is again constantly with soldiers and, since GIs don’t learn languages, unable to communicate with Germans other than bartenders. The Army is his entire existence. By the time he is thirty he is deeply imbued with a bird-politics leftwing vs. rightwing view of things. He is by no means stupid—the academies get bright students—but he is simple-minded. He believes profoundly that one is either on the team or one is with the enemy.

Reporters aren’t on the team. They report what they see, or think they see. Many do not know what they are talking about, but the military detests even more those who do. In time of war, truthfulness makes them traitors. Soldiers often use the word, and they mean it. You are with us, or you are with the enemy.

The two groups live in sharply differing mental worlds. While reporters are more insular than they should be, they are much less so than the military. They see a broader slice of the world and rub shoulders with more kinds of people. The overseas correspondents see more wars than do soldiers. The result is a certain cosmopolitanism which, whether good or bad, is much at odds with the clarity of the military’s outlook.

For example, many in Washington who actually know how the press works (the military actually doesn’t) believe that the press supports the war in Iraq, has until recently given the White House a free ride, and has been adroitly controlled by the government. I agree. If newspapers had been against the war, they would have published countless photos of gut-shot soldiers who will never get a date, paraplegics doomed to a life on a slab, and more Abu Ghraib photos (which they have.) Soldiers don’t know this. In any event, anything but unqualified support is treason.

The military usually regards journalists as cowards. (“Coward” and “traitor” are their gravest pejoratives.) This is questionable. When the 2000th US soldier died in Iraq, I checked the site of Reporters Without Borders and found that 72 reporters had been killed there (with two more missing), or 3.6 percent of the military total. I don’t know how many troops have served in Iraq. Just now it is about 160,000. To be conservative, let’s call it 130,000 on average, making 347,100 for two and two-thirds years of war. By the equation 2,000/347,000 = 72/x, one finds that there would have to have been 12,500 reporters in Iraq to have equal rates of death between reporters and soldiers. Otherwise, the press is taking casualties at a higher rate than the military. The calculation is rough, but makes the point.

Further, reporters can leave any time they choose. The government forces soldiers to fight under penalty of long jail sentences and, in many times and places, death. If you dispute this, tell the troops that they can fly home tomorrow without punishment and see how many remain. They would not leave from cowardice, but from lack of a stake in the outcome. (Would you leave your children fatherless because you wanted democracy in Iraq?)

More than most professions, the military lives in a world defined by idealism. Being a dentist does not carry an ideology with it. Being a soldier does. The dedicated soldier thinks in terms of honor, valor, loyalty, sacrifice, and heroism, of righting wrong and defeating evil, of proving himself in combat, of glory and exaltation and defending the fatherland. The reporter sees the dead lying in the street, the flies crawling in shattered craniums, the bombed-out cities for year after year without change. He hears this described as progress. To him it is pure bullshit.

Maybe, maybe not. But it is how he thinks.

Journalists are not idealists. Cynical, weary of being lied to, having seen the fraud and self-interest that underlie, as they come to see it, almost everything, they regard the soldiery as a riverboat gambler might regard the Boy Scouts. The soldiery regard the press as a Boy Scout might regard a riverboat gambler. Different mental worlds.

Ambiguity disturbs soldiers. Few of us can kill and die for ifs and maybes and on-the-one-hand. Thus every war is described in apocalyptic terms, whether Vietnam, Granada, Korea, or Iraq: We must defeat them there or we’ll have to fight them in California. Usually this is nonsense. Journalists may suggest as much. And so, again, they become traitors.

The moral ambiguity of war is especially painful. While military men as citizens are at least as moral as the rest of the population, as warriors they are not, and can’t be. Because of this conflict they therefore have to believe things about themselves that are not true. Consequently you may hear a soldier saying with perfectly sincerity that the US military goes to great lengths to avoid killing civilians. Furious accusation of treason arise when reporters point out that they are in fact killing civilians.

For example, while a case can be made that the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were militarily desirable, they cannot well be described as attempts to preserve civilians. The bombings of cities in WWII were intended to kill civilians, hundreds of thousands of them, to break morale. In war utility invariably trumps decency.

Reporters, being traitorous, will write of these things. After initial cheerleading while the war goes well, they will note that it isn’t going well any longer. Soldiers, who are being killed and mangled, come to hate them, seldom distinguishing between being against a war and being against the troops. After the hell of combat, who wants to hear that maybe it wasn’t really a good idea after all?

On and on it goes.

