Saving America from Bankruptcy

The day is fast approaching when the United States government will be bankrupt. This is not my hyperbole. It is the judgement of the Comptroller of the United States and the Federal Reserve of St. Louis. Social Security and Medicare are going to balloon out of control over the next couple of decades. Budget deficits had been cut and a surplus was seen for the first time in over forty years under Bill Clinton. Still, the national debt was at 4 trillion dollars. Under George Bush and the Republican controlled Congress, the surplus disappeared and deficits again exploded to the point where, under George Bush's Administration, the national debt has more than doubled to about 9 trillion dollars. Under the socialist policies of a potential second Clinton Administration you can be sure that socialized medicine will continue to expand the debt. Trade policies have caused the trade deficit to grow to an unprecedented level. China now has more than a trillion dollars of our money as surplus capital on hand that they can use for a variety of purposes like space exploration, social engineering or war, depending on their national interest. The United States of America is no longer the richest country in the world; China holds that distinction. We are a debtor nation that continues to borrow money at an unsustainable rate.

The only way to stave off economic disaster is a libertarian approach to government. The federal government must be cut and cut drastically or else we will be forced by the necessity of bankruptcy to do it.

Based on the estimated 2006 budget, here's how we save America from disaster.

Cut the Department of Interior. Savings - 9.3 billion dollars
Cut the Department of Agriculture. Savings - 95.7 billion dollars
Cut the Department of Commerce. Savings - 6.5 billion dollars
Cut the Department of Labor. Savings - 51.4 billion dollars
Cut the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Savings - 46.8 billion dollars
Cut the Department of Transportation. Savings - 61.3 billion dollars
Cut the Department of Energy. Savings - 22.8 billion dollars
Cut the Department of Education. Savings - 84 billion dollars

Total savings - 377.8 billion dollars

There are 56 independent agencies and commissions that should be looked at for elimination including NASA, USAID, NEA and NEH, and NRPC. These agenices and commissions represent government luxuries that we can no longer afford.

My cuts leave intact the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services. My cuts do not affect people who rely on a federal handout to survive.

The Department of Health and Human Services is the most expensive department in the federal government. In 2005, HHS consumed 580 billion dollars. Medicare accounted for 337.9 billion dollars of that. Medicaid and SCHIP accounted for another 198.1 billion dollars. Something has to be done to move people off Medicare and Medicaid and onto something more sustainable. Social Security, which is an independent agency, currently funds itself with a surplus, thanks to the tax increase put in place under Ronald Reagan. But that surplus will quickly disappear as the baby boomers retire and Medicare will grow almost exponentially. Another tax increase could keep Social Security solvent for longer. Getting rid of HHS can more than double the rate at which we dispatch with the national debt. Putting more people on government funded health care is NOT an answer.

We can keep going along like we have been and watch our country go down in financial flames, or we can do something about it and stop electing Republicans and Democrats who won't do anything. Electing Ron Paul President would be an excellent first step towards saving this country from its socialist past.

Fascism in America

We have been living under a fascist regime since 9-12-01. The attacks of September 11th were the excuse that people in the Administration, like Dick Cheney, had been looking for. Militarism, secrecy and all the trappings of a police state under the guise of "national security." Those who would give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither.

Now, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination is an unabashed fascist. Ask the people of New York City. They will tell you about the administration of the little dictator, Rudy Giuliani. He used the police to control his opponents. He was obsessive about secrecy. He controlled the media through fear and intimidation. And when his term was up, he tried to use 9-11 as an excuse to extend it indefinitely!

We fought World War II to defeat fascisim in Europe. Now, sixty years later, fascism is alive and well in the United States of America. About 30% of the Republican Party is fascist. That's Rudy's base. If he can scare the rest to death, he can win the Republican nomination.

If you thought Bush was a tyrrant, just wait for St. Rudy. Giuliani has no regard for the niceties of the Constitution, not as a federal prosecutor, not as mayor and certainly not as president.

The very neoconservatives who talked Bush into war against Sadaam Hussein are advising Rudy Giuliani. Bush's militaristic foreign policy will be pacifist compared to Giuliani's. a vote for Giuliani is a vote for war with Iran, which I am convinced will lead to World War III with Russia and China.

Giuliani will continue the Bush Administration's policy of classifying every document produced. There will be absolutely no Congressional oversight allowed of a Giuliani presidency.

Spying on American citizens under Bush has at least a hint of being related to terrorism. Under Giuliani, spying on American citizens will become a routine task and terrorism will not be the only justification.

