The New American

Transatlantic Two-Step

Dennis Behreandt — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

A few quick showers moved through the Washington, D.C., area on the morning of April 30, 2007, but they wouldn’t stay long. By the time a smiling Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, joined President Bush and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso of Portugal in the Rose Garden at the White House, temperatures were beginning to climb on what would become a beautiful, warm spring day in the nation’s capital. The leaders were there for a press conference at which they would announce the results of the recent U.S.-EU Summit. While the flags of the United States, Germany, and the European Union fluttered in the warm breeze behind them, the trio of leaders gazed at the assembled press corps. At 1:18 p.m., President Bush addressed the gathering.

“Thank you all, please be seated,” President Bush began. “Welcome to the Rose Garden. I want to welcome Angela Merkel and Jos Barroso here. Thank you all for your friendship, thank you for what has been a serious set of discussions,” the president said in his characteristic drawl.

Without further preface, he then described the outcome of recent U.S.-EU negotiations.

“I told the chancellor and the president that the EU-U.S. relations are very important to our country,” the president continued, “that not only is it important for us to strategize how to promote prosperity and peace, but it’s important for us to achieve concrete results. And we have done so. I thank the chancellor and Jos very much for the trans-Atlantic economic integration plan that the three of us signed today. It is a statement of the importance of trade. It is a commitment to eliminating barriers to trade. It is a recognition that the closer that the United States and the EU become, the better off our people become. So this is a substantial agreement and I appreciate it.”

With that, the president announced a wide-ranging agreement that committed the United States of America to a path that would see the nation shed its long-cherished independence in favor of integration with the European Union. As described by the White House itself, the U.S.-EU summit:

“Adopted a framework on transatlantic economic integration which lays a long-term foundation for building a stronger and more integrated transatlantic economy, in particular by fostering cooperation to reduce regulatory burdens and accelerating work on key ‘lighthouse projects’ in the areas of intellectual property rights, secure trade, investment, financial markets, and innovation.”
“Adopted a declaration on political and security issues,” including the seemingly mutually exclusive goals of combatting terrorism and working “towards visa-free travel for all EU and U.S. citizens by creating conditions by which the Visa Waiver Program may be expanded.”
“Adopted a joint statement on energy security and climate change” that commits the United States to working collectively with the EU to ensure “secure, affordable, and clean supplies of energy and tackling climate change.”

What seems like a revolutionary step toward transatlantic merger was little remarked in the press. The entire event seems to have occurred in a vacuum. There was little or no coverage of possible discussion of transatlantic integration in the years before the summit and, over the past year, there has likewise been little or no coverage of subsequent developments. It seems almost as if the agreement hammered out between the White House and the European Union was a freak occurrence, a political accident of nature. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

In fact, quietly and behind the scenes, a very active if unofficial and non-governmental effort has been underway to grease the skids for transatlantic merger. The effort has been led by a little-known non-governmental organization (NGO) that has been working to advance plans to merge the United States with Europe. Few have heard of the work of this group, the Transatlantic Policy Network (TPN), because it has never been covered by the mainstream media. That is a particularly interesting fact, given that TPN’s supporters and collaborators include many powerful and well-known corporations, think tanks, and legislators on both sides of the Atlantic. That they are cooperating in an effort to merge the United States and the EU would seem to be at least marginally newsworthy.

Even though the mainstream media can’t be bothered to report on it, the American people might be interested to learn that TPN’s plans are not just talk. Working carefully, if quietly, since the early 1990s, the organization has moved quickly to gain the agreement of leaders on both sides of the ocean that further integration is necessary and desirable. Now, transatlantic integration is much closer to reality than anyone would suspect.

Merger Ahead

In February 2007, ahead of the U.S.-EU Summit, TPN published its white paper entitled Completing the Transatlantic Market. In that paper, the organization summarized its goals. The executive summary states:

It is time for a complementary, top down approach to transatlantic cooperation through a joint commitment by the European Union and the United States to a roadmap for achieving a Transatlantic Market by 2015 and creation of an overarching framework for dialogue and action to achieve that goal.

The emphasis placed on “top down” is not insignificant. As typically used by NGOs, that terminology usually implies that executive-level leaders will impose their desires on the citizens of a nation, not the other way around as envisioned, for instance, by America’s Founders.

That aside, is the plan as described by the TPN white paper, really anything to worry about? After all, isn’t a common “Transatlantic Market” just a matter of economics and trade policy that will have little or no effect on the sovereignty and independence of nations?

The experience of Europe over the last 60 years demonstrates that the creation of a common market is only a first step toward more thorough integration. The European Union itself started life as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), an intergovernmental organization formed in the aftermath of World War II ostensibly to give a boost to the coal and steel industries in European nations ravaged by war.

But the ECSC was only meant to be a first step to further economic and (eventually) political integration. In 1957, it was superseded by the European Economic Community (EEC) that was created by the Treaty of Rome. The EEC, which was also known as the Common Market, became the European Community, the immediate predecessor of today’s European Union.

The progression from common market to political union as it occurred in Europe should not be mistaken for a singular and unusual event. It is, in fact, the process through which other international political mergers are expected to occur. The process was explained by University of Nevada professor of economics Glen Atkinson. In a paper published in the Social Science Journal entitled “Regional Integration in the Emerging Global Economy,” Professor Atkinson explained:

The lowest level of integration is a free trade area that involves only the removal of tariffs and quotas among the parties. If a common external tariff is added, then a customs union has been created. The next level, or a common market, requires free movement of people and capital as well as goods and services. It is this stage where institutional development becomes critical. The stage of economic union requires a high degree of coordination or even unification of policies. This sets the foundation for political union.

If TPN succeeds in catalyzing the existence of a transatlantic common market by 2015 as planned, that will be only one short step removed from actual political integration.

Integration Milestones

On its website, TPN proudly lists some of its “achievements” in building the framework for a common market. “In a short space of time,” the organization says, it has “built a credible ‘network of networks’ linking the political, business and academic communities. It confirmed its value to members by helping to shape key developments in the EU-US partnership during the 1990s.”

