Why Congressman Peter King is on a Crusade against Muslims

     You’re aware, of course, that Congressman Peter King (R-NY) has embarked on a crusade to investigate Muslims in America, supposedly to find out what motivates them to become "radicalized.” Millions of sensible Americans are scratching their heads, wondering why he"s doing this.

     According to a 2007 survey by Pew Research, American Muslims are about as radical as apple pie. (Source)

     Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky and Imam Jihad Turk  have an unconvincing explanation for King's crusade. They say that King is "making a mistake.”  (Source)  They rightly point out that King's witch hunt is more likely to stir up animosity against Muslims and perhaps serve to radicalize a few Muslims and more than a few non-Muslims.

     Excuse me, but a mistake is something that happens once, over a brief period of time. For example, if a beer-bellied man wore a tight-fitting, knit sport shirt, that would be a mistake. It would make him look like a product placement ad for Budweiser.

     I looked into Peter King's records and found more convincing explanations for the congressman's radical and un-American behavior.

     Like most politicians who began their adult lives as Vietnam draft dodgers (he cooled his heels in the National Guard until 1973), Peter King is gungho on America's wars of aggression and empire building. In his letters to constituents, he can be particularly harsh with constituents who try to reason with him.

     I realize that most politicians are far from smart, but stupidity alone doesn't explain King's witch hunt. After all, his campaign contributors didn’t get rich by being stupid.

     Who are his campaign contributors? Let's take a look at the 2010 campaign cycle.  (Source)

     Of the twenty top contributors to his 2010 re-election campaign, five of them are manufacturers of military weaponry. They are General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Honeywell International, and United Technologies. Open Secrets.Org doesn't have a link for United Technologies. Here's a link for it:  

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7004833821877183483&postID=9143759782290515867

     In the 2010 election cycle, Congressman King received a total of $62,250 from PACs or individuals representing those few companies.

     A brief search turned up the fact that United Technologies, Boeing, and Raytheon are closely connected. Boeing and Raytheon have been manufacturers of the tomahawk missile—the missile that many researchers believe was used to attack the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Boeing and United Technologies are sister companies. Boeing and Honeywell have undertaken joint projects.

     During that same cycle, he received $11,000 from Goldman Sachs, which needs no introduction.

    If you’ve never heard of Park Strategies, don't feel embarrassed. I had to look it up myself. They are lobbyists for the military-industrial complex, the banksters, and "homeland security.” 

(Source) King received $11,550 from them.

     Of course, heavy-hitting campaign donors don't dish out that kind of dough just because they like a candidate. For them, it's an investment.

     Does it pay off? Well, let's take a look at which companies got the most federal taxpayer dollars for FY2010. I’ve placed in parentheses the amount they received in return for their campaign (ahem!) "contributions.” .(Source)

     Below each name, I've given the total amounts of money that their PACs or individuals gave to Congress (Source: Open Congres.org)

1. Lockheed Martin Corporation ($38,512,401,433.23)

Contributions 2010 cycle: $2,669,689

2. Boeing Company ($21,956,065,368.89)

Contributions 2010 cycle: $2,805,693

4. Raytheon Company ($16,106,903,431.28)

Contributions 2010 cycle: $2,172,978

22. Honeywell International Inc. ($2,938,415,700.74)

Contributions 2010 cycle: $3,861,235

     In case you’re wondering, what Goldman Sachs's PACs and perps did with the billions of dollars in bailout (read: embezzlement) money, they gave $5,868,239 to congressmen for the 2008 election cycle and $2,482,477 during the 2010 cycle.  Where else can you get a multibillion-dollar return on an eight-million-dollar investment?

     Never let anyone tell you that our congress critters are cheap crooks. As Pete King and his unindicted co-conspirators have shown us, they're some of the most expensive crooks that blood money can buy.

James Clyburn: Poster Child for Corruption

Suppose your congressman were about half as corrupt as South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn. Would you be pleased with that? To some of y’all, that may depend on how corrupt James Clyburn is.

I ask this question because, assuming that degrees of corruption may be measured along a bell-shaped curve, the average United States congressman is probably a little more than half as corrupt as James Clyburn. Of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, only 50 congressmen have grafted more money for family and cronies than James Clyburn. Figured in dollars that congressional corruption is costing us, we may divide the cost of Clyburn’s corruption in half and multiply it by 535—the number of senators and “representatives” in the U.S. Congress. That’s at least how much it’s costing American taxpayers.
Of course, we’d have to add the cost of the Wall Street embezzlement bills, the Big Pharma/health insurance scams, and various other multi-trillion-dollar acts of collective congressional embezzlement. Only in Congress is the misappropriation of several million dollars considered, at worst, petty theft.
The Myrtle Beach (South Carolina) Sun News and other newspapers have been running articles on Congressman James Clyburn’s corruption. Clyburn’s excuses have been inconsistent.
In an interview, he said he saw nothing wrong with his graft. In 2008, the Sun News quoted him in a classic case of misdirection: “I have a bushel of family members. I earmark stuff for the State of South Carolina, and my daughter works for the state. I earmark stuff for Sumter, and several of my nieces and nephews work for Sumter. I’ve earmarked millions of dollars for I-73. Should I not do that because my son is an engineer with the highway department?”