Oil peak: I enjoy a little alarmist doom, frankly

2005-11-29T12:36:00.000-06:00

That way I don't have to hear the government telling me "Rest assured we are looking into the matter" or some other spokespersonian tone that makes me... well, nevermind. Anyways, some of the assumptions by James Howard Kunstler are rather staggering, and I'd rather keep these in my back pocket just in case some of them were to come true, or even remotely so. Greed does some pretty wonderous things, and it's for the first time why I have started to believe the war in the Middle East is in fact over oil just as much as anything else. US independence on oil isn't exactly homegrown, and it's either getting (taking?) it from somewhere else or face the consequences of Kunstler's theories even earlier without imported oil. For the record though it should be known I continue to support the war even though I question where the exit strategy is. And also I prefer to have the memory of the fallen written in stone with the words "terrorism" and not "oil for economics." This all could be outlandish claims, but when push comes to shove over economic welfare, I wouldn't pass the notion up on any country in dire need. It says to me time and again conservation is and always will be the ideal. That in fact people generally are happier when consuming less. I am open to comments with supported data though.

True North

Kunstler has been accused of being overly pessimistic and gloomy about the future. That's not surprising given the emphasis on state sponsored scientism by the Bush regime. Not being overly fond of religion (he once said "Religion is a kind of low-grade showbiz for that half of the nation under the median IQ") hasn't improved his standing with the Theopublicans either. Saying things the petro-jihadists don't like doesn't mean he's wrong.

So what is "peak oil"? I'll let Kunstler explain that himself.

"The few Americans who are even aware there is a gathering global energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That core states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems.

The term "global oil production peak" means that the time will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year, and after that production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. Peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total fossil fuel endowment.

The best estimates of when this peak will actually happen are somewhere between now and 2010. In the past year, after revelations that Shell Oil misstated its reserves, and the Saudi Arabians proved incapable of goosing up their production, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time peak production.

It will change everything about how we live.

Some other things about the global energy predicament are poorly under stood by the public and even by our leaders.

The first is that this is going to be a permanent energy crisis. It's not going to go away this time. We will not over come it. We will have to accommodate ourselves to fundamentally changed conditions.

The second explains the first: no combination of alternative fuels or systems will allow us to keep living the way we do. They will not even allow us to keep running a substantial fraction of what we are currently running. This is particularly true of the so-called hydrogen economy. There isn't going to be any hydrogen economy. The idea is a fraud. It represents the wishful think thinking of American leaders in politics, business, and even technology. I call this the "Jimmy Cricket Syndrome,” the notion that wishing for something makes it come true.

The peak oil idea is based on the theory that oil is a finite resource. It was created by certain organic and tectonic processes millions of years ago, and there was only so much of it formed - a lot, but only so much. The earth does not have a "creamy nougat center" of inexhaustible "inorganic" oil, as some of the wishful would like to think."

This is not about running out of oil. There will always be some oil left. That isn't the problem. The problem is that we have skimmed off the cream (so to speak) in the form of easily accesible, sweet, light crude.

"The oil that remains, meanwhile, the second half of Earth's all-time total endowment, is the oil that is harder to get out of the ground. The first half was easy to get to. Most of it was accessible on land, in places where the weather is pretty good and the working conditions favorable - in Texas, for instance. Much of the remaining oil lies in forbidding places, in the Arctic, or deep under the ocean. It will be much more difficult and expensive to get out. Quite a bit of it will never be extracted because it will take more than a barrel of oil in energy to extract a barrel of oil."

James Howard Kunstler books:
The Long Emergency
Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape

A "tech" company offering environmental advice?

2005-11-29T09:53:00.000-06:00

I first heard of Steven Milloy (Tech Central Station) through Front Page Magazine's environmental archives section. I tired of the one-sided environmental extremists expositions, and my general cynicism towards politics (and environmental bias) kept asking telling me to look elsewhere. More importantly to me, it doesn't follow a common sense flow. Granted there are environmental organizations with motives, but hiring a "tech" company to give out valid projections on the environment is odd to say the least. Because tech company's usually concentrate on, well, technology. I understand the need for some development, but this breaks the common sense law that the environment need not some form of environmentalism to protect the environment. I would assume the last thing Nat'l Park protection needs is human interference of any kind. But simply to leave it alone and let nature run its course. A columnist once said the environment needs technology to better protect it. That may well be true given technology breeds the need for more technology, and once poverty is removed from the globe, so to will the need to mistreat the Earth for human survival. However, this certainly isn't a sacrosanct postion, and I for one am a 'back to basics' kinda person. When administrations tell the new media we need to remove trees from Nat'l Forests to prevent further fires, I know this isn't factual. Not because I knew the exact details that trees have fire protections naturally built in them in the form of thick barks, but because my generally applied understanding of life is a naturalist look. Therefore, human-induced (for a lack of a better word) removal of trees makes fires more prone because the Earth (and the Universe) was already created in a perfect state before humanity conquered it. Trees have built in survival mechanisms just like humans to disease.

Anyhow, after my ramblings what I'm trying to say is I don't disagree with all of Steven Milloy's assertions because he does have some fine points. But the Middle Ear will not tolerate those who discredit science and the environment for the sake of political gain. And it isn't as important to me to read every word of his as it is to know his final position will always be anti-environmental.