According to the organization, some of its achievements include:

Creating the “New Transatlantic Agenda” in December 1995, described by TPN as “a blueprint for joint action by the US and the European Union across all of the most important political, economic, security and social aspects of their relationship.”
Launching the “Transatlantic Business Dialogue” also in 1995, “with a specific objective to remove the trade and investment obstacles to the creation of a real transatlantic marketplace.”
Creating the “Transatlantic Economic Partnership (TEP)” at the London EU-U.S. Summit in May 1998. According to the organization, “TEP identified a series of elements for an initiative to intensify and extend multilateral and bilateral cooperation and common actions in the field of trade and investment, including formal trade negotiations and trust enhancing measures.”

These efforts have garnered significant transoceanic support, both from political and business leaders. In 2004 and again in 2005, the EU parliament passed resolutions “in which the concept of completing the transatlantic market by 2015 is supported.” TPN notes with apparent satisfaction that the U.S. Congress has done likewise and points out that the “House of Representatives has also passed a resolution endorsing the concept of a ‘Transatlantic Partnership Agreement’ between the EU and the US.”

For those keeping track of congressional malfeasance, this legislation, House Resolution 390, was introduced in the House by Nebraska Republican Doug Bereuter on October 2, 2003. It passed the House little more than a month later on November 5. The resolution found that the “United States and the European community are aware of their shared responsibility, not only to further transatlantic security, but to address other common interests such as environmental protection, poverty reduction, combating international crime and promoting human rights, and to work together to meet those transnational challenges which affect the well-being of all.”

Moreover, it found that because of the “threats posed by global terrorism, terrorist states, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the nexus of the three, the partnership should be expanded progressively from a transatlantic community of values to an effective transatlantic community of action by developing a collaborative strategy and action plan for dealing with those challenges of mutual interest and concern.” (Emphasis added.)

Support Network

The passage of the Bereuter resolution in the House in 2003 strongly indicates that the TPN plan has the widespread support of influential members of Congress. It is not necessary to look far to find just how many influential legislators have backed the transatlantic integration plan.

One such backer was the late Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, the powerful and influential former chairman of both the House Judiciary and International Relations Committees.

In its “Partnership Report” of June 2004, TPN notes that Hyde spoke in favor of creating an EU-U.S. common market during a speech in Rome on June 29, 2003. According to the TPN report, Hyde “stressed the need for a ‘Transatlantic Economic Framework with the free movement of goods, services and investments.” That, as economist Glen Atkinson pointed out, is the very definition of a common market.

But Hyde wasn’t finished. He returned to this in a speech given in Chicago in September of 2003. In that speech, TPN points out, Hyde argued that America’s “economic relationship with Europe receives too little attention” and that the United States should be looking more closely at “the benefits to be obtained from closer cooperation across the Atlantic.” Accordingly, TPN notes, “Hyde called for the establishment of ‘a true Atlantic Marketplace’ and urged the EU and the US to ‘convene a high-level meeting of our respective regulatory policy-makers and regulatory bodies to try to establish common objectives in regulation and devise a process of formulating complementary regulations.’ ”

To put this in proper perspective, it should be noted that harmonization of law and regulation is a necessary prerequisite that must be accomplished before any economic or political integration of nations can occur. Finally, in 2004, Hyde, along with Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.) and Minister of the European Parliament (MEP) Jim Nicholson, who was serving as Chairman of the European Parliamentary Delegation to the United States, signed a joint statement “calling for a barrier-free transatlantic market by 2015,” thereby officially endorsing the plan preferred by TPN.

There are many other important legislators on both sides of the Atlantic who continue to back the integration plan, and some of them actually serve as leaders within TPN itself. The most prominent of these is Republican Senator Robert Bennett of Utah. Bennett is chairman of the TPN Management Committee, one of the top leadership positions at TPN, according to the organization’s website. The honorary U.S. president of TPN is Robert S. Strauss, a key Carter administration official and former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Joining Strauss and Bennett in TPN leadership positions are:

Former Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) — now senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., another group promoting U.S.-EU integration;
Democratic Congressman Ron Kind of Wisconsin, who has been an active supporter in Congress of regional free trade agreements;
Former Congressman Mike Oxley (R-Ohio), infamous coauthor of the notorious Sarbanes-Oxley Act that, as described by Congressman Ron Paul, unconstitutionally gave “the federal government authority to regulate the accounting standards of private corporations” in the wake of the Enron and other financial scandals of the early part of the decade.

In addition to these U.S. legislators serving in leadership positions with TPN, there are many others who are members of TPN’s “U.S. Congressional Group.” These include six senators — the aforementioned Senator Bennett of Utah, Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) — and 49 representatives. Some of the noteworthy members of the latter cohort include former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), recently deceased Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell (D-Mich.), and current House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). It seems that selling out U.S. sovereignty is a very popular and bipartisan pastime.

The Usual Suspects

Among businesses and think tanks one finds the usual crowd of internationalists heading up the lists of those supporting the TPN program of transatlantic integration. European and American business members include such influential companies as Boeing, BASF, Microsoft, Coca Cola, General Electric, IBM, Time Warner, Walt Disney, Wal-Mart, Xerox, Merck, Nestle, UPS, and a host of others. The inclusion of media titans Time Warner (owner of CNN), General Electric (NBC), and Disney (ABC News) perhaps explains in part the media blackout on the coverage of TPN’s activities.

Among think tanks, the TPN membership list is a who’s who of internationalism-promoting groups. Included on the list is the granddaddy of them all, the Council on Foreign Relations. Joining the CFR is the Atlantic Council of the United States, which seeks a “healthy transatlantic relationship” as “an essential prerequisite for a stronger international system.” Other organizations serving as TPN members include:

The Brookings Institution
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Chamber of Commerce of the United States
The German Marshall Fund of the U.S.
The Centre for European Policy Studies
The European Roundtable of Industrialists
Institut Francais des Relations Internationales

All of these and several other groups have lent their support to the TPN goal of creating a Transatlantic Market by 2015. As umbrella organization TPN points out, this market is to be created by executive decree from the top down, and that is exactly what has been happening. Meanwhile, the citizens who are being herded into this arrangement have no say in the matter. In fact, they are being kept in the dark.

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Allow Intelligence!

James Perloff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Traditionally minded Americans don’t often cheer Hollywood products. We gladly report an exception: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (rated PG).