Clyburn didn’t mention the $3 million earmarked for a golf course program named after Clyburn, although that program is already funded by Fortune 500 companies. He didn’t mention the two projects on which his nephew Derrick Ballard was one of the lead architects: one for $784,000 and one for $145,000. In the latter case, known as Five Rivers, executives faced 15 felony charges that they had stolen public money.
On July 3, 2010, all five executives pleaded guilty, were sentenced to five years in prison, and were ordered to pay restitution. (Click here for link.)
Regarding those two acts of graft, Clyburn said that he didn’t know that his nephew was involved. Excuse me, but what are the odds of that happening twice? I expect it’s about the same as a blindfolded man hitting the bulls-eye in a game of darts twice in a row. Oh, by the way, the Five Rivers community center that Ballard was paid for designing was never built. (Then his Uncle James used tax dollars to pay him for the $784,000 job.)
Here’s a quick run-down on just some of Clyburn’s nepotism:
$784,000: nephew (architect)
$145,000: same nephew
$69,663: same nephew (though this figure may refer only to his cut of the abovementioned $145,000.)
$229,000: daughter (marketing director at an obesity clinic)
$990,000: daughter (same as above—another bulls-eye twice in a row)
$282,000: sister-in-law (housing coordinator for a corporation)
$670,000: brother (trainer for YouthBuild program at a corporation)
$16,600: brother (consultant)
$2.5 million: brother, lobbyist for airport; the brother personally received $60,000.
$131,000: former aide
$250,000: same as above (yet another bulls-eye twice in a row)
$1.3 million: Benedict Shogaolu, a former business partner convicted of four felony charges.
(Notice how many of Clyburn’s business associates go to prison.) (Click here)
It goes on and on.
More recently, the Charleston Post (reposted by the Sun News) reported that there’s now an investigation of the money Clyburn steered toward the James Clyburn Transportation Center of South Carolina State University. Of approximately $50 million allocated, several millions are missing. http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/07/02/1565525/clyburn-center-missing-millions.html
According to the Herald On-line, South Carolina state legislators are demanding an audit of South Carolina State University to determine what happened to the “missing millions.” Have they tried auditing Clyburn’s freezer? (Check it out.)
Recently, James Clyburn defended his actions, saying that the Constitution “mandated” his corrupt behavior. Last year, earmarks of this sort cost the taxpayers $17.2 billion. (Click here for the sordid details.)
James Clyburn makes a perfect poster boy for the American Action Report’s efforts to clean all the rats from Congress this November. If your congressman is only half as corrupt as James Clyburn, multiply that by 535 and see how much personal corruption in Congress is costing us. Check some of the Recommended Links at the top right corner of this page to find out if your congressman truly represents you.
I would like to thank the friend who sent me the links on James Clyburn. I would thank him by name, but I’d like for him to live a few more years. Chicago doesn’t have a monopoly on politically motivated murders.

Pray for wisdom in the 2010 congressional elections.
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How Washington Really Works, Part 2

In my previous message, I promised to give you some details on how things really work in Washington. The illustration you see above is just the beginning. Three more are yet to come, and even that is the tip of the iceberg--or rather, the first whiff of the sewer.
You may have noticed that there's no place for the taxpaying voters in the illustration. That's because the taxpaying voters are not in Washington. Most don't contact their congressmen at all. This doesn't mean that your opinions don't mean anything to him. Election Day means a great deal to him. It's just that--well, maybe you've heard the old song, "When I'm not near the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near." The illustration you see here reflects whom our congressmen are near.
Our nation's Founding Fathers designed a system of checks and balances among three branches of government: legislative, judicial, and executive. They never authorized the erection of a fourth branch of government: the regulatory agencies.
Instead of taking the time and trouble of writing and passing laws that are clearly understood, Congress passes laws that can best be described as Chinese fire drills or soup sandwiches. If a congressional committee were in charge of creating new animals, they would create something like the platypus. Then the executive branch has to do its job of enforcing flexible and sometimes vaguely worded or contradictory laws.
The executive branch doesn’t want to create reasonable laws either; and, besides, that’s not their job. They kick the can down the street by creating what they call regulatory agencies. Basically, the job of regulatory agencies is to transform Chinese fire drills into Chinese puzzles. On any given day, they create puzzles that the inventor of Rubric’s cube would envy.
Though these puzzles hamstring and often destroy small- and medium-sized businesses, the CEO’s of giant corporations love them. They can afford to hire people to work out these puzzles. Besides, their people create those puzzles in the first place.
Here’s how it works:
Congress appoints the regulators from the business community; that almost always means the giant corporations. The top regulators are changed from one presidential administration to another, so where do they work when they leave government “service”? They go where they’re most qualified to work: a company in the industry that they’ve been regulating. How’s that for a sweetheart deal?
It gets worse. If you see a congressman’s name on a bill, it doesn’t mean that the congressman wrote it. It means only that he introduced it. It may have been written by an official for a regulated business, by members of a regulatory agency, or both. There’s nothing wrong with that practice, because those people have more expertise in that area than the average congressman does.
It does, however, create a potential conflict of interest. Imagine yourself accepting campaign contributions from someone who has handed you a bill to introduce—a bill that, for all you know, may benefit that person at the expense of everyone else. It’s a potentially corrupting system, and it behooves the congressman to study it more carefully and seek other expertise.
Congress is advised by experts who work only for the Congress, but where do they get them? Usually, the same places they get the regulators.
You can see how the system can be used to benefit the few at the expense of the many. In tomorrow’s blog, I’ll describe an iron triangle of potential conflicts of interest among congressmen, news reporters, and corporate CEO’s.
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How Washington Really Works: Part 3