I hate Hillary Clinton and her socialist agenda, but I hate Rudy Giuliani and his fascist agenda even more. Someone has to stop Rudy Giuliani, and if none of the Republican candidates can do it, only Hillary has the thick skin and naked ambition to beat him in a general election. If Rudy Giuliani is the nominee, next fall will be a bloody, dirty, disgusting battle for the hearts, minds and votes of the American people. Watch out and bring your hip waders. The fascist and socialist are going to war and they're taking no prisoners. Nothing less that the fate of Western civilization is at stake. 2008 is the most important Presidential Election in US history. Nothing has threatened our way of life more than Rudy Giuliani's ambition to become the most powerful man in the world.

Liberal vs. Socialist

George Washington was a liberal. Thomas Jefferson was a liberal. James Madison was a liberal. The Constitution of the United States sets up a government based on liberal principles. This country was founded by liberals to conduct an experiment in liberalism. Then, in the mid-nineteenth century, along came socialism. It appealed to the unintelligent masses. It is based on flawed social science. Everywhere it has been tried it has failed.

Then, Eugene V. Debs ran for President of the United States. He was arrested under the Espionage Act during World War I and socialists fled underground. When they reemerged, they had co-opted the term liberal and set out to rebrand the Democratic Party. But, there was nothing liberal about the reemerging socialists.

According to Ludwig von Mises, Austrian economist and philosopher, liberalism promotes free enterprise, limited government and individual freedom as the path to social justice and world peace. Everything the socialists believe is anathema to liberals. Socialists decry capitalism as exploitative; liberals see capitalism as the catalyst for uplifting every sector of society. Socialists see government as the answer to every problem; liberals see government as a necessary evil to be limited in scope and power. Socialists see true individual freedom as the path to anarchy; liberals see it as the path to self expression and self enlightenment. Socialists see debate as a threat; liberals see debate as vital to democracy. Socialists see the accumulation of wealth as immoral; liberals see the accumulation of wealth as a reward for peace.

Ask yourself if Democrats sound like socialists or liberals. The answer is clear. The Democrat Party as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson was liberal. That party was insinuated with socialists in the early twentieth century and was taken over completely by 1932 when the socialist Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the Party's nominee. Roosevelt's answer to the Depression was to push through Congress the most sweeping socialist agenda ever attempted in history. We are living with the consequences of that policy today. Social Security is going bankrupt and the socialist health care policies of the sixties are threatening to bankrupt the treasury. This country enjoyed its most prosperous and explosive growth under liberalism. Socialism took almost a century to kill it.

The Libertarian Party, today, is the last vestige of true liberalism in the world. It is time we reclaimed our rightful title and returned this country to its liberal founding principles. Fascism under the neo-conservative Republicans has given us a world filled with hate and resentment and socialism has given us an economy and treasury teetering on the edge of disaster. Capitalism under the control of fascists in America exists only to enrich the wealthy and powerful. Socialism has mollified the masses of poor Americans with empty promises that can't be fulfilled. It is time for true liberalism to reemerge in American politics and save the world from destruction as it tried to do in the eighteenth and nineteenth century before it was highjacked by leftwing lunatics.

Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and John Edwards are not liberals, they are socialists. Until we start calling them what they are, this country will continue to decline until there is nothing left but the remnants of a once flourishing civilization.

Conspiracy of Lies

George W. Bush is now an active member of the conspiracy to the obstruction of justice that Scooter Libby was charged with, convicted of and sentenced for. He is now a co-conspirator in the plot to destroy a CIA agent in order to discredit an honorable American who only wanted to know the truth. A truth that was inconvenient for the President and Vice President. Ambassador Wilson wasn't the only person looking into the question of whether or not Sadaam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Niger. When the President spoke the lie in the State of the Union Address he had ample proof of the falsehood of the lie from multiple sources. The President knew it was a lie, the Vice President knew it was a lie and the Director of the CIA knew it was a lie. But the lie was spoken nonetheless and nearly five years later, after all the irrefutable proof of the lie, the Vice President still speaks the lie at every opportunity. Hitler said if you speak the lie often enough people will believe it. But the American people are smarter than the President and Vice President give them credit for. We now know it's a lie and we're not buying it.

And the Administration knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I was misled for a considerable time and continued to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction and subscribed to the view that Sadaam Hussein had managed to export them to Syria even as multinational forces were massing on his border. Then, a former CIA agent speaking to MSNBC revealed that when Sadaam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan the CIA interviewed him. He was the senior official in the Iraqi government in charge of the weapons of mass destruction. He told the CIA there were no weapons of mass destruction. The CIA knew it and told the President. But that too was an inconvenient truth. So the President, the Vice President and even the junior Senator from New York denied the American people the truth.