As many NEW AMERICAN readers know, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution transformed Western culture. The Bible taught that life forms are creations of God, with man the centerpiece, made in God’s image. Darwin introduced a new doctrine: random interactions of chemicals had created life, and man was just an animal, evolved from lower life forms through survival of the fittest. Sold to the public as scientific fact, “Social Darwinism,” with its view of man as beast, helped spawn unprecedented cruelties under communism and Naziism.

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Now, however, science has evolution on the retreat. For example:

A single cell, which Darwin thought “simple,” is encoded with information that would fill thousands of books, and is far too complex to have formed by chance.
In his book Darwin’s Black Box, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe demonstrates that certain biochemical systems, such as blood clotting and the immune system, are “irreducibly complex” — that is, they consist of interdependent parts that cannot function in lesser stages, and thus cannot have evolved step-by-step.
In Not by Chance, Dr. Lee Spetner, who taught information theory at Johns Hopkins University, documents that random mutations — evolution’s alleged building blocks — cause losses of genetic information, not gains.
In Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, molecular biologist Michael Denton shows that, on a cellular level, there is no evidence for the proclaimed evolutionary sequence “fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal.”

As the new data has emerged, evolutionists have fought to prevent classrooms from openly discussing the weaknesses in Darwin’s theory. Freedom of speech has been suppressed in academia, and educators persecuted for daring to address intelligent design (ID). It was this trend that prompted the documentary Expelled.

According to the film’s website, the project “began with an observation made by [co-producer Walt] Ruloff, a successful computer software entrepreneur who comes from a high-tech world in which innovation is constant and eagerly sought. In stark contrast, he noticed, the scientific and academic communities were deeply resistant to innovation, in this case innovation that might revise Darwin’s theory that random mutation and natural selection drive all variation in life forms.”

The film’s host and narrator is Ben Stein, economist, law professor, speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and author of over 20 books, but probably best known as a comedy actor, with his trademark monotone voice. He is also a pro-life creationist, making him a maverick in Hollywood.

Liberty and Justice — for All?

“Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are,” says Stein. “Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-science, it’s anti-American.” The film underscores America’s tradition of personal freedom with visits to landmarks such as the Jefferson Memorial and Washington Monument, and contrasts these with images of the Berlin Wall, symbol of tyranny. That wall is gone, but another, we learn, has been erected in American universities.

Stein interviews double Ph.D. biologist Richard Sternberg, a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. In 2004, as editor of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Sternberg allowed publication of a peer-reviewed article suggesting there is evidence for intelligent design in nature. This resulted in a vicious, smear-tainted campaign of abuse against Dr. Sternberg, driven by certain Smithsonian officials and by the National Center for Science Education (self-described as a “clearinghouse for information and advice to keep evolution in the science classroom and ‘scientific creationism’ out”). The attack on Sternberg was so outrageous that it led to a congressional investigation and an ensuing report, Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian.

Among others, Stein also visits:

astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez, who, despite publishing over 60 articles in peer-reviewed science journals and being credited with helping discover new planets, was refused tenure at Iowa State University after he advocated teaching intelligent design;
molecular biologist Caroline Crocker, compelled to leave George Mason University after including several slides about intelligent design in one of her lectures;
NASA-honored engineering professor Robert J. Marks II, forced by Baylor to remove an ID-friendly website from the university’s servers.

But Stein doesn’t just meet intelligent design’s defenders, he also takes on some of its most adamant critics, including Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education; Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society; Cornell professor William Provine; and atheist blogger P.Z. Myers. Ultimately he travels to England to confront Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and probably the most vocal critic of ID and creation.

Producer Ruloff warns: “People will be stunned to actually find out what elitist scientists proclaim, which is that a large majority of Americans are simpletons who believe in a fairy tale.”

During his interview, Dawkins dismisses religion as “primitive superstition,” and those who reject evolution for it “ignorant or insane.” Logically questioned by Stein, Dawkins admits that life could have come from “a higher intelligence” that “seeded” it on this planet — i.e., he could accept aliens as our creator, but not God. But this begs for an answer to the question: how did life get started on the aliens’ planet?

Ideas Have Consequences

Creation-evolution is a vital issue. It is far more than a science discussion. Most Americans believe, as Thomas Jefferson said, that “men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” If, as Darwinism says, there was no Creator, then there is no basis for rights, no moral absolutes, nor any God to whom we are accountable for our actions.

Small wonder, then, that Darwinism has always found a comfortable home in totalitarian states. Stein visits the former mental institution at Hadamar, Germany, where over 14,000 mentally ill were once executed by the Nazis. As Stein notes, Charles Darwin advocated eugenics, writing that “the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.... Excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” Stein explores the link between Darwin and Nazi eugenics, interviewing California State University professor Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler. And he notes that eugenics was espoused in America by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.

The film also exposes media bias. Intelligent-design advocates tell Stein how the politically correct press has distorted their positions. Journalist Pamela Winnick recounts the abuse she received after trying to report on the evolution-design controversy in a balanced manner. A discomforting moment for Americans comes in the film when Polish scientist Maciej Giertych tells Stein that there is less censorship on this issue in Poland today than in the United States.

A Model of Communication

Expelled strikes a blow for free speech, and is drawing much-needed attention to the creation-evolution battle. It has been effectively marketed by Motive Entertainment, which also took on The Passion of The Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia. Motive’s appealing website for the film, www.expelledthemovie.com, along with grass-roots promotion from advocates of creation and intelligent design, has spurred a groundswell of demand.

Atheists have been bitterly denouncing the film. Atheist P.Z. Myers declared: “It’s going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant — which means they’re going to draw in about 90% of the American market.” Such attacks have unintentionally served as further promotion. On April 18, Expelled opened in 1,052 theaters, breaking the record for documentaries (Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 opened in 868).

Expelled is not your grandfather’s documentary. A fast pace, rocking soundtrack, and Stein’s deadpan humor all defy that word’s connotations. The interviews never drag — they are interspersed with clips from old films to underscore points being made. There are two superb animation sequences, one demonstrating the cell’s complexity, the other a satirical “casino of life” in which hundreds of slot machines must simultaneously hit jackpots in order for life to commence by chance. This movie will leave you entertained and informed (we know plenty these days that do neither).

Near the film’s end, shots of the Berlin Wall coming down remind us that the walls of academic censorship must fall also. Stein’s final words exhort audience members to get involved.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a model of communication that all can learn something from.

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James Perloff is author of Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism.