In part 2, I described the iron triangle among Congress, the regulatory agencies, and the businesses being regulated. In part 3, you see another iron triangle: the one among Congress, the news media, and the big banks and corporations. As you saw in part 2, we're talking about a mutual back-scratching society.
Money has been described as “the mother's milk of politics.” Big banks such as Citibank and Goldman Sachs have a ton of it. So do giant corporations such as Monsanto and Baxter International. According to federal law, banks and corporations are forbidden to directly contribute to political campaigns. CEO's, however, are allowed to set up political action groups (PAC's) and shake down their employees for contributions.
Nobody really believes that these political contributions aren't tied to the kind of service they expect to get from congressmen. If you've ever contributed to a political campaign, you probably did so because you expected certain behavior from the candidate. In your case and mine, there wouldn't be any quid pro quo (That's Latin for, “You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.") After all, most candidates have no reason to remember our measly little contributions. On the other hand, candidates can't help but remember receiving thousands of dollars from one CEO. Do I hear a back being scratched?

Congressmen also are in need of publicity. As long as the name is spelled correctly, any publicity is good publicity. That's because voters tend to remember names better than news. The information media, which is charitably called the news media, is a rich source of free publicity.
What can congressmen give the—er—news media in return? They can give them status, credibility, and (for what it may be worth) news. You've heard the adage, “Names make the news.” People in government have the names that count the most. Me? I'm nobody. Putting my name in their rag wouldn't give them any status or credibility at all.
Here's an example: During the Jimmy Carter administration, White House muck-a-muck Hamilton Jordan peeked down the bodice of an Egyptian ambassador's bodice and said, “I've always wanted to see the pyramids.” It got more space in the Washington Post than a presidential address Carter gave at the time.
If some unknown person did something like that to a vegetable seller, who'd know about it?
Then there's the sweetheart arrangement between the “news” media and the big banks and corporations. Of course, the giant banks and corporation CEO's want favorable publicity; but, more significantly, they want unfavorable publicity to be as muted as possible. If you get all your news from the big six communications companies that dominate the flow of news, you probably didn't hear that Baxter shipped “vaccines” containing live (A) H1N1 flu virus to 18 countries. When the “vaccine” was tried on ferrets, every one of them died.
What do the banksters and corporate parasites have to offer the—um—“news” media? One thing they have is effective control. Most votes are won or lost within a range of 3%; a switch of 1.5% is usually enough to change the outcome of the vote. For that reason, 5% ownership of a company is considered “controlling interest.” Giant banks and corporations are heavily invested in the big six communications companies, and they enjoy the advantage of interlocking directorates. That is, they have people sitting on each others' boards of directors.
Big banks and corporations also heavily advertise in the big six communications companies. You may have heard that the “news” media compete with one another for news. Actually, the news is incidental to a news outlet's profitability. The main pursuit of a news outlet is advertising, not news.
People who buy newspapers and news magazines buy it for the news, but the piddling amount they pay for them is nothing compared to advertising profits. The price of a newspaper is just earnest money to make sure that somebody's actually reading that rag. The broadcast media doesn’t charge the viewer anything, and they make higher profits than the oil companies.
If you're paying less than a dollar for a newspaper, and somebody else regularly places $2,000 advertisements in that same paper, who's going to have more influence on the news and editorial content of the paper? Especially if the advertiser has a henchman on the paper’s board of directors?
In the next article, I'll share with you how an iron triangle among the Congress, the banking cartel, and the military-industrial complex makes war more likely, even when it's against America's national interest.
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How Washington Really Works, Part 4

