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Copyright 2003 A Second Opinion January, 2003,
Vol. 2, No. 1 Free
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State of the Union 2003
War * Pestilence * Famine
The Speech George W. Bush Doesn't Want You to Hear
By John S. Lemberger
Oshkosh-More than anything, 2002 should be marked as the year that
Orcs, Trolls, Cheneys, Balrogs, Bushes, and other neo-conservatives leveraged
their takeover of the Republican Party into a complete takeover of the United
States government. The takeover of the Republican Party was completed some
years ago. Neo-conservatives found a home in the Republican Party like cockroaches
find a home in your house. They have infested the GOP, multiplied voraciously
and now present themselves under the respectable banner of the Republican
Party. There remain only a handful of real Republicans on the national scene,
Lincoln Chafee, Jim Jeffords, and perhaps Olympia Snow and John McCain.
It's time to recognize this takeover and stop using "Republican" when referring to the political party now in power. The new crowd is neo-conservative and should be referred to as such. The Neo-conservative Party of Cheney and Bush embraces a philosophy that is contrary to that of past Republicans from Lincoln to Eisenhower. War broke Lincoln's heart. Eisenhower loathed war. The Neo-conservatives are pro-war. Both Lincoln and Eisenhower warned against the destruction of our democracy by corporate interests. The Neo-conservative Party is wildly pro-corporation. Lincoln fought a war against the states-rights people. The Neo-conservatives are pro-states-rights. The Neo-conservative Party is no longer the Republican Party that was born in Wisconsin. We must recognize that fact and we must educate ourselves about the new Neo-conservative Party. Understanding the Neo-conservatives provides us with a road map for 2003. A second Opinion offers the following analysis.
The philosophy of the Neo-conservative Party is promoted by front organizations
like the Heritage Foundation. To understand
where the ruling Neo-conservatives will be taking us in 2003, it is instructive
to look closely at the Heritage Foundation and follow the money!
The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich with money from Richard Mellon-Scaife (heir of the Carnegie-Mellon fortune) and Joseph Coors (the beer magnate). The Heritage Foundation receives money from Amoco, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank and right-wing groups like Olin and Bradley. It is the mouthpiece for large corporations and the very wealthy people who run them. Following the money we find it is not surprising that Neo-conservative Party leaders like Bush and Cheney have packed their administration with former employees of the corporate world. It is not surprising that Cheney's secret energy meeting was for corporation executives only. It is not surprising that we are fighting an oil war in central Asia to replace local control of oil reserves with American corporate control. It is not surprising that the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act are being gutted. It is not surprising that worker's rights are being eroded in favor of corporations. It is not surprising that pension laws are being changed to favor corporations over workers. Don't expect these trends to change in 2003.
The Heritage Foundation also receives money from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's World Unity Church (one of its largest contributors). The Reverend Moon is committed to the establishment of a single world government ruled by a Christian Political party. Following the money, it is not surprising that the Heritage Foundation and the Neo-conservative Party are committed to replacing our democracy with a theocracy controlled by a small ruling class anointed by God to lead us into their version of a Christian future. To insure the establishment of a permanent ruling class, wealth must be transferred upward and preserved within that ruling class. It is not surprising then that theya re committed to flattening the tax code, along with the elimination of the inheritance tax and other changes in the tax code. This will insure the preservation of wealth within the ruling families of this new American theocracy forever. In 2003, expect an "overhaul" of our federal tax code with large breaks going to the wealthiest classes. It will be called an economic stimulus package. It will mean pestilence and famine for the middle and lower classes that are dependent on a strong economy, because historically, when the top income tax rate has gone up the economy has boomed; when it has gone down the economy has suffered. This is because when the top income tax rate is cut more money collects in the pockets of the wealthiest Americans. Concentration of wealth leads naturally to recession because the purchasing power of the majority of Americans is reduced. We are experiencing this now as a result of the Bush tax cut that lowered the top income tax rate.
Lowering the top tax rate even more will almost certainly result in a serious depression.A tremendous amount of wealth will stay in the pockets of a few individuals. This will severely under fund a variety of essential government programs that redistribute some of the wealth hard working Americans generate and contribute to the collective good like education, transportation, medical and scientific research, clean air, and safe food to name a few. Under the Neo-conservative program of Bush, average Americans will be faced with pestilence and famine.