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A Climate of Repression

William F. Jasper — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Interview of Vaclav Klaus by William F. Jasper

On March 2-4, more than 100 scientists, many of considerable renown, attended a conference in New York, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, called the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. Also in attendance were over 300 other delegates, including Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic.

Though he is not a climatologist or physicist, he was a featured speaker at the event for two reasons. First, he recognizes in the mannerisms and proposed public-policy recommendations of those trying to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions the same noble-sounding goals and the same repressive political mechanisms as of the communists who so recently ruled his country with an iron fist. Second, he is a notable economist, formerly holding a position in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and he can speak with authority about how the global-warming alarmists are misusing data to justify their claims.

THE NEW AMERICAN interviewed President Klaus at the climate conference.

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THE NEW AMERICAN: Why did you come to the International Conference on Climate Change here in New York City?

Vaclav Klaus: Well, I feel very strongly about it, not about global warming but for the discussion in principle. It’s not a discussion about the climate; it’s a discussion about human society; it’s a discussion about freedoms; it’s a discussion about human prosperity, especially in developing countries. That’s the issue which has been a topic for my whole life. Global warming is just an instrument for influencing the future behavior of mankind. In this respect I am involved in the discussion.

TNA: You come from the Czech Republic; you are familiar with what it is like to have freedom totally suppressed. How does freedom relate to this issue?

Klaus: I am sensitive, maybe overly sensitive in this respect, but I listen to speeches of some global-warming alarmists — environmentalists in general. I hear sentences, ideas, which sound to me very familiar from the communist era.

Again there is someone who wants to orchestrate our life, again someone who knows better than the rest of us what is good for me, for us, and who tries to regulate, control, mastermind human society and in this respect there is a structural similarity with my experiences from the past.

TNA: Are you also familiar with the way that statist systems will claim a scientific basis to justify their policies?

Klaus: They are misusing science. Again, I say with the communists it was also science which was also misused as an instrument for influencing us. There was scientific Marxism at the time and now we have scientific environmentalism — it was the same.

TNA: Very similar parallels …

Klaus: Yes, somewhat. I think that many people are misled by the argument that the debate about climate change is a scientific debate in the field of climatology. I don’t think that is the case. What we are talking about is influencing human society, and in this respect it is much more about social sciences, my own field of economics, and not that much about the details of physics and other scientific disciplines.

TNA: In that regard, one of the things that’s been quite prevalent in this case is closing off scientific debate.

Klaus: To close the scientific debate is again, a weapon against those who disagree. I know that there is no scientific consensus. There can never be scientific consensus in this respect. The closing of the scientific discussion is really a very dangerous way of looking at things and can have very unpleasant consequences for human society.

TNA: Tell us about your concern on that level, the economic and social consequences of the policies which are being advocated.

Klaus: As an economist — by the way, I have to stress that I wrote a book about it, Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered, Climate or Freedom? — my answer is of course freedom.

The book is more from the position of a social scientist and economist than from a position of a climatologist. I have just one chapter devoted to technical issues. I see the scientific discussion not as a climatologist, but as an economist. I can follow the significant literature, but I don’t want to be someone who contributes to the scientific literature. Nevertheless, I can compare the two approaches.

As an economist, I have one relative comparative advantage. We are dealing with time-series data. So in this respect, climatology and economics are comparable and similar. In both fields it’s a huge complex system and it’s a system where you can’t make controlled experiments. So the statistical theory, in our case econometric, is something very similar to the same discussions in climatology.

I’ve spent 10 or 15 years of my life doing mathematical modeling, statistics, and econometrics. I think I have some knowledge about how to deal with time-series data, which is the same story in climatology. This is my interest.

I see a misuse of data. I see a misuse of statistical techniques used to analyze the data, to interpolate and extrapolate the data. This is what bothers me as an economist. I’m really very unhappy with the simplification of analysis.

We, I mean economists, live in the world of cost-benefit analysis of a serious risk aberration discussion. The global-warming alarmists live in the world of precautionary principle — for me nonsense. I have never seen that principle in all the textbooks I have studied in my life.

Plus, as an economist I started to be really involved in this discussion when I discovered how irrationally discounting principles are used in the global-warming alarmism. That wasn’t, by the way, the motivation for me to start writing the book. Originally I just wanted to write a short piece, a short article, about discounting — misuse of discounting in the Stern Report.

That was my original ambition and when I wrote the piece and wanted to publish it as an article. I discovered there is no publication useful for it, so I started to extend it. Originally the idea was to make it a short booklet, and then it became a book.

But the discounting discussion is a crucial part of it. This is something the climatologists do not discuss.

TNA: What would implementing some of the drastic or even moderate so-called proposals of the global-warming alarmists mean for the people of the Czech Republic?

Klaus: Well, I don’t want to distinguish the Czech Republic from other countries. The Kyoto Protocol will have a minuscule impact upon the climate. It’s almost difficult to find statistical significance of the Kyoto Protocol. Nevertheless, the costs are very, very heavy, and I don’t think it’s very smart to do that.

On the other hand, for me, “economy” is about economizing, it’s about saving, it’s about rational behavior, so I don’t mind some saving of energy — that’s the last thing I would criticize.

Nevertheless, to a priori introduce the targets for limiting the use of energy without knowing how to increase [the efficiency of that same energy] is for me a joke for the next several generations in the world — I don’t want to speak for the most developed countries within the world. For the undeveloped, economic development will still be based on fossil fuels. And to stop it is definitely impossible.

TNA: But as an economist you could see very definitely a negative impact in many ways on human society?

Klaus: That is quite clear. As an economist … I know that when there is economic growth — the growth of income — that the people pay more attention to all kinds of environmental issues, including the climate.

So, I am absolutely sure that just as spontaneous [activity and cooperation] will solve the problems, it’s not necessary to mastermind society from above as the global-warming alarmists basically try to do.

TNA: Do you see encouraging developments in Europe with regard to rolling back the onslaught of the alarmists’ trend of the last few years?

Klaus: I am afraid that it will be difficult. Nevertheless, this is the task for all of us to do it in the future. However, I am afraid global-warming alarmism will continue marching on, and we will get on the slippery road to serfdom, to use the phrase from [economist Friedrich] Hayek’s terminology. This is what we once experienced in our country, and I don’t want to experience it again.