Of three iron triangles of power I describe in this five-part series, this one is the most complicated. That's because not one person in a thousand knows how the Federal Reserve System (Fed) works. For that reason, this installment is mainly about the Federal Reserve System.
Each of the twelve branches of the Fed is called a Federal Reserve Bank. That’s a misnomer, because the Fed is not federal in the sense of being part of the federal government; it has no reserves, and the Fed isn't really a bank. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to “coin money,” but, in 1913, Congress presumed to pass that legal power to a banking cartel and called it the Federal Reserve System.
The Fed has the power to create paper currency out of thin air (not backed by anything of value) and lend it to the U.S. Treasury. This paper currency is, in fact, certificates of debt (promissory notes), with the promise that the American taxpayer will repay the debt.
If paper currency is not backed by anything of value, from where does it get its value? It gets it from the value of paper currency already in circulation. Let's say you have $100 in your wallet out of, say, $10 trillion in circulation; and the Fed prints another $10 trillion and puts it into circulation. Because there is twice as much paper currency to pay for the same amount of goods and services, the $100 in your wallet is now worth only half what it was worth before.
You lose money twice: once when Congress borrows the money for you to repay; and a second time, when the value of the currency in your wallet drops. It's as though a thief has taken $50 out of your wallet and left you with an IOU stating that you—not the thief—will have to “repay” the debt “owed” to the thief. (Think about that the next time you think about the $multi-trillion bailouts.)
Look at the left side of the triangle above. The taxpayer pays interest for borrowing something that had no value at the time the Fed loaned it to the U.S. government.
During the War Between the States, Abraham Lincoln refused to finance the war on borrowed money. There was no Fed at the time, of course, but Lincoln recognized that fractional lending and the use of promissory notes as “paper money” amounted to the kind of double taxation I've just described.
Instead, the federal government rather than the bankers issued its own paper currency. This inflation of the currency was a form of invisible tax, in that it raised money by reducing the value of currency already in circulation. Nonetheless, there was no debt for the taxpayers to repay. Here's how Lincoln described his policy:
“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.”
- Abraham Lincoln
The following are from two other Lincoln quotes: "I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy..... I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” Abraham Lincoln- In a letter written to William Elkin
As strange as it seems, the Federal Reserve has never been audited in its entire 97-year history. Establishment shills have consistently beaten back attempts to make the Fed accountable to the American people, but this may soon change. On a bi-partisan 43-26 vote, the House Finance Committee approved HR1207—a bill to audit the Fed. The House passed HR1207 (known as S604 in the Senate) by an overwhelming margin.
Did your congressman vote to make the Fed accountable to the American people? Or is he beholden to powerful special interests? Click here and find out.

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How Washington Really Works: Part 5

(This is the last of a five-part series)
The diagram you see above is just a sketch of how power and influence are exchanged in Washington. The exchanges are explained in parts 2-4 in this series, in which iron triangles of power are illustrated. This diagram shows only bilateral relationships that indirectly add up to a power establishment.
The diagram doesn’t show interlocking directorates among businesses and banks or the blurring of distinctions between commercial banks and investment banks. It doesn’t show the investments that individual congressmen or individuals elsewhere on the diagram have in others in the diagram.
As a precaution against tendencies toward monopoly, federal law prohibits banks in the same city from having interlocking directorates. That law was passed in the days of green eye shades and paper ledgers. In the age of Internet and Excel, all banks are virtually in the same city.
In 1933, Congress wisely passed the Glass-Seagall Act, separating commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. For the next 66 years, the Glass-Seagall Act served as a deterrent to some of the worst abuses that had led to the Great Depression. Insurance company representatives could proudly claim that no insurance company in American history ever went bankrupt.
Then, on November 12, 1999, the curtain rang down on sanity and then came Act Two. The ironically titled Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (or more formally, (Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338) was passed. Phil Gramm now holds the dubious distinction of being the Father of the Current Financial Crisis.
None of these three perps are still at the scene of the crime. Leach and Bliley dropped out of sight, and Phil Gramm became a lobbyist for malefactors of great wealth. Astonishingly, Gramm was 2008 presidential candidate John McCain’s chief economics adviser. McCain admitted that he didn’t know much about economics, but that was ridiculous. It’s like admitting that you don’t know much about surgery and asking Jack the Ripper to perform an operation on you.
Phil Gramm also holds the dubious distinction of ending insurance company bragging rights about never having experienced bankruptcy. Courtesy of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, American International Group (AIG) became heavily involved in credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. (Don’t feel embarrassed for not understanding those terms. Fed Chairman Allan Greenspan admitted that he didn’t understand them either but that they must be good for the economy. In 2008, Greenspan was the one who ended up feeling stupid. When McCain picked Gramm to advise him, McCain really was stupid.) Courtesy of Phil Gramm and his unindicted co-conspirators, AIG became the first insurance company in American history to be nationalized to save it from going bankrupt.
You may be wondering if the wheeler dealers in Washington are at least as sophisticated as the average teenage Facebook user. That is, do they, like their pimpled counterparts in cyberspace, do networking or participate in meet-up groups? Well, yes, they have several of them. That’s another phenomenon that the diagrams in this series don’t show; and that will be the subject of a future article.
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How Congressmen Stack the Deck against Voters