According to its website, the Heritage Foundation wants a second American Revolution of "cultural independence" to overthrow our current multicultural society. In other words they believe that what America needs is a darned good ethnic cleansing. It should be of no surprise then that Mr. Weyrich has sympathies with neo-Nazi, white supremacists like Roger Pearson, organizer of the Nazi Northern League of northern Europe and a former editorial board member of Policy Review, the Heritage Foundations' monthly publication. It is not surprising that during the presidential campaign of 2000 Bush visited Bob Jones University. It is not surprising that Trent Lott should make comments about how much better off we'd all be if Strom Thurmond had won the presidential election of 1948 on a segregationist platform. It is not surprising that Mr. Lott is still in the senate and chair of at least one important committee. Do not expect this trend to change in 2003.
War is necessary for the Neo-conservative program. In an Orwellian sense war helps convince people to vote for politicians and programs that are against their best interest. Neo-conservatism is wrapped in the cloak of Patriotism. In another sense war is necessary to establish the world empire envisioned by the Reverend Moon, and it is necessary to establish American corporate hegemony. Islam must be defeated, and a Christian-American-corporate empire established. It is not surprising that we are preparing to attack Iraq. It is not surprising that we have increased our military budget, even at the expense of homeland security. It is not surprising that Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and North Korea fear us. Do not expect this trend to change in 2003.
So there you have it, war, pestilence and famine. Up until now the Neo-conservatives have had to nibble around the edges of their program. But with the takeover of the Senate and their new-found ability to pack the federal court system with Neo-conservative judges, they can now unfold their full program. Happy New Year.
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Democracy Is Dead: Requiescat in Pace, R.I.P.
by Sara DeHart December 13, 2002
January 1, 2001 I began to publicly wear a tombstone button depicting the demise of democracy in America: Requiescat in pace, Rest in Peace. It stated: Born July 4, 1776, Died December 12, 2000, Lynched by: Rehnquist, O'Conner, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas. It named the five Supreme Court Justices who stopped the vote count in Florida; thereby awarding the 43rd presidency of the United States to George W. Bush.
This betrayal of America undermined the constitution. As a country we will
never be the same. Vincent Bugliosi wrote that "none dare call it treason."
But treason it was, and it was treason, unpunished (Bugliosi, 2001).
The button attracted attention. Some asked where to buy one and I handed
them a button and silently moved on. There were others though who were troubled
by the message and sneeringly negated it. A third group asked, "Who are
Rehnquist, O'Conner, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas?" That was when I fully
realized that the tombstone button was a symbol for an era that had ended.
The America that I knew, like Tara, was Gone with the Wind.
How could any American adult not know the names of the five Supreme Court
justices who stopped the vote count in Florida in a close presidential race?
How could Americans not understand the significance of that decision? We were
bombarded by selective information through television, talk radio, newspapers
and news magazines about the Florida vote recount and chads. For Americans
not to know about this most relevant political event by January 2001 should
have alerted even those living in underground bunkers that something was amiss.
Marc Ash reported: "America who had long preached to the world of its
vaunted free elections had rolled over without a fight. A small group of ruthless
industrialists had rigged the White House and handed the nation a clumsy lie.
American democracy was gone, and we were the only ones who refused to see
it. (Truthout, 7 July, 2002).At the urging of the media, the majority of Americans
decided to "get over it and move on." Our system was broken, and
the corporate-owned, bought-and-paid-for media was only a symptom of the problem.
They selectively reported the news, but we allowed them to get away with it.
We did not stand up and demand a free and unfettered press. By January 1,
2001 our system of government, founded as a constitutional, democratic republic
was well on its way to oblivion. The most recent election on November 5, 2002
confirmed what has appeared on the Internet for the past two years. Democracy
is dead and we have now given it a silent burial. About the time that George
Washington gave his farewell to the Republic, a British professor, Alexander
Fraser Tyler, wrote: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of
government. It can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves
largesse (defined as a liberal gift) out of the public treasury. From that
moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most
benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses
over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship."