TNA: We appreciate your coming here to share with us here at this conference. Any last comment?

Klaus: I must say I was just asked by the Czech press agency what was the net contribution I got here. I said, “Well, even with all my strong views, I must say I was slightly reinforced in my views by seeing so many very competent scientists — their speeches, their presentations.” It was slightly better than I expected.

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It’s About Freedom

The following is excerpted from an address by President Vaclav Klaus to the International Climate Conference in New York City on March 2-4, sponsored by the Heartland Institute.

First, I would like to thank the organizers for this important conference, for making it possible and for inviting one politically incorrect politician from Central Europe to come and speak here.

A politician, as was just mentioned, who in spite of his views on climate, was two weeks ago reelected as president of his country. And the point is that everyone in the Czech Republic knows my views on climate change. I am, I think, a living demonstration of the fact that politicians can be elected with such views on climate change....

I know it’s difficult to say anything interesting and new after so many speeches and discussions here. But when I look around, there are not many speakers from former communist countries here. As an economist, I always try and find my comparative advantages.

Each of us has his or her experiences, prejudices, preferences. The ones that I have are quite inevitably connected with the fact that I have spent most of my life under the communist regime. A week ago I gave a speech … at the Prague Castle commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist putsch in the former Czechoslovakia. One of the arguments there quoted in all the leading newspapers in the country the next morning went as follows: “Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will nevertheless be identical. The attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good on the one hand, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice the man and his freedom in order to make this idea reality on the other.”

Yesterday morning I read the excerpts from the Czech press and I discovered that the chairman of the Czech Green Party dramatically criticized this statement of mine. I think it’s very good that he understood it.... [Laughter from audience]

My central argument was, “What is endangered, climate or freedom?” My answer is clear and resolute. It’s our freedom, I may also add, and our prosperity....

In spite of their public roles, [global warming’s exponents] maximize their own private … good, power, prestige, career, income, and so on.

I am afraid there are people who really want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living — though not their own — and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science, and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries.

The climate alarmists believe in their own omnipotence; they believe in knowing better than millions of rationally behaving men and women what is right or wrong....

I am afraid we have to restart the discussion about the very nature of government and about the relationship between the individual and society. Now it concerns the whole of mankind, not just the citizens of one particular country....

To sum up, it is not about climatology. It’s about freedom.

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Is Making Taxes “Fair” the Answer?

Laurence M. Vance — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Although tax season has come and gone once again, the various proposals for tax reform are still with us. These tax-reform plans, even though they appear outwardly to be quite different, have one thing in common that dooms them from being taken seriously by advocates of liberty and less government: they are all revenue-neutral plans seeking the most fair and efficient way to fund the federal government’s ever-increasing, multi-trillion-dollar budgets.

The current federal tax code found in the 20 volumes of Title 26, “Internal Revenue,” of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations is a complex, intrusive monstrosity. With its progressive brackets (10, 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent) and refundable tax credits, it is used to redistribute wealth while funding the interventionist welfare/warfare state. Since the surest way to return the size, scope, and cost of the federal government to its proper constitutional authority is to cut off its funding, there is no question that most of the tax code needs to be substantially eliminated and the rest radically overhauled. But could the cure offered by a tax-reform plan be worse than the diseased federal tax code it is designed to replace?

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Gaining Momentum

Judging from its well-organized and highly vocal supporters, chief among tax-reform proposals would have to be the FairTax, a progressive national retail sales tax. The FairTax is the brainchild of three businessmen concerned about the crippling effects on the economy of the current federal tax code. After adopting the name “FairTax” for their tax-reform plan, they formed Americans for Fair Taxation in 1997 and enlisted Representative John Linder (R-Ga.) to introduce FairTax legislation in Congress. Linder first sponsored the “Fair Tax Act” in the House in July of 1999, and has reintroduced a FairTax bill at the beginning of every term of Congress since then.

The current incarnation of Congressman Linder’s FairTax is H.R. 25, the “Fair Tax Act of 2007.” The bill has 70 cosponsors, including former presidential candidates Thomas Tancredo (R-Colo.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). Notably absent from the list of cosponsors is Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), widely acknowledged as the taxpayer’s best friend because of his consistent voting record against unconstitutional spending. Although the FairTax bill is currently languishing in the House Committee on Ways and Means (as it does each time it is introduced), the FairTax itself has been in the news of late because of its support by two prominent individuals: Mike Huckabee and Neal Boortz. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was a vocal supporter of the FairTax during his presidential campaign. Radio talk-show host Neal Boortz is the author, with Congressman Linder, of the recently published FairTax: The Truth, Answering the Critics (2008), which is a sequel to their previously published The FairTax Book (2005).

The FairTax is a progressive, revenue-neutral consumption tax in the form of a national retail sales tax on all services and the final sale of all new goods. Services such as tuition and job-related training courses are exempt. All other services are subject to the FairTax, including medical procedures, funeral services, rent, and haircuts. Purchases for business or investment purposes are exempt. The FairTax is only levied on new goods, but the tax is absolute — nothing is exempt. This means that new construction, new cars, food, and all Internet purchases of new goods would be taxable.

The FairTax is designed to replace the personal income tax, corporate income tax, estate tax, gift tax, unemployment tax, alternative minimum tax, Social Security tax, and Medicare tax. Under the FairTax proposal, there would no longer be taxes on capital gains, interest, dividends, gambling and lottery winnings, self-employment earnings, or income of any kind. But there would also no longer be tax deductions for home mortgage interest, charitable contributions, casualty or theft losses, and medical expenses. Additionally, the FairTax does not eliminate tariffs, federal excise taxes, special federal taxes on things like airline tickets, or any state and local taxes.

The FairTax system includes a monthly payment from the federal government to all households to reimburse them for the sales tax paid on basic necessities. The amount of this “prebate” is based on the government poverty level and family size. Initially, a family of four would receive a monthly rebate of $525. The prebate is not in any way based on income; Bill Gates would even get it.

The appeal of the FairTax is quite obvious: no more complex tax code, no more taxes withheld from paychecks, no more 1040 forms, no more record keeping, no more compliance costs, no more business decisions based on tax consequences, no more social engineering with the tax code, no more IRS audits of individuals, no more April 15, etc. The prebate merely sweetens the deal.