Most American voters have a low opinion of Congress but feel that their own congressman deserves to be re-elected. There's an obvious disconnect here. Why? I think that it's mainly because, in each election, most voters let their congressmen control the election debate and the flow of communication.
By way of analogy, suppose you were a teacher, and you had 345 students—that's the number of congressmen there are in the U.S. House of Representatives. Think of elections as mid-term or final exams. As their teacher, how would you react if your students told you that there should be 345 separate sets of questions on the exam; and that each student would decide what questions he should be required to answer? Then how would you react if they suggested that each student should be allowed to grade his own paper?
Now you have a picture of how it is that almost all congressional incumbents are re-elected to a congress that most voters think is rotten. Most voters let the incumbents tell them which issues and which votes are relevant to the voters’ decisions as to whether he should be re-elected. Don't expect that the incumbent's opponent will do the job for you. Opponents also have their agenda. Who's making sure that your agenda is properly addressed in the election? If you aren't, nobody is.
In case you think this is an exaggeration, let me tell you about two incidents I experienced. During one election on which I'd help manage, I asked an experienced operative, “What are the issues in this campaign?”
She replied, “The issues are whatever you say they are.” Did you get that? In most cases, the voters don't decide what the issues are; the candidate and his campaign team decide.
On another occasion, I observed that taking a stand on a controversial issue loses a candidate support from those who disagree, but it doesn't gain support from those who agree with the candidate’s position. I asked, “How do you deal with a controversial issue?”
The answer was, “If anyone asks you, give your answer in a truthful but matter-of-fact manner. If you don't treat it as an important issue, neither will most voters.” Did you get that? In most cases, the voters don't decide how important an issue is; the candidates do.
When individual voters or groups try to make an issue of some of their congressmen’s votes in Congress, congressmen usually protest, “Those votes weren't representative of how I usually vote in Congress. You should look at all of my voting record.” He knows, of course, that nobody will do that because nobody has that much time on his hands. On the other hand, when the congressman tells you what he has been doing in Congress, he makes no attempt to tell you about all of his voting record—just the votes that will make him look good. Did you get that? He's saying that you, the voter, have no right to choose which votes to consider in judging his performance; only he has the right to do that.
Since you're reading this article, I must assume that you want to “take America back,” to use the popular catchphrase. Before we can do that, we have to take the responsibility of taking our elections back. For a change, each voter must put himself in the driver's seat.
You decide which issues are important to you, and you be the judge of your congressman’s performance. How does your congressman stack up? Here and here are web sites that may help you to decide:
There are many other resources on the Internet. I'll try to find a few more non-partisan, really useful sites for you between now and the November elections. As the saying goes, “A new broom sweeps clean.” This November, let's sweep the moneychangers from the temple.
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How News Reporting Really Works: Part 2

(This is the second of a four-part series.)
From time to time, we hear that the news media is “biased.” What does that mean, and is it true?
Let’s look at the first question first. Depending on your area of study, a bias may also be called a conceptual framework (academic literature), an attitude (or value)(psychology), or a frame of reference (social science). In all of these areas, some frame of reference is needed as a yardstick for measuring (or a dowsing rod for finding) the truth.
Let’s say you were upset because someone stole your candy and wouldn’t give it back. In any discussion of what to do about it, you would assume that everyone within earshot held the attitude that property can be owned. No one would even consider discussing the issue unless one of your listeners came from a culture in which people had never heard of private property.
In a moment, I’ll give you a link to a video showing a real-life impasse between two people who had different frames of reference on a controversial political issue. First, though, let’s take a look at what psychologists call Rokeach’s Onion.
Each of us has countless opinions. When asked to back up our opinions, we often give facts, but the facts always come with certain beliefs on which our opinions are based. If, for example, you asked a constitutionalist why he calls a certain government action an “intrusion,” he’ll give you facts, but he’ll also cite a well-known theory (such as Social Contract Theory) or law (such as the Tenth Amendment). He may not know what the theory is called, but he understands the basic idea of it.
When asked to defend his belief in Social Contract Theory or the Tenth Amendment, though, he’s usually stumped. He has never thought to defend it, and he has never thought it needed defense. Until you brought it up, he may never have realized that it, in some way, applied to the belief he’s asked to defend. This is called an attitude. Three examples of attitudes are the right to own property (or lack of that right), that all men are created equal (or not), and, for that matter, that there is such a thing as a right.
To Thomas Jefferson, an attitude was something that is regarded as a “self-evident truth.” It’s taken on faith and can neither be proven nor disproven. Of course, if a person has a “bad attitude,” his attitude only seems like a self-evident truth.
Now take a look at this video clip of a CNN reporter and a Tea Party protestor “talking past” each other. In the reporter’s frame of reference, government is the source of our rights; in the protestor’s frame of reference, God (or Nature) is the source of our rights. Obviously, neither had given the idea much thought, but they’re acting on those attitudes just the same.
Because of the reporter’s frame of reference, she presented the “stimulus package” as a gift from specific government leaders, as if it had come from their pockets. The protestor, in his babbling way, showed that he realized that the money was borrowed from the people and that it amounted to “double taxation.” That is, the taxpayer must repay the debt, even after losing some of the value of his money to the inflation of the currency. He also seemed to know that the government can’t give more than it takes; the reporter clearly did not recognize that fact.
The CNN reporter also subscribed to the Leviathan theory of government. She suggested that the people we elect to make our laws are free to pass any law they wish. The protestor clearly subscribed to the republican view that we elect leaders to represent us and that we’re not electing them to do as they wish.
The babbling protestor’s biggest mistake was his attempt to frame his views in lofty quotes. He probably would have done a better job of presenting his views if he had used the same words he uses when he talks with his friends and acquaintances.
The CNN reporter’s biggest mistake was that she made no attempt to understand the man’s frame of reference. (That’s mainly what people mean when they accuse reporters of bias.) Instead, she berated the man for being ungrateful for what she saw as the generosity of government leaders. She further suggested that the protests amount to fringe elements claiming that they shouldn’t be required to pay their fair share (whatever that means) in taxes.
We should remind CNN that 56% of the American people—that’s around 170 million people—can not honestly be called fringe something-or-other. You can’t find that many “right wingers” in America.
Over a hundred million liberals, conservatives, libertarians, Southern agrarians, and non-aligned Americans are uniting to take our country back from the banksters, war profiteers, and other perps in the Wall Street/Washington crime syndicate. As Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” This November we can, and must, sweep the rats out of Congress, topple the Axis of Evil, and reclaim our country.
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How We Created the Mess in Washington, Part 3