And what was the price paid for American democracy? A $300 tax "rebate"
that turned out to be a tax "advance". Whether it is $300 or much
larger sums awarded to the upper income 1.5% of the population, it all translates
into 30 pieces of silver. American democracy was sold for a paltry sum, and
once the crown jewels of our republic were auctioned and dismantled, we can
never retrieve them.
What is really sad is that the Constitutional Republic of the United States
fell with nary a whimper from the American media. The theme for the day was
"get over it," and without examining the cost, Americans accepted
it. Before the American public knew what happened we had "First Amendment
holding pens" and peaceful protest was decried as divisiveness.
Presidential edicts rolled off Mr. Bush's tongue as fast as the speech writers
could invent them: Proposed regulations for arsenic levels in our drinking
water were rolled back, the Kyoto Agreement went unsigned, and the National
parks were opened to the timber and mining industries. It happened so fast
that no one could keep track, let alone mobilize protests. The media took
brief notice of these happenings and then moved on to note the newest edict.
Voices of dissent were raised, but the media paid scant attention. Then 9/11
occurred and the media went to war for the Bush administration. Note that
it did not go to war for America; it went to war to proclaim the righteousness
of Mr. Bush's holy crusade against "terrorism" and the "axis
of evil". The fact that one cannot wage a war against an abstract concept
was ignored. Wars are waged against nation states, police actions target murders
and thieves. Wars against abstract concepts (war on drugs, war on poverty,
etc.) are doomed to failure. The enemy must be identified and defined. The
media missed this point in each of the 'concept wars'. They marginalized those
who dared speak out and dissent became truly hazardous duty.
The voices of Americans were stilled by a propagandized media. Those who
did not comply, or who raised objections, were labeled "unpatriotic,
fringe, kooks, and conspiracy theorists." Noncompliant writers, editors
and TV hosts were fired. "Watch what you say" became reality. The
death of dissent in George Bush's America has been little noticed in the mainstream
media. One of the few voices to be raised was that of Walter Cronkite, who
in an address that received no attention from major news sources said: "They
(the Germans) applauded as Hitler closed down the independent newspaper and
(broadcasting) stations and only gave them his propaganda. When they did not
rise up and say, 'Give us a free press,' they became just as guilty."
(Ferrell, Common Dreams October 28, 2002).
We, too, stand guilty because we have accepted the voices of CNN and Fox
news without protest. We have allowed the FCC to remove every regulation in
place that guarded the independence of the media. Now we have a consolidated
corporate media that speak only for corporate self-interests.
On November 5, 2002, we, as a nation, faced the reality of a pre-emptive
war against Iraq that could lead to WWIII, and 120 million Americans did not
bother to vote. Blame for the outcome of that election that gave one political
party control over all three branches of our government, with no oversight,
rests with two groups: The media that have chosen to use their 30 pieces of
silver to sell out American democracy and 120 million Americans who essentially
felt disconnected from the system, and have chosen not to become informed
voters. The United States of America can not recover from the legacy of these
two groups. The transition has been made, from democracy to totalitarianism
in two short years. We, as a people, stand guilty. We did not rise up and
say to the Supreme Court Justices, "you can not steal an election of
the people;" we did not say to the media "give us a free press."
We accepted the edict of the Supreme Court without protest; we accepted the
media's "get over it" bromide. We refused to acknowledge that a
bloodless coup d'etat had taken place. At that point, the battle for democracy
was lost. For those, who in 2001 said, "It can't happen here" and
refused to acknowledge that it, indeed, had happened here, let it be known
that the funeral has now taken place.
How will history view this period of America? The period that will be known as the "Fall of the American Republic" as surely as Rome's demise is recorded as the "Fall of Rome." The dream is dead. Historians will record the evolution from the Supreme Court decision that took the vote from the American people and gave the 43rd presidency to George Walker Bush as a signal marker. Historians will also note that the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was perverted into a political tactic as cynical as the one Hitler used when the Reichstag burned in February, 1933. Hitler viewed the burning of the Parliament building as "an act of God" and used that event to set the political agenda for the next decade. Mr. Bush said "he hit the trifecta" after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. He took the stance of Caesar and, in America's name, began the conquest of the world. Historians will note the ramifications of the secrecy and the hiding of documents by key administrative figures in the Bush Administration. They will puzzle over the lack of an independent investigation of the events leading to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. One day, historians will note the loss of civil liberties such as the right to dissent and privacy. They will look at domestic spying by the Office of Total Information Awareness and the return of political assassins to key positions in the current administration as they ponder how and why a once great and free nation marched into the abyss of totalitarianism. Will they also note that this happened, not with a bang on 911, but through a slowly eroding process that was little noted by the Fourth Estate? Freedom of the press, the Constitutional Right, so gallantly fought for by John Peter Zenger in 1731 was surrendered without a murmur.