Since the FairTax, like all current tax-reform plans, is revenue neutral, it is predicated on the supposition that any tax-reform plan must allow the federal government to raise the same amount of revenue that it does currently. This means that rather than lowering the overall tax burden of the American people, the total amount of taxes the federal government extracts from the citizens of the United States would be the same as it is now. All federal programs, all federal agencies, all federal projects, all earmarks, all pork-barrel spending — they would all continue just as now. Thus, Congress can continue its spending orgy while appearing to lower taxes. Put another way, the FairTax is meant to allow the federal government to confiscate the wealth of its citizens more efficiently. The FairTax also shifts the debate from how much wealth the federal government confiscates to the manner in which it is done.

The FairTax perpetuates the fallacy that the government has a right to confiscate a percentage of the value of each new good sold and every service rendered. This is no different than claiming that the government has a right to the portion of each American’s income that it takes under the current system. As the late economist Murray Rothbard explained:

The consumption tax, on the other hand, can only be regarded as a payment for permission-to-live. It implies that a man will not be allowed to advance or even sustain his own life, unless he pays, off the top, a fee to the State for permission to do so. The consumption tax does not strike me, in its philosophical implications, as one whit more noble, or less presumptuous, than the income tax.

The FairTax is also a highly progressive system — perhaps even more so than our current system according to FairTax advocate Neal Boortz. Thus, like the present system, it favors “the poor” over “the rich.” Although everyone would pay the same rate under the FairTax (when purchasing goods and services), many Americans would pay no taxes at all, and many more would have most of their taxes offset, thanks to the monthly prebate.

Tricky Diction

Mathematically, the FairTax just doesn’t add up. The stated rate of the FairTax is too low to achieve revenue neutrality, and the amount by which prices would fall under a FairTax system — because of the removal of the cost of taxes that are currently embedded in the price of all goods — has been grossly exaggerated.

The rate of the FairTax is always given as 23 percent. Sometimes the caveat is added that the rate is figured inclusively (the tax is included in the price of the product) rather than exclusively (the tax is added to the price of the product). But how many pick up on the caveat and how many are fully aware of the FairTax promoters’ sleight of hand in how they calculate the tax in practical terms?

Suppose you buy a $1.00 item, though, admittedly, there’s very little you can buy these days for $1.00. If a 23-percent tax is added to the cost of an item, you’d expect to pay a total of $1.23. But that’s based on calculating the tax exclusively — not how the FairTax would be calculated. The FairTax would be calculated inclusively, meaning that 23 percent of the total cost of the item would have to be applied to the FairTax. For that to be the case, a $1.00 item would actually cost $1.30 when the FairTax is applied — the additional 30 cents (or 30 percent) being 23 percent of $1.30.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to understand if the FairTax were promoted as a 30-percent tax as opposed to a 23-percent tax that’s calculated inclusively? Of course it would be, but it wouldn’t be as marketable. Obviously, it is much easier to sell a national sales tax if the rate is “only” 23 percent. The fact remains, however, that under the FairTax system, everyone will pay an extra 30 cents on the dollar to purchase a new good or service regardless of whether he thinks the rate is 23 or 30 percent. And in spite of what the rate may in fact be, some economists don’t think that either of these rates would be high enough to make the FairTax revenue neutral. The FairTax also artificially broadens the tax base by requiring governments to pay taxes on goods purchased and salaries paid. This results in the absurdity of the federal government paying taxes to itself.

Although it seems like the exchange of most federal taxes for the FairTax would lead to higher prices on all new goods and services because of the imposition of a national sales tax, FairTax proponents claim that the removal of embedded taxes would result in the prices of goods and services falling by enough to offset the amount of the FairTax imposed. However, this would not be the case. Advocates of the FairTax are correct that the current price of consumer products includes embedded taxes, but they are mistaken concerning their amount and their effect if removed. There are just not enough embedded taxes to be removed to offset the FairTax. Personal income taxes, which account for almost half of all federal revenues, are borne by consumers, not embedded in product costs. The FairTax would not eliminate any excise taxes embedded in the costs of goods. It is mainly corporate taxes and the employer share of social insurance taxes that are embedded taxes. And although we can be certain that retail prices will increase by 23/30 percent under the FairTax, we don’t know with any certainty how much they will decrease after the embedded taxes in the price of goods are removed.

But, it could be argued reasonably by FairTax proponents that even if the costs of goods and services go up somewhat after the imposition of the FairTax, the combination of higher take-home pay (because of the elimination of withholding taxes), the prebate, and the elimination of the costs of complying with the tax code will result in a lower overall tax burden. Well, to begin with, this assumes that the stated rate of the FairTax would be high enough to achieve revenue neutrality — a very dubious proposition. Secondly, since state and local governments would have to pay taxes to the federal government under the FairTax, they would have to raise their taxes to cover the new taxes they would have to pay, thus increasing the overall tax burden. Thirdly, the federal government would have to come up with an additional half a trillion dollars to pay out the prebate. Since the prebate is not included in the federal budget right now, the overall tax burden would have to increase by the amount of the prebate. And then there are the extra billions of dollars that the federal government will need to pay the FairTax to itself. This means, of course, that the FairTax is not really revenue neutral at all. Finally, there won’t be a great savings of tax-preparation dollars because the FairTax is only a federal tax, and states will still be forcing corporations and individuals to prepare returns.

Auditing the FairTax

Practically, there are a number of problems with the FairTax as well.

First, maintaining that the FairTax is a “fair” tax system, or one that is “fairer” than our current system, is highly subjective. As Boortz himself acknowledges in his new book on the FairTax: “Whether a tax system is ‘fair’ is a complicated economic and philosophical question, one that inevitably involves oversimplification and subjective judgment.”

Second, FairTax proponents have made so many grandiose claims for the FairTax that it is hard to take them seriously. The FairTax, they say, will result in unprecedented economic growth, a tremendous increase in capital investment, substantially lower interest rates, the creation of millions of new jobs, the saving of Social Security and Medicare, the doubling of the economy within 15 years, and the greatest transfer of power away from the government ever seen. It is also claimed that the FairTax is voluntary since one could choose not to purchase a new good and therefore not have to pay any tax on it. But aside from the fact that one cannot purchase used food, the FairTax is a voluntary tax only in the sense that the present system is “voluntary”: if one chooses not to earn any income under the current system then one doesn’t have to pay any income tax. One must buy things as a matter of course to live in a modern society.