This Administration is rotten to the core and the rotting begins at the head. Keith Olberman on MSNBC recalls a statement by John Wayne on the election of John F. Kennedy. He said he hadn't voted for Kennedy, but he recognized Kennedy as his President and he hoped he would do a good job. I can paraphrase Mr. Wayne by saying I voted for George W. Bush and I hoped he would do a good job. I can state unequivocally that I am severely disappointed. George W. Bush has proven to be one of those domestic threats to the Constitution that I swore an oath to defend against in 1982 when I joined the US Navy. He has spied on American citizens without a warrant, mined our phone and internet activity and denied habeas corpus to individuals he deems a threat to our national security. When those individuals successfully challenge their detention before a military judge, he has ordered those proceedings to be repeated over and over and over again until the outcome comes out 'right'. He has led this nation into an unjust, illegal, preemptive war claiming an imminent threat where none existed, just so the Vice President could settle a personal political score. He has sold out the economic security of hundreds of thousands of American workers so his business friends could profit from the economic ruin of those American workers. And he has left this country vulnerable to the kind of terror threat that surfaced in London and Glasgow by not securing this country from foreign terrorists.

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney should be removed from office for the safety and security of our Republic. Unfortunately, we are shackled with Congressional leadership that is more incompetent than the administration they are tasked with overseeing. Henry Waxman, John Conyers and all of the Congressional Democrats are idiots who couldn't mount a successful impeach of a criminal like Richard Nixon. Barbara Jordan is probably rolling over in her grave. They can't get Alberto Gonzales who is clearly in contempt of Congress and has probably perjured himself. The deck is stacked against Congress. The Justice Department is staffed by neo-con political appointees and the courts are run by conservative judges who support expansive executive privilige. Getting a successful prosecution of George Bush and Dick Cheney passed the current conservative Supreme Court will require a level of legal expertise that the current Congress just isn't up to. Unfortunately, the Congress is so incompetent that any prosecution of George Bush and Dick Cheney will be portrayed as purely political and that will cost the Deomcrats control of Congress.

Since our politicians are incapable of doing their duty, I call upon all patriotic US Armed Forces personnel to uphold their oath to the Constitution and refuse to obey any orders from their Commander-In-Chief until he admits his crimes against the Constitution and resigns. If he refuses, the generals and admirals of the Pentagon should walk over to the White House, pick George Bush and Dick Cheney up and throw them out of the house. Let's be absolutely clear about what I'm advocating. I'm calling for a military coup de etat to restore the Constitution. After George Bush and Dick Cheney are on the White House lawn, the next in succession should be immediately sworn into office. The time has come for all patriots to do their duty to the Constitution. It is the Fourth of July and our Constitution and Democracy are under threat from a democratically elected fascist dictator and his equally fascist mentor. With all due respect to Justice Black, the Constitution IS a suicide pact. It is the whole purpose of the exercise in Democracy. Without it we are subject to the whims of any tyrant who can get a majority in the Electoral College. And every member of the United States Armed Forces has sworn an oath to that Constitution, not to the President, not to the country but to a document that we hold as sacred to our Democracy as the Bible is to our Christian Faith.

There is nothing that the current Congress can do about the disastrous war in Iraq, but they can stall any initiatives by the White House for the next 18 months. If Congress can't get rid of the President and Vice President at least they can limit any further damage by obstructing and neutering the White House. Keith Olberman calls for the President and Vice President to do the patriotic thing and resign. (http://thenewshole.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/03/256978.aspx) I wouldn't hold my breath. George Bush believes he is God's instrument and Dick Cheney is addicted to absolute power. We're stuck with these criminals until January 20, 2009 or the Armed Forces act. I probably won't vote for whoever is the next President of the United States, but I hope they will do a good job.

Executive or Legislative, That is the Question

The Vice President asserts executive privilege to shield his activities from Congress, but when it comes to Executive Orders that he doesn't like, he asserts that he's not part of the Executive Branch. A lesson in basic Constitution is in order.

Article I Section 3 states "the Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided." Article II defines the term, manner of election and manner for removal from office of the Vice President along with the President. The Vice President seems to be claiming that he is in the unique position of stradling both the Legislative and the Executive Branches. He is claiming that he is not subject to the authority of either. He has invented a new branch of the government, one not subject to the checks and balances of the other three.

It is clear to me, from my reading of the Constitution, that the Vice President is a member of the Senate only as a representative of the Executive Branch. He has no vote unless there is a tie, in which case, he is clearly authorized to cast a vote favorable to the position of the Executive.