(This is the third of a three-part series.)
In the second part of this series, I pointed out the importance of creating voter understanding, electing the right people to public office, and keeping in touch with them. I also said that this wasn’t enough. What’s lacking?
If we want a government “as good as the American people,” it’s important to examine just how good we really are. One of the reasons we’ve gotten the government we have is, we haven’t been as good as we thought we were.
Before some of you piously nod your head in agreement, let me remind you that Jesus was crucified by government officials to satisfy the demands of religious people.
Someone once said, “You can’t cheat an honest man.” I’ve heard of many examples of supposedly honest men and women who were cheated by con artists. They were considered honest because they weren’t consciously trying to cheat someone. They were, in fact, dishonest either because they were expecting something they shouldn’t have or they were expecting more than they were paying for.
To give an example, one woman paid $200 to have her driveway paved and was cheated in the process. The concrete alone would have cost much more than $200, but her greed blinded her to that reality. She was being dishonest, even if it were not called that.
I’m often reminded of a line from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Even after the wizard was revealed to be a fraud, Dorothy and her friends expected him to deliver on his promises to them. He then conned the odd threesome into thinking he had given them a heart, a brain, and courage; but he told Dorothy to come back the next day for her trip back to Kansas. After they had left the room, the wizard said to himself, “How can I help being a humbug when people expect me to do things that everyone knows can’t be done?”
People who had been adults during the Great Depression have told me how they survived. In effect, they said that families that had only enough food for two days would share what they had with families who had nothing to eat. On other days, the latter families would return the kindness. Now, that’s generosity!
Nowadays people want to feel as though they’re generous without giving of their own resources. When asked to donate to the needy, people have told me, “I don’t have to donate to the needy. That’s why I pay my taxes.” Using government to take someone else’s property just so that we can feel generous isn’t generosity—it’s theft!
Before anyone starts accusing me of being a hard-hearted conservative, get your facts straight. I stopped being a conservative a long time ago. I consider myself a Southern agrarian. (By the way, you can be an agrarian in the midst of a large city.) If you want to read an agrarian manifesto, turn to the fifth chapter of Matthew; it’s called the Sermon on the Mount. Due to the impact of Madison Avenue advertising, too many people see the Sermon on the Mount as a feel-good speech with little practical value. On the contrary, it’s a powerful antidote to a lot of today’s problems.
One of those problems is materialism. The Sermon on the Mount stresses the virtue of simplicity. I confess that I never saw that in the Sermon until I read it in a book about Buddhism. When I did, I thought, “Doesn’t the Bible say something like that?” Then I thought, “Why haven’t I ever heard it from the pulpit?” I’ll tell you why: Because it’s not profitable. We’re supposed to believe that fulfillment is found on E-Bay or on a store shelf or in a bottle with a child-proof cap.
If we loved our neighbors as ourselves, if we sought first the rule of the Supreme Being in our lives, we’d be satisfied to ask less of government. We wouldn’t have 800-plus military bases in almost every country in the world to force them to buy our products or sell us theirs. We wouldn’t elect congressmen who promise us things we shouldn’t have, only to end up taking all we have—which is what con men always do to suckers.
For many centuries, agrarianism was the only competitor to monarchism. Even today, liberalism, conservatism, and libertarian all contain traces of it. That’s one reason I say that liberals, conservatives, and libertarians can learn a great deal from each other. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, and others have much to learn from each other.
I don’t advocate a new political party or a new religion. We have all the parties and religions we need. What we don’t have enough of is righteousness according to our faiths and cooperation as good neighbors.
It may not be true that, as the saying goes, “It takes all kinds to make a world,” but the fact remains—like it or not—we’ve got all kinds. Let’s make the most of it.

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Freedom from Fear

I don't pretend or presume that the Tea Partiers face the same level of difficulties that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi faces in her valiant struggle to bring representative government to her people in Burma. The Tea Partiers are struggling to restore the measure of representative government that Americans have lost as a result of apathy and folly.
Nonetheless, Aung San's view of the situation in Burma (the name by which she calls her country) can provide us with insights and inspiration into our struggles to regain lost freedoms.