What we witnessed on November 5, 2002 was democracy's funeral. The fact that
60.4% of eligible voters didn't bother to show up gives some idea of how dead
democracy truly is in 2002. A brave and noble experiment of government, by
and for the people, lies dead and buried. Neither the requiem nor the events
leading to its demise were even recorded as newsworthy by the mainstream media.
Let the obituary read: Democracy is dead-RIP-Born July 4, 1776-Died December
12, 2000-Funeral November 5, 2002. Mourners may pay their respects by standing
in First Amendment containment zones. They may not carry banners nor signal
their protest or presence in any way, lest they offend members of the Bush
administration.
[Sara DeHart, a freelance writer and democracy activist, lives in the
Seattle, Washington area of the United States.] Sara DeHart encourages your
comments: dehart.ss@verizon.net
UWO Student Environmental Action Coalition Statement on
Iraq
With the War on Iraq imminent, many peoples primary concern is the immediate
loss of life as a consequence. However, often overlooked are the long-term
damages that war and its preparations have on the environment.
The Gulf War was one of the most ecologically destructive events in human
history. While the official Iraqi death toll still lingers around 150,000
people, this tragedy has and will continue to be greatly compounded by the
sheer brutality of the United States assault on the civilian and environmental
infrastructure (i.e. water sanitation facilities, cropland, hospitals) of
Iraq. The question must be asked, if one nation destroys another nation‚s
access to clean water, resulting in mass proliferation of waterborne diseases,
then prohibits that nation from repairing it water purification technologies,
how does this differ from biological warfare? Similarly, if a predominantly
white, affluent nation uses warfare as a means of dispersing highly toxic
waste that would be to costly to treat or store on domestic soil into the
air, water and the food chain of a poorer, darker nation, isn‚t that
environmental racism?
Just as we can not ignore what is happening in Iraq we should place equal
concern on the impacts that preparations for war has on the environment here
in the United States. The Department of Defense is one of the most polluting
institutions in the world, along with its pseudo-military counterpart, the
Department of Energy. These institutions are responsible for tens of thousands
of toxic hotspots in the United States, with massive releases of toxins such
as mercury, trichloroethylene, and ozone depleting chloroflorocarbons and
the consumption of an inordinate amounts of resources (i.e. oil, paper, and
precious metals). For instance, in one hour of flight, an F-16 fighter jet
burns twice the amount fuel as the average American motorists during one year.
During the last several years, the United States military has generated more
toxins annually than the top five chemical companies combined. The polluting
tendencies of these institutions has been shown to disproportionately affect
low income and people of color, the same segment of the population that is
actively recruited to fight and die in the United States military ventures
abroad.
There is an old saying, "when you only have a hammer, everything looks
like a nail." It is time we take away the hammers away from the irresponsible
decision-makers who continually plunge our nation into dangerously destructive
wars that are against our best interest and even the will of many Americans.
It is time we realized that a nation that deems weapons of mass destruction,
ecological genocide, and attacks on civilians as an appropriate means to accomplishing
an end is a nation that will never find peace.
In Peace and for Justice,
The UWO Student Environmental Action Coalition
"Anyone who wants to combat lies and ignorance today and to write the truth has at least five difficulties to overcome. He must have the courage to write the truth although it is suppressed everywhere, the cleverness to recognize it although it is veiled everywhere, the art to make it usable as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it may become effective; the cunning to spread it among these. These difficulties are great for those who write under fascism…indeed even for those who write in the countries of civic freedom."-Bertolt Brecht
A Second Opinion in edited by John S. Lemberger. He can be emailed at jlemberg@uwosh.edu .The views expressed in A Second Opinion do not necessarily reflect those of Commentary hosts Tony Palmeri and Jim Mather.