Dick Cheney has conducted his office with nothing but contempt for Congress. As the issue of whether the Vice President is a part of and thus subject to the orders of the Executive is destined to be decided by the Supreme Court, the question then becomes, does the Vice President recognize the authority of the Judicial Branch over the Executive and Legislative Branches and does the current President have the balls to compel his Vice President to submit to Executive Orders?

Democrats Losing Congress

The Democratic majority in Congress won't last out the 2008 Election. Their approval rating is lower than the President's. They've pissed off the Independents and Left-wing that got them elected. Where is their 23% approval coming from? The Republicans had twelve years to change the way Washington works and they were corrupted by the process and did worse than the Democrats. The Democrats were relected in 2006 because people didn't trust the Republicans anymore, and the Democrats simply picked up where they left off in 1994. It is time for the American electorate to really change Washington by throwing the Republicans and the Democrats out for good. The time is right for every third party in the country to take over. The question is, can the third parties capitalize on the perfect political storm?

The Libertarian Party doesn't have a strategy for taking control from unpopluar Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Their strategy is to raise money for Presidential campaigns and leave local campaigns on their own. They have to focus on local, Congressional campaigns, but they aren't organized for that task. Their stragtegy is top down instead of grassroots up. Ron Paul, a Libertarian, has coopted the Republican machine in places like Brazoria and Victoria. He has a message that people chose by 20 points over his Democratic challenger. Where are the other Ron Pauls of the Libertarian Party? Any Libertarian running for Congress needs to learn from Ron Paul.

The Surge Assessment

General Odierno has given a clue as to the assessment of the surge in September by General Petraeus. They will ask for more time. They will give the Republicans enough cover to keep a majority of Republicans behind the President and his military strategy. Tony Snow has given a clear answer as to how long the Administration thinks we will be in Iraq. Think Korea. It has been the plan of the Administration to create a permanent military presence in Iraq from the beginning. There may be troop reductions by the end of 2008, but there will continue to be a significant, permanent troop presence in Iraq for generations to come. Hillary foresees it and so do all of the Republican candidates. As unpopular as this war has become, there is no indication that it will be resolved by any President in the near future.

Who's To Blame for Iraq?

Whether George Bush or Al Gore were President on September 11, 2001 would have made no difference. We would still have been attacked, and more than 3000 people would have died. The difference would have been the reaction vis-a-vis Iraq. Al Gore would never have taken us into a bloody, foolish war with Iraq. So who's to blame for the disaster that Iraq has become. 22,198 people in New Hampshire who thought it would be fun to poke a finger in the eye of the political process and cast a vote for a man who had no chance in Hell of being elected President. New Hampshire is the only New England state to go for Bush. New Hampshire's 4 electoral votes is the margin of victory. The deaths of 3,432 Americans can be laid at the feet of the fine voters of New Hampshire. The Green Party, the most anti-war party in America, stole the election of 2000 for George Bush. Ralph Nader should be the most hated man in America, not Dick Cheney. The War in Iraq is Ralph Nader's fault. Ross Perot may have done the country a favor in 1992 when he threw the election to Bill Clinton, but Ralph Nader is responsible for the worst foreign policy decision any president of this country has ever made. Ralph Nader and 22,198 voters in New Hampshire made George Bush the Dictator of the United States of America and put into power people who were hell bent on the first day on destroying Sadaam Hussein no matter the cost.

Freedom and Hope and Opportunity

America is supposed to be about freedom and hope and opportunity. That's what John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were selling and we ate it up. There's not a single candidate for President who is selling anything approaching the American ideal. All the Republicans have is fear. All the Democrats have is despair. Where's freedom and hope and opportunity? Did 9-11 kill those too along with 3000 Americans? We survive in the world by being "a shining city on the hill." Since 9-11, all we've offered the world is death and military oppression. We need someone to steer us back onto the path that makes us proud and the envy of the world. We defeat global Islamist terror by maintaining our ideals of freedom and hope and opportunity. Freedom from fear, hope for prosperity for our children and the opportunity to achieve both.

The US military throughout our history has had only one role. To kill and destroy the enemies of freedom and hope and opportunity. Armies don't build civil societies; people build civil societies. And they build them based on freedom and hope and opportunity. We can't remove tyranny from the world one dictator at a time. All we can do is encourage people to fight it themselves by our example and our support. We can't deliver the world from evil by doing evil ourselves. Everytime we use war as a solution to a problem, we get nothing but fear and suffering and despair. Wars are at times necessary, but should be used sparingly and only for a specifically stated purpose. Giving the President an open-ended declaration to use force was a huge mistake. We need to withdraw that declaration and work towards a more positive solution. One that replaces fear and suffering and despair with freedom and hope and opportunity. I believe that was the message of Baker-Hamilton. I am looking for the Presidential candidate who can offer that.