Third, the FairTax eliminates neither the 16th Amendment nor the federal tax code. Nor does it eliminate what is now called the IRS. To repeal the 16th Amendment would require another amendment. And contrary to the claims of FairTax promoters, calling the IRS by another name while redirecting its mission is hardly eliminating it. Just as the income tax would be replaced by the FairTax, so the IRS would be replaced by the “Sales Tax Bureau” in the Treasury Department. The FairTax bill also wouldn’t replace the federal tax code. It repeals four subtitles, redesignates seven others, and adds a new one that implements the FairTax.

Fourth, adopting the FairTax doesn’t mean that the income tax couldn’t be reimposed. Congress might simply decide to resurrect the income tax because it is not politically expedient to raise the rate of the FairTax. This could be sold to the American people by lowering the FairTax rate, reinstituting the income tax, and then claiming that the combination of the two was revenue neutral. And even if the 16th Amendment were repealed, there is nothing preventing Congress from implementing some form of an income tax.

Fifth, the FairTax prebate will give some people more money “back” than they paid in (national sales) taxes, much like the earned income tax credit does today. Like any refundable tax credit, the prebate is just another income-redistribution scheme.

And sixth, FairTax proponents are very naïve to think that Congress wouldn’t turn the FairTax into a monstrosity just as hideous as the current tax code. The rate of the FairTax could be raised at any time. The exemptions currently on certain services could be removed. The prebate could be subject to a means test, or simply eliminated for upper-income taxpayers and increased for seniors, the poor, minimum-wage earners, and anyone receiving public assistance.

Reducing Taxes

The fundamental problem is clearly taxation itself, not the tax code. The problem with the code is not that it is too complex, too intrusive, too long, too full of loopholes, too unfair, or too progressive. The problem is that it is used to feed the federal leviathan in the amount of almost $3 trillion a year.

Since it is a tax-reform proposal instead of a tax-reduction proposal, the FairTax merely changes the way that taxes are collected. It is an incremental step toward neither lower tax rates nor lower taxes. And it is certainly not a plan to return the size, scope, and cost of the federal government to its proper constitutional authority. With President Bush’s proposed new budget topping $3 trillion and the national debt fast approaching $10 trillion, the need of the hour is clearly to rein in government spending, not change the way the government raises its revenue. FairTax proponents have the proverbial cart before the horse. Their energy is misdirected. As Congressman Ron Paul has remarked on several occasions: “The real issue is total spending by government, not tax reform.”

The income tax should be repealed, not replaced. The IRS should be abolished, not given a new name. Tax reform should result in revenue reduction, not revenue neutrality. Because the FairTax falls far short of these goals, it should not be considered a “fair” tax. It should therefore be rejected by all Americans who favor a return to the limited government of the Founders.

Laurence M. Vance is a freelance writer who has reviewed both of Boortz and Linder’s FairTax books.

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Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Report Psychological Problems

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

A Rand Corporation report indicates that 18.5 percent of current and former U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans recently surveyed reported symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. The survey polled 1,965 members of the armed forces, both those still currently on duty as well as veterans of tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan,” AP quoted Terri Tanielian, a researcher at Rand and the project’s co-leader. “Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation.”

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Ongoing Conflict in Tibet

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

On April 18, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi — who is in Japan as an advance man for Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit in May — that the unrest in Tibet has become an international issue. The Beijing government maintains that the ongoing protests and suppression of freedom in Tibet are a domestic matter. In response to questions about rioting and the government crackdown, Yang shifted blame to the Dalai Lama, claiming the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader has failed to engage in dialogue.

On the same day, Tibet’s prime minister-in-exile Samdhong Rinpoche predicted from his enclave of Dharamshala in India that China will extend its suppression of freedom in Tibet and issued an appeal for the international community to intervene. “Tibet is virtually sealed,” said Rinpoche. “In a short period the Chinese authorities will destroy all evidence by executing the innocent Tibetans.”

Riots against government policies in Chinese-occupied Tibet began in March, and exiled Tibetan leaders say more than 150 Tibetans have died in the subsequent Chinese crackdown. However both Rinpoche and the Dalai Lama have asserted that the violent protesters were actually Chinese agents provocateurs masquerading as Tibetans. “In particular, there are cases where people have seen Chinese policemen in Tibetan dress and in monks’ robes taking the leading role during the protests,” said Rinpoche.

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“Funding Father of the Right” Backs Hillary for President

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

Neoconservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife has had a change of heart concerning Hillary Clinton. Scaife, the partial heir of the Mellon family fortune, once was involved in the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign and helped to fund efforts by the American Spectator magazine in the 1990s to expose Bill Clinton’s womanizing and abuse of power while governor of Arkansas. But he has decided to throw his support behind Hillary Clinton after a meeting with her in March. “[That] meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her,” Scaife admitted in a laudatory editorial entitled “Hillary, Reassessed.”

Just before Pennsylvania’s presidential primaries, Scaife’s newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, published a glowing endorsement of Hillary Clinton. The two-term New York senator is “far more experienced in government [than Obama] — as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right,” the Tribune-Review enthused. “She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder.”

While all of this may seem a betrayal of the so-called right wing that Scaife supposedly epitomizes (he has supported such organizations as the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Reason Foundation, Judicial Watch, the Federalist Society, and the American Enterprise Institute, among many others), he has long given generously to certain of the political left’s most influential institutions as well. These include the globalist Center for Strategic Policy and International Studies, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Planned Parenthood (Scaife is an ardent supporter of abortion).

Richard Mellon Scaife’s track record is all too typical of ultra-rich power brokers who dedicate their assets not to principled causes but to a power agenda championed across political party lines. Only thus can be explained the transformation of the man the Washington Post once styled the “Funding Father of the Right” into a Hillary Clinton supporter.

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Global Food Prices on the Rise

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

The recent precipitous climb in global food prices is nothing less than “mass murder,” according to UN food envoy Jean Ziegler. In a recent interview with an Austrian newspaper, Ziegler, commenting on the climb in commodities prices that have triggered food riots in Haiti and growing lines from Latin America to Africa to Asia of hungry people seeking UN food handouts, suggested that the food shortages are a consequence of globalization. Multinationals, market traders, financial speculators, and other “financial bandits” are responsible for the crisis. “Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time — just as Karl Marx thought.... This is silent mass murder,” he averred, adding, “We have to put a stop to this.”