The ruling junta in Burma, like the kakistocracy in America, is a corrupt regime. Aung San's religion (Buddhism) teaches that corruption has one or more of four sources: greed, malice, ignorance, and fear. The most pernicious of these is fear because it often gives rise to the other three sources. (I would add to that observation the notion that corruption arising from any source gives rise to fear.) Aung San observes, “With so close a relationship between fear and corruption, it is little wonder that in any society where fear is rife, corruption in all forms becomes entrenched.”
A lesson we can draw from this is that the ruling junta fears the people as much, if not more, than the people fear them. They protect themselves by instilling fear in the people. The people are encouraged to fear not only the regime but other ethnic groups in their country.
Aung San cites the Greek myth of the man who sowed dragon's teeth, each of which sprang up as warriors. The warriors were defeated by tricking them into turning against one another. Similarly, corrupt rulers keep the people down by tricking them into turning against one another.
We see that in America as well. Native-born Americans are turned against new Americans, and the distinction between immigrants and illegal aliens is deliberately blurred. Non-Muslims are taught that Muslims are supporters of terrorism if not terrorists themselves. Government agents are taught that air travelers are to be presumed guilty until proven innocent, throwing the constitutional guarantees against “unreasonable search and seizure” out the window. The list is almost endless. If we're not careful, our suspicion of Wall Street bankers may become corrupted into enmity between the middle class and the rich.
“Loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity,” she says, are, “'divine states of mind' which help to alleviate suffering and to spread happiness among all beings. The greatest obstacle to these noble emotions is...the rigid mental state that comes of a prolonged and unwavering concentration on narrow self interest. Hatred, anger, or ill will that arises from wrongs suffered, from misunderstanding, or from fear or envy may yet be appeased if there is sufficient generosity of spirit to permit forbearance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.” Aung San also urges that we “concede that the other party has an equal claim to justice, sympathy, and consideration.”
Thus far, this article has focused on different religious, political, or ethnic groups that have been divided against one another. What about policemen and military personnel who are from time to time commanded to commit acts of needless violence against civilians at home or abroad (such as Iraq or Afghanistan)?
They, too, are often acting from fear—fear of their superiors. We've all read stories or seen movies such as House on Haunted Hill, in which the power of evil turns people's deepest fears or darkest secrets against them. That's how it is with the few thousand people, mainly in Washington and Manhattan, who turn our fears or weaknesses against us. They have this power because our fears give them this power.
What if we truly supported our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? I don't mean supporting the wars that are decimating the troops with post traumatic stress syndrome and killer diseases that the government denies even exist and later downplays. What if private citizens held the Veterans Administration's feet to the fire used every legal means to get them to “care for him who will have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” which is their job anyway?
More and more servicemen are refusing to return to wars in which their own government refuses to support them. It's only a matter of time before whole units refuse to go. What if the troops were ordered into a third war, in Iran, and nobody went?
For eight years, Dick Cheney, through his puppet George W. Bush, ruled America through fear—fear of Muslims, fear of immigrants, fear of a government that was supposedly “of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.” Barack Obama was elected on the promise of change and hope. What we got instead was more of the same under the de facto President Rahm Emanuel.
Fear can serve constructive purposes. I think of fear as the Almighty's way of telling us that something requires our attention. Fear is also the devil's way of telling us that all is hopeless. Hope is the blessed assurance that heaven hears our prayers has everything under control.
If 305 million Americans fear heaven and have learned to set aside their fears of each other, then we have nothing to fear from a few thousand embezzlers and petty despots.

What's All this about the GOOOH Movement?

By now you’ve heard a thing or two about the GOOOH Movement. GOOOH, pronounced, “Go,” stands for Get out of Our House. GOOOH is a non-partisan, grassroots movement to replace all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and elect citizens who, presumably, will serve for only one term of office. It’s the brainchild of Jim Cox, a computer specialist who quit his day job to devote all his time to GOOOH.
I won’t go into the details of how the GOOOH process of candidate selection and election is designed to take place; nor will I try to get you fired up for or against the movement. I’ll refer you to the GOOOH web site for the details and the rah-rah stuff. As I write these words, I’m listening to one of the You Tube videos (of seven) answering that question.
This article is a discussion of the pros and cons of a movement to remove every member of the House of Representatives in a single election. I’ve often heard that the Chinese word for crisis is a composite of two words, one meaning danger, and the other meaning opportunity. In the present crisis, the GOOOH movement represents both.
The greatest danger is that we have an unelected, extra-constitutional (some would say unconstitutional) branch of government in the regulatory agencies and other areas of the federal bureaucracy. In the face of an entrenched bureaucracy, newly elected congressmen are babes in the woods. Rather than getting true representatives in Washington, we may be exchanging poor representation for no representation.
The greatest misconception of the GOOOH movement is that we can solve the problems of Washington by electing “the right people” to Congress and leaving them alone to do good. The late Milton Friedman said that congressmen are, in effect, businessmen who will do the right thing or the wrong thing depending on which is more politically profitable. (Perhaps a more apt word, given his rationale, might be mercenaries rather than businessmen.) While his view may have been overly simplistic, he makes a vital point: If the voters don’t monitor their congressmen’s behavior, somebody else will, and probably not for the better.
Another shortcoming of the idea is that it’s not sustainable. Let’s say you throw half the bums out. The other half will probably figure that GOOOH will never be able to give a repeat performance. Not only will they feel less vulnerable, they’ll also know that, with their experience, they can run roughshod over these newcomers.
On the plus side, the voters themselves will feel a sense of empowerment that they’d never felt before. They’ll have seen that they can make a difference. We probably would see a higher degree of citizen participation in government. With that higher degree of citizen participation, we may see a higher determination to throw crooks out of office.
For reasons I described in the series “How Washington Really Works,” the problem in Washington isn’t a case of a few rotten apples spoiling the barrel. It’s a case of a rotten barrel that spoils the apples. Very few academic papers have been written on the Rotten Barrel Theory; but, in certain areas, fundamentally decent people are corrupted by the systems in which they function. I believe that Washington is one such system.
The movement to get the crooks out of office is laudable. That, in fact, is the main reason I started the American Action Report. The GOOOH movement provides some of the direction for the excitement generated by the Tea Parties. The GOOOH movement also should provide some of the incentive and sense of empowerment necessary to watch congressmen once they’re elected.
I know of no movement—and certainly not the American Action Report—that can promise to deliver everything needed to clean up the mess in Washington. I believe, though, that the GOOOH movement is worthwhile for at least two reasons: the immediate gratification we expect to see in removing a significant number of corrupt congressmen, and the sense of responsibility I expect it to generate among its participants.
Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not an end; it’s a beginning. The more difficult part will come after the election.