The "Surge" in Shambles

The so called "surge" was not the plan of the military commanders on the ground in Iraq. The "surge" was not cooked up by military planners in the Pentagon. The "surge" was dreamed up by a policy dink at the American Enterprise Institute. When the commanders on the ground refused to sign on, they were moved aside and replaced by commanders who would do what they were told.

Now that he has met the enemy face to face in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus has scrapped the new Iraqi Security Plan. The plan called for Iraqi security forces to take the lead. That has been dropped. The plan called for accelerated training of Iraqis. That has been put on hold. The plan now calls for US military forces to take full control of the entire country, and then turn over control to Iraqi forces. Iraqis will not control the security in the country by the end of the year, contrary to pronouncements by the Iraqi Prime Minister.

The US military doesn't have the personnel necessary to carry out this new plan. By the end of the summer, Gen. Petraeus will be asking for and getting further deployments of National Guard troops to the war zone. There will be no troop withdrawals from Iraq before 2009. And, if John McCain is elected President, those troops will remain until far into his presidency. There is no foreseeable end to our engagement in Iraq.

The troop surge is only about two-thirds deployed, but military casualties have doubled over the past two months. The Shiite militia are laying low, so sectarian killings are down. But they will wait only so long before rejoining the fight. The US military is right now at this moment Balkanizing Baghdad, walling off Sunni and Shiia districts. It is not stopping the suicide bombings, it is only concentrating the targets.

Our troops are in an untenable situtation. It is an entirely proper military strategy to withdraw and reassess the situation. But President Bush is intransegent in his blind religious fervor to save Iraq from itself.

How much more treasure and blood must be wasted before Congress exercises its Constitutitional authority to put a stop to this fiasco? Congress had to give authority for this war to start and Congress can withdraw that authority anytime it sees fit. Only Congress can declare war and only Congress can declare peace. The blood of brave American soldiers is on Congress, now.

The blood of the innocent Americans who will be killed as a result of our failure in Iraq is solely the responsibility of George Bush.

Enforced Democracy

In an article entitled "Let Freedom Ring" about additions to Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech, Time wrote, "The sober, wise Wall Street Journal editorialized for still another: "The freedom of every people to reject any or all of the other four, for themselves, if they so desire." Reason: "Democracy will become the political salvation of the race, if and as it is voluntarily embraced by non-democratic peoples and adapted to their respective conditions, but never if it is made a pretext for an attempt at enforced conformity.""

The War in Iraq is doomed to failure. Democracy can't be forced with the barrel of a gun. The people of Iraq are incapable of democracy. Democracy will only come to Iraq after a significant period of transition. You can't go from totalitarianism to democracy in a single step. The situtation in Iraq will only improve when Iraq gets a strong-willed leader who can force the competing factions to cooperate. The current Iraqi administration is too weak to survive long without the backing of the United States.

The democratic process brought totalitarianism to Germany in 1932. So, after 1945, western Germany was able to reestablish democracy in pretty short order. Japan had no tradition of democracy, but there was a populace compliant to the will of its emperor and when he endorsed democracy, the people willingly followed. Iraq has no history of democratic institutions to reestablish and there is no unifying political force to lead the people of Iraq to democracy.

John McCain is right. There will be dire consequences for failure in Iraq. The War in Iraq was a monumental mistake and there will be a heavy price to pay for that mistake. The "surge" is only delaying the inevitable unpleasantness and wasting American lives and treasure. One of those consequences, the terrorists following us here from Iraq, can be avoided if the President would enforce existing immigration laws. They can't attack us here if they can't get here. Security at all foreign US installations has to be significantly increased. And, Americans have to be strongly warned about their vulnerability overseas. We can't prevent the consequences of our failure, but we can prepare for them.

We must also learn three vital lessons from this fiasco. First, never give a President a blank check for aggressive action. There must always be clear objectives and a certain exit strategy. Second, nation building is not an acceptable use of the US military. It always backfires and further endangers us. And we must learn the unpleasant truth that not everyone in the world wants to be an American.

The world did not change on 9-11. Only the United States changed. There is still a military dictatorship in Pakistan. The people of Darfur are still suffering. Global temperatures are still rising. Poverty and AIDS are still rampant across Africa. The only thing that changed on 9-11 is that Americans realized that the world is a truly dangerous place and that no place on the planet is safe. That danger is largely of our government's own making. And, just as the Roman Empire couldn't protect its citizens everywhere in the world, the United States can't either. And, because of Iraq, the world will be an even more dangerous place and there is even less that the United States can do to protect us. Ramming democracy down the throats of the Iraqi people doesn't help.