Crooked Timber

But worst of all is when think tanks deliberately propagate inaccuracies, misinformation and downright lies in order to muddy policy debates, and create the appearance of doubt where there isn’t real grounds for it, not only engaging in suppressio veri but suggestio falsi. It’s this that Mooney identifies as having happened thanks to Exxon’s funding of global warming ‘skeptics.’ There are grounds for debating the appropriate policy response to human-caused global warming, but not for debating whether it’s a real phenomenon. Exxon’s funding of think tanks and astroturf groups has had the (presumably intended) effect of creating an appearance of debate, through whistling an opposition into existence out of thin air. However, there isn’t any serious scientific debate about whether human-caused global warming exists and is important – quite simply, these organizations are being funded by Exxon to cloud the public debate, and block political action. Not to further the real debate, but to prevent it from starting.

Jim Norton's Correcting Myths from Steven Milloy
Environmental Defense: Guess Who's Funding the Global Warming Doubt Shops?
ExxonMobil's $8 million in donations

Is America a democracy?

2005-08-23T10:50:00.000-05:00

The Education Forum

America is a democracy all right. And Americans vote on the wallets just as soldiers march on their stomachs.

Life is good here. Maybe it is a Matrix-like existence and maybe it isn't. But evena modest school teacher like myself can afford more than I should and live in calm and security.

Americans have the power to change their government whenever they wish. Here in America you are considered a bore if you harp too much about politics. We generally learn about politics as things go wrong and react in outrage if the mood suits us.

I don't believe in the Matrix and a range of other ongoing conspiracies. People are just too inept to have a master ring of control over everything. Look at how accurate the CIA was about Iraq and then rethink its ability to shape the world the way it wants to.

We are a complacent people. We need to see real damage at home before we will react. We like short speeches, and Americans react a lot more strongly to "let's nuke 'em and turn it into a glass desert" then we do to "In order to stave off terrrorism for the long run we need to better understand 'why they hate us'. It is far easier to paint the threat as evil and leaving it ill-defined.

But make no mistake about our political system being a democracy. Just because our first past the post system makes it difficult for smaller voices to be heard, does not mean that populism cannot shake people out of their seats in Washington.

We are also a capitalist system, and as in any other society I can think of, people with lots of money have an inordinate impact on the policies of our country.

Complacency lets the milionaires club rule through influence peddling. The people get the governmnet they deserve. That is democracy.

Working with John's definition of democracy: A government in which the supreme power is exercised by the people directly or indirectly through a system of representation involving free elections… the absence of class distinctions or privileges; then no. If "the absence of class distinctions or privileges" is part of the definition, no reasonable person could define America as a democracy.

America is more accurately defined as a capitalist society (for better or worse). Money buys political influence, favors, and power. This is true on both sides of the political aisle in America- left and right, democrat and republican. Though we elect our officials, they are/become subordinates of corporate wealth and desires. Money talks. Protest all you want. Vote with your head and your conscience. But have no illusions, your voice, the will of the People and the good of the population buys rhetoric and lip service. Money buys legislation. Money buys action. Money buys policy decisions.

I hate to sound so cynical, but even if an elected official starts out as an idealist with higher values and a broader, more enlightened vision, he or she quickly learns who signs the checks in America.

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but IMHO, a more accurate description of today's America would be a plutocracy.

Plutocracy:
1. the rule of power of wealth or of the wealthy.
2. a government or state in which the wealthy class rules.
3. a class or group ruling, or exercising power or influence, by virtue of its wealth.

Government by the rich and powerful. "A weapon in that struggle [between democracy and plutocracy] is the Court system, more often than not used to greatest effect by the plutocracy. An example is the series of injunctions taken out by European Pacific to prevent these matters being exposed [in the Media or Parliament]." [PCW p326]
www.embassy.org.nz/encycl/p5encyc.htm

Rule by wealth
wordmentor.placementor.com/vocabulary_powerkit/02.htm

a political system governed by the wealthy people
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

A plutocracy is a government system where wealth is the principal basis of power (from the Greek ploutos meaning wealth).

The word "democracy" has come to be nothing more than a corporate marketing buzzword employed by politicians as often as possible, preferably with the flag waving in the background and a patriotic score playing in the throughout. And the masses gobble it up like crack-flavored pringles, slapping American flag bumper stickers all over their cars and basking in their self-righteous, ethnocentric world view.

Of course the alternative would be to turn off the TV for awhile, start thinking critically and independently, and face the today's realities with a more educated and open-minded world view. I frankly can't see that happening.

Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Karl, meet today's entertainment industry (television, Hollywood, professional sports, consumer electronics). The greatest ally the plutocracy has had, aside from the media, is the distraction, errrr... entertainment industry. We're sheep. Sheep who have become all too comfortable and do not wish to be inconvenienced by today's political and economic realities.