And that’s the rub. “We,” of course, means UN authorities and kindred globalists, most of whom, like Ziegler, accept Karl Marx’s version of reality. To wit: financial crises, shortages, recessions, and other alleged “failures” of the free market are all consequences of the rapacity of wicked capitalists. Marx’s solution was to empower the state with absolute control over property and production, a program that has now been adopted to varying degrees by every country in the world, including the United States.

In one thing Ziegler is right: the looming global food shortage is indeed man-made, but the culprits are rather different from what UN officials would have us believe. The dizzying rise of oil prices has been the single most important contributor, driving up prices in supermarkets and commodities exchanges the world over. Oil prices are particularly susceptible to dollar inflation because of the large amount of oil purchased in dollars. When the Federal Reserve opens wide the money spigots, flooding the world with American paper money, the value of the dollar relative to a gallon of oil drops. But it was Karl Marx himself — patron saint of global socialism — who recommended, in The Communist Manifesto, the creation of all-powerful central banks like the Fed.

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Pope Benedict XVI’s Comments Give Pause

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

On April 20, Pope Benedict XVI, the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, concluded a six-day visit to the United States, home to 67.5 million of his flock. In between the pope’s April 15 arrival and his farewell ceremony, the pontiff took part in a whirlwind round of ceremonies.

On April 18, the pope addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations. Speaking partly in French and partly in English, Pope Benedict praised the world body despite its militant secularism. The pope began by inexplicably lauding the UN’s coercive nature, and he went on to praise the UN’s concept of human rights — both of which are in measure feared and scorned by many religious peoples:

“The United Nations embodies the aspiration for a ‘greater degree of international ordering’ … inspired and governed by the principle of subsidiarity, and therefore capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules and through structures capable of harmonizing the day-to-day unfolding of the lives of peoples.”
“Human dignity, which is the foundation and goal of the responsibility to protect, leads us to the theme we are specifically focusing upon this year, which marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Contrary to the pope’s favorable comments, the UN doesn’t espouse sacrosanct rights or protect such rights and human dignity. To it, “rights” are human activities that the UN allows people to undertake. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948 presumes the power to grant rights (unlike the Declaration of Independence, which declares that men are “endowed by their creator” with such rights) and further presumes the power to cancel them. For example, a revision of the 1948 document, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, states:

Article 1B: 1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.... 3. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law. [Emphasis added.]

Since it is unlikely that Pope Benedict believes that freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject to limitations as are prescribed by law (as in China), the faithful Catholic who understands the true nature of the United Nations will very likely find some statements made by the pope before the General Assembly confusing and disturbing.

On his final day in America, the pope visited the Ground Zero site of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and celebrated mass at Yankee Stadium before 57,000 worshipers. In his homily at that event, Benedict spoke against abortion, affirming “the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world — including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb.”

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Main Concern Doesn’t Sway Voters

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

As part of the pulse-taking of the electorate to see what makes Americans’ hearts beat faster as the United States heads toward another presidential election, an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll found that the worsening economy is Americans’ number one concern, yet candidates’ positions on the economy are not creating a base of support for any of the leading presidential candidates: Clinton, McCain, or Obama.

Such a seeming logical disconnect might actually be very logical. It could be because, as Robert Michaels, a Republican from Fort Collins, Colorado, said, “I’m not sure what any candidate can do to improve the job situation.” Or it could be, especially in the case of lower middle-class and poor Americans, that the voters have already chosen the candidate that they believe will give them the biggest government handout. Or it could be that Americans are realizing that there isn’t much of a substantive difference amongst the three candidates, especially having to do with the economy, hence they might as well make their decision for president based on some less concrete criteria — such as whether he or she is more honest than the other candidates.

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Congress Reverses Posse Comitatus Act Changes

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (H.R. 4986), which Congress passed on January 22 and President Bush signed into law on January 28, contained language that effectively repealed revisions to the Posse Comitatus Act made in 2006. The 2006 language made it easier for a president to declare martial law.

A wide range of freedom-loving individuals had opposed the expansion of police powers granted to the federal government as part of the ongoing “war on terror.” In an address before the House of Representatives on May 22, 2007, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) cited “the changes made to the Insurrection Act of 1807 and to Posse Comitatus by the Defense Authorization Act of 2007.” Because of that act, warned Paul, “martial law can be declared not just for ‘insurrection’ but also for ‘natural disasters, public health reasons, terrorist attacks or incidents’ or for the vague reason called ‘other conditions.’ ”

Section 1074 of the 2008 bill (“Protection of Certain Individuals”), which provided for the military to protect designated Defense Department and military personnel, also strictly limited that role by stating: “Other than the authority to provide protection and security under this section, nothing in this section may be construed to bestow any additional law enforcement or arrest authority upon the qualified members of the Armed Forces and qualified civilian employees of the Department of Defense.”

A leading opponent in Congress of the 2006 expansion of Posse Comitatus powers, as well as a leading advocate of their repeal, was Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

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SPP Moves Forward Under Different Name

JBS Staff — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 CDT

The leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico met in New Orleans on April 21-22 for the fourth round of annual talks formerly known as the Security and Prosperity Partnership. However, the session carried the label North American Leaders’ Summit. The likely reason for not calling it a Security and Prosperity Summit has to be widespread opposition to the SPP generated by THE NEW AMERICAN, its parent organization the John Birch Society, and like-minded activists. Increasing numbers of Americans — as well as a growing number of opponents in Canada — are rightly concerned that the SPP is actually a major step toward the creation of a North American Union.

On the first day of his visit, President Bush spoke very briefly at a reception hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Introduced by Chamber CEO Thomas J. Donohue, the president said he “strongly supports NAFTA” and was hugely disappointed when the House of Representatives refused only days ago to approve a Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

While introducing the president, Donohue claimed that NAFTA had created more jobs and benefitted trade, adding that it “should never be altered.” Asked later by NEW AMERICAN publisher and JBS President John McManus why he failed to mention “the loss of three million U.S. jobs because of NAFTA,” he snapped, “Anyone who believes that has distorted the figures.” Americans whose jobs were exported south of the border believe it.

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