-Caveat Lector-
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
CONGRESS ACTION: August 19, 2001
=================
CAMPAIGN REFORM RESURRECTED: "As part of his relentless effort to get big
money out of politics, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spent more than $1.1
million from his Straight Talk America political action committee during the
first six months of the year." That opening sentence from an August 13
article in Roll Call newspaper pretty much sums up the debased status of
politics today. Spending big money to achieve a political result is evil,
according to conventional wisdom, unless it is John McCain doing the
spending, and only on a goal with which the major media agrees.
It turns out that the reported demise of the campaign finance "reform"
travesty was a bit premature. Under the Discharge Petition procedure,
proponents of the Shays-Meehan campaign "reform" bill (H.R.2356) must obtain
the signatures of 218 members of the House to force the bill back onto the
legislative calendar for a vote. They currently have 205 signatures. It will
be recalled that in July, procedural maneuvering temporarily killed H.R.2356
in the House. Democrats wanted to add numerous amendments ("loopholes" in the
currently popular parlance) to the bill to induce votes from their wavering
supporters, and got mad when the republican leadership proposed following
standard House procedure of holding votes on individual amendments one at a
time. The bill's proponents knew they didn't have enough votes to keep the
legislation intact, so they voted against the rules of the debate and killed
their own bill. And with the help of media disinformation, succeeded in
blaming republicans for the dastardly deed. How dare those wily republicans
demand votes on individual amendments -- it's only democrats who are allowed
to demand individual votes on hundreds of individual amendments that they
introduce in order to destroy republican sponsored legislation -- and to add
insult to injury, in this case it was the democrats' own amendments that they
didn't want individual votes on!
In 1997, a CATO Institute Policy Analysis (Campaign Finance "Reform"
Proposals, A First Amendment Analysis) concluded, ".current proposals for new
regulation of federal election campaign finance practices are
constitutionally indefensible. In their general conception, they are nothing
short of a practically complete rejection of individual and associational
rights of expression and political participation that the First Amendment
guarantees." Bradley A. Smith, Constitutional scholar and now a member of the
Federal Election Commission, while testifying before the House of
Representatives, Subcommittee on the Constitution, on February 27, 1997,
said, "The House should reject simplistic proposals such as Shays-Meehan, or
efforts to amend the Constitution to destroy the right to free political
speech, and move generally to deregulate political speech. It ought not be a
crime to 'commit politics' in America."
Have those so-called campaign finance "reform" proposals -- McCain-Feingold
and Shays-Meehan -- improved over the intervening years? Are those bills that
our elected legislators are pushing today, with the connivance and blessing
of the national media, any more Constitutionally defensible than they were
five years ago? According to the American Civil Liberties Union: ".the
McCain-Feingold bill is a recipe for political repression because it
egregiously violates longstanding free speech rights in several ways: It
stifles issue advocacy in violation of the First Amendment; It criminalizes
any constitutionally-protected contact that groups and individuals may have
with candidates (through bans on so-called "coordination"); It virtually
destroys political parties in an unconstitutional fashion." Further,
"Clearly, the authors and supporters of McCain-Feingold despise any form of
issue advocacy that has the audacity to mention candidates for federal office
by name. The bill virtually silences issue advocacy. . Speech which comments
on, criticizes or praises, applauds or condemns the public records and
actions of public officials and political candidates -- even though it
mentions and discusses candidates, and even though it occurs during an
election year or even an election season -- is entirely protected by the
First Amendment. . The Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2001 is not
reform at all, but is a fatally flawed assault on First Amendment rights."
When the Congress returns from its August recess, that assault on the First
Amendment will resume.
GREEDY TAXPAYERS: "We face the very real prospect that your tax cut, coupled
with an economy that is slowing significantly, will have exhausted all of the
surplus in the near term and leave no way to fund other functions of
government without tapping into Medicare and Social Security." -- Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt
(D-MO), in a letter to President Bush. "The Bush administration has authored
a budget and tax plan that does not add up and that will hurt our country. .
Bush's fiscal mismanagement has driven us into a ditch." -- Senator Kent
Conrad (D-ND). "I am glad we did what was right in 1993 [raising taxes], and
I'll do it again, because I believe in being fiscally responsible with the
taxpayers' money." -- Dick Gephardt.
According to democrats, because of that measly $300 that taxpayers are
getting back (part of $1.3 trillion tax cut over the next ten years, which
democrats want to repeal), our country faces financial catastrophe. White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer was more accurate when he warned that
congressional spending was more of a danger to the budget than the tax cut.
"They only way Social Security will be touched is if Congress spends too much
money.''
According to Citizens Against Government Waste's (CAGW), ".during the next
five years the U.S. government will flush at least $1.2 trillion down the
drain in uncorrected waste, fraud, and abuse [nearly double the total amount
of the tax cut]. So, to tell the American people that government can't pay
its bills and has no choice but to raise taxes -- during a near-recession no
less -- takes real brass. But that is just what House Minority Leader Dick
Gephardt recently did. For playing politics against the president's
barely-in-effect tax cut and defending the Washington waste status quo, CAGW
names Rep. Gephardt its Porker of the Month for August 2001."