Of course, that's just my opinion. Sorry about the rant.

Sheehan Gets Surprise Visit from Woodstock Artists

2005-08-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here.

An Iraq War without a plan

2005-08-19T11:48:00.000-05:00

These are two obvious differing sides to the war. What I would like to see (and will email fellow bloggers on) is there needs to be some type of plan or timetable set in motion that states some parameters on how long or when American troops should come home. There are different variables to this, and no one answer is perfect. So with that in mind, I suggest we set a timetable in the future, a marker point, for the supposed war strategy to improve, assuming it has declined. Opposers of the war cannot expect our troops just to drop everything and head home immediately. Supporters cannot expect frustrated family members to wait out a campaign without a hint of any Iraqi seperation.

Anti-war

The real dagger pointed at the heart of the War Party isn't the Democratic mobilization that is even now gathering to bring down the GOP, it's the people Hagel's been talking to back in Nebraska, all of them rock-solid Republicans. They will prove decisive in putting the war plans of the neocons on indefinite hold:

"Hagel said even some who had previously backed Bush strongly on Iraq now felt deep unease. 'The feeling that I get back here, looking in the eyes of real people, where I knew where they were two years ago or a year ago – they've changed,' he said. 'These aren't people who ebb and flow on issues. These are rock-solid, conservative Republicans who love their country, support the troops, and support the president.'"

The neocon radio screamers and the Fox News bleach blondes are always carrying on about how it's "the Left" and "the leftists" who are driving rising antiwar sentiment across the country, but if you look at the polls, it just isn't true. Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and a Democrat running in a heavily Republican district, almost beat the GOP candidate in a special congressional election in Ohio, winning 48 percent of the vote, against the 52 percent won by Rob Portman, the Republican incumbent in 2004.

Victor Davis Hanson

Third and most important, is the battlefield, the final adjudicator of political disagreement. War more often creates political reality, rather than politics determining the course of the war. If the United States winds down its presence, curtails its losses while Iraqis beat the terrorists and ensure a democratic government, then the victory, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, will still have a thousand fathers. WMD controversies will be a distant memory.

But if the insurrection increases, topples the government, and we withdraw from a new Lebanon, then the Iraqi defeat will be an orphan.

My own view remains absolutely unchanged — that we were right, in both a practical and a moral sense, in removing Saddam, that despite depressing lows and giddy highs, the democratic reconstruction of Iraq will work out, that an emerging constitutional government will make both Americans safer and the Middle East in general more stable, that preexisting jihadists are flocking to Iraq and being defeated rather than being created ex nihilo, that anti-Americanism will gradually subside in the Muslim world as millions see that we are consistent in our support of democratic reform, that the United States military has proved itself the preeminent fighting force in the world today and is on the offensive in Iraq and winning a difficult asymmetrical campaign, and that old allies in Europe and Japan and new ones from India to Russia will slowly come to appreciate American constancy and leadership as never before.

But I am not naïve enough to think that most Americans at this moment would agree with all — or any — of that.

Cindy Sheehan: I'll be glad when this passes over

2005-08-19T10:50:00.000-05:00

Townhall

It is embarrassing and inhumane for the media to expose this poor women’s unbalanced behavior. Somebody needs to step in to provide her with a quiet place to rest and, one would hope, regain her rationality and emotional balance. It is terribly sad to see the press ¬¬–– bored from a slow-news August and the forced inactivity in Crawford, Texas –– exploit someone who has become a crackpot.

Lengthy indictments:

Michelle Malkin
Front Page

Media Matters: Hard Right

Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens also implied that Sheehan is anti-Semitic, accusing her of repeatedly making a statement "to the effect that her son was killed in a war run by a secret Jewish cabal within the administration." Hitchens then asserted that Sheehan was being manipulated by "hysterical paranoid ideologist[s]" who have turned the "Camp Casey" protest into "Camp Fruitbat and Nutbag."

Well, I think that it's true that there are Americans who feel the way Cindy Sheehan does. Unfortunately, they are Americans who are very anti-Israel and, in some ways, anti-Semitic. She uses the term how the "neocons" are doing this thing -- that's code word for "the Jews in the Pentagon." -G. Gordon Liddy

To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn. -Ann Coulter

Media Matters

Olbermann named nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh "today's worst person in the world" for saying on his August 15 radio show that "Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing about it that's real." Commenting on Limbaugh's remarks -- which Media Matters noted on August 16 -- Olbermann said, "I guess she made up that dead-son-in-Iraq business! He [Limbaugh] also referred to her supporters as 'dope-smoking FM types.' I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics. Rush Limbaugh, today's worst person in the world!"

Iraq The Model's appropriate Message to Cindy Sheehan