Americans are Coming Together

I recently read an email from a neoconservative, would-be Paul Revere. Or,at least he seemed to be riding on Paul Revere's horse. In his post, he breathlessly warned everyone interested in reading his screed that “liberals” were “infiltrating” the Tea Parties as part of a “divide and conquer strategy.”
Let’s back up a few years—say, about 46 years or more. In 1964, there were two main branches of the Republican Party: Goldwater Republicans and the Rockefeller Republicans. Outside the party were the unabashed liberals.
The liberals embraced Tea Party issues even back then, although their views on the matter were somewhat inchoate.
As of 1988, when the elder Bush ran for President, Rockefeller Republicans became known as neo-conservatives. The neo-cons are now found in both major political parties. Henry Kissinger (Republican) was a protégé of Nelson Rockefeller; Zbigniew Brzenzinski (Democrat) is a protégé of Henry Kissinger. It was the Rockefeller Republicans (neocons) who were most responsible for giving the Republican Party its reputation for being a party of the rich at the expense of the poor.
We were all foolish in those days—most of us, anyway. Liberals tended to condemn any corporate profit as fascism, regardless of how honestly the profits were obtained. Conservatives would roll their eyes and praise any profit making, and call it free enterprise, regardless of how much of it was profiteering at taxpayer expense. No matter how many billions were stolen by the malefactors of great wealth, it was excused on the fraudulent rationale of free enterprise. On the other hand, any welfare mother who kept her small bank account a secret from the Welfare Gestapo was a “welfare queen.”
Now, both liberals and conservatives are faced with blatant fascism on a multi-trillion-dollar scale. Remember, the liberals were the first to cry, “Fascism,” and, “Corporate Welfare.” Now that the Tea Partiers have taken up the cry, do you see them telling the liberals that they’ve seen the light? No. Many of them are letting the Rockefeller Republicans con them into telling the liberals to stay away from “their” party.
I'm not saying that liberals and conservatives are acting from the same motives. Take the attempted healthcare overhaul for example. Conservatives oppose it mainly on the constitutional ground that healthcare is not a federal issue; and on the free market ground that, for all its faults, America's healthcare system is still more efficient than the government healthcare system found on Native American reservations. Liberals oppose it because it appears specifically designed to shovel billions of taxpayer dollars at corrupt corporations in such industries as Big Pharma and the health insurance monopolies; and that it would bring American healthcare down to the level of that which is found on the Native American reservations.
Either set of arguments flies very well, but the liberals, having the more populist argument, have the best chance of resonating with American voters. It is any wonder, then, that the Rockefeller Republicans and Rockefeller Democrats are so eager to keep the liberals away from the Tea Parties? Talk about “divide and conquer!” It's the neocons who are desperately trying to keep Americans divided against one another.
Apart from one another, the liberals and the conservatives can do little to sweep the rats out of Congress. The numbers of either group are too small, especially if liberals and conservatives work against one another. Together, we can do it; and together we must do it!
The one issue that unites us is whether our congressmen represent us, their constituents; or the banksters, war profiteers, and other scoundrels of their ilk. We have just over 200 days between now and the 2010 congressional elections. I'll try to share as much as I can to help you decide—no, I won't decide for you—whether your congressman is one of the few honest men or women remaining in Congress and deserving of re-election. Of the 345 members of Congress, I seriously doubt that there are more than 45 honest men and women; the rotten barrel has spoiled that many apples. If in doubt, vote him out.
In a future article, I'll share with you the results of several polls that show that, for the first time in memory, we can change Congress. We can drive the money changers from the temple and replace them with honest Americans. But, to do this, we must work together.