While you read the following from CAGW, keep in mind that leftists claim it
is your puny tax cut -- not their own wasteful spending -- that "has driven
us into a ditch."
a.. Federal agencies make at least $20 billion annually in improper
payments.
b.. Corporate welfare costs $65 billion annually.
c.. Total discretionary spending increased by 11% in fiscal 2000 and 8% in
2001, well above inflation, with 2002 increases expected to be in the same
range.
d.. The Pentagon is currently storing 618,000 Chinese-made berets, valued
at $4 million, while it decides what to do with them. (DoD officials banned
the berets after protests because they were made in a communist country).
a.. A $100 million Earth-observing spacecraft pushed by former Vice
President Gore will soon be placed in storage. The spacecraft Triana was
designed to study Earth's climate and monitor global warming, but budget
matters forced NASA to cut back on missions. Triana, nicknamed GoreCam, was
not deemed a scientific priority.
b.. According to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report, the Pentagon
made $615 million in illegal and improper accounting entries last year for
contractor bills.
a.. The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved a 4.6% salary increase
for government employees even though the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) says the bill will cost approximately $900 million more than the 3.6%
pay increase President Bush requested. The raise passed the House by 334-94.
b.. A senior systems accountant at the Department of Education, fired
during the Clinton Administration after reporting security problems in a
grant management system, said that the system could lose between $6 and $15
billion. The Department of Education still uses the system.
c.. The United States Postal Service paid out $197 million in bonuses
despite a $199 million deficit for last year.
d.. The federal government spent $32 billion on direct payments to farmers
last year, despite the failure of these payments to remedy rural poverty and
environmental concerns.
Big government types (on both the left and the right) truly believe that all
money belongs to the government, not to the people who earn it. Thus Joe
Lieberman recently lamented that the tax cut would "jeopardize our
prosperity" -- because he, like most politicians, measures "our prosperity"
as government receipts, not as private wealth. When spending money that's not
theirs, fiscal responsibility (not to mention Constitutional restraint) is
irrelevant. So what if they waste a few billion dollars? They can always
blame you and demand that you fork over more money for them to waste. Cutting
their spending is a main objective of a tax cut. But of course the idea of
having to trim their profligacy in any way, because you are getting back a
small pittance of your own money, has congress outraged. It is the taxpayer
who should be outraged, watching government take $2 trillion of our money
every year, seeing the outrageous ways in which they spend it, then hearing
them whine that it isn't enough and that you are harming their prosperity.
BILL CLINTON, ENVIRONMENTALIST?: To hear radical environmentalists and other
assorted leftists tell it, our environment was heading for catastrophe under
12 years of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Reagan, it was said,
instituted a "radical project" of using the takings clause of the Fifth
Amendment to stifle federal and state regulation of business and property
(enforcing the Constitution has become "radical" to the left). Reagan's
policies, according to enviro wisdom, endangered the quality of life for all
Americans. According to the left, the price, in terms of public health and
public safety, was disastrous. We were "saved" just in the nick of time by
Bill Clinton and his sidekick Al "Earth in the Balance" Gore. While running
for president, Gore once boasted that one of the Clinton administration's top
achievements was that it stopped an effort to "roll back 25 years of
environmental progress." That, at least, has always been the left's mantra
regarding Clinton/Gore environmentalism. Dissenting environmentalists,
however, were less than enthusiastic, but not very public in their criticism.
Explaining why he was supporting Ralph Nader instead of Bill Clinton in the
1996 election, a Sierra Club board member wrote, "President Clinton has done
more to harm the environment and to weaken environmental regulations in three
years than Presidents Bush and Reagan did in 12 years." The public propaganda
campaign to demonize republican environmental policy continues against the
current administration, with the Defenders of Wildlife proclaiming that
President George W. Bush is "on track to become the most anti-environmental
president in modern times. . He's waging war on the environment, and he's
just getting started." In June, the bipartisan AEI-Brookings Joint Center for
Regulatory Studies issued a report examining the Clinton/Gore environmental
record, and concluded, "Environmental quality improved overall during the
decade, continuing a trend that began in the 1970s, although improvements
were much less than during the previous two decades." (emphasis added) Those
"previous two decades" encompassed the presidential terms of republicans
Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, a brief stint by democrat Jimmy Carter,
followed by republicans Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. So as assorted
leftists and democrats attack the environmental policies of the current Bush
administration and pine for the "good old days" of Clinton and Gore, it bears
remembering that attacking republicans on the environment is just political
sport for the left, and that their claims don't bear any relationship to
reality.
FOR MORE INFORMATION.
========================
CATO Institute Policy Analysis # 282: Campaign Finance "Reform" Proposals, A
First Amendment Analysis: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-282.html
National Environmental Policy During The Clinton Years:
http://www.aei.brookings.org/publications/abstract.asp?pID=152
Citizens Against Government Waste: http://www.cagw.org/index.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Kim Weissman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107,
any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use
without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational
purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]
Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists!
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
