Archive for the ‘America's National Sovereignty is at Risk’ Category
LOST: Law of the Sea Treaty
January 3rd, 2010 | 
Author: Written by William F. Jasper
Wednesday, 18 February 2009 18:30
The United States Senate may vote very soon on one of the most far-reaching and dangerous treaties our government has ever considered for ratification: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (also known as the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST). The treaty, which has simmered on the back burners of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades, would give the United Nations control and jurisdiction over the world’s oceans, nearly three-quarters of the surface of our planet.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and contain 97 percent of the planet’s water. The agency also notes, “one of every six jobs in the United States is marine-related and over one-third of the U.S. Gross National Product originates in coastal areas.” Of course, the oceans are important not only for our commercial transportation, recreation, food production and energy production, but also for our national security; our navy’s unhindered access to the ocean seas is crucial to our defense at home and the protection of our interests abroad.
The Law of the Sea Treaty would jeopardize all of this by subjecting America to the rules and jurisdiction of UN bodies and the incessant harassment of lawsuits by foreign nations and activist non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The LOST proponents snort in derision at these concerns, insisting that the treaty merely codifies customary international maritime law already in effect, and actually strengthens American sovereignty. “One of the most common criticisms of the treaty is that ratification will lead to the largest transfer of sovereignty and wealth in US history,” says the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA) in its “fact sheet” on LOST. “Instead,” asserts the UNA-USA, “the treaty strengthens and extends U.S. sovereignty over vast amounts of ocean territory and resources.”
However, when we look closely at what the authors of the Law of the Sea Treaty say in various international fora and publications, and when we examine the admissions and boasts of the UN’s officials and legal experts, we find that they have baited a very big trap. Their public assurances notwithstanding, they have designed and birthed a monster that they intend will do far more than they openly concede when seeking state ratification. Here’s what the UN’s Division of Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea (DOALOS) had to say at the official celebration of the “25th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea” on October 17, 2007:
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea … is perhaps one of the most significant but less recognized 20th century accomplishments in the arena of international law…. Its scope is vast: it covers all ocean space, with all its uses, including navigation and overflight; all uses of all its resources, living and non-living, on the high seas, on the ocean floor and beneath, on the continental shelf and in the territorial seas; the protection of the marine environment; and basic law and order…. The Convention is widely recognised by the international community as the legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and the seas must be carried out.
Please note that DOALOS, the UN agency in charge of administering LOST, claims the convention covers “all ocean space,” including everything on, in, under, and above the oceans. Note also the heavy use of the adjective “all,” as in “all uses,” “all resources,” “all activities.” But wait; as we shall see, the claims go even far beyond this to include global regulations that will override domestic laws covering not only coastal waters and shorelines, but also human activities in rivers and inland waterways, and land-based activities that may be claimed — no matter how far-fetched — to be harming the marine environment.
Moreover, LOST may confer upon the UN, for the first time, the ability to tax Americans directly, without congressional approval.
Many Americans have experienced firsthand just how burdensome U.S. regulation of our own waterways, including wetlands regulations, can be. But how about international regulations of our waterways? What national interest can be served by subjecting ourselves to the regulatory ministrations and taxing authority of UN bureaucrats and judges and the litigational ploys of foreign dictators and anti-American NGOs? Obviously, none. Nonetheless, Senate ratification of LOST is a “top priority” for the new Obama administration.
At her January 13 hearings for confirmation as Secretary of State, then-Senator Hillary Clinton was asked by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a LOST supporter: “If confirmed, do you intend to make ratification of the Convention your top treaty priority at State?” Sen. Clinton responded: “The President-Elect and I both supported ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention as senators…. If confirmed, its ratification will be one of my top treaty priorities at State, and the new administration will work with the Senate to secure approval.”
The LOST Boys … and Girls
The new administration will be well packed with LOST boys and girls. Vice President Joseph Biden, for instance, was a longtime Senate champion of the Law of the Sea. He will be presiding over the Senate in the 11th Congress. President Obama’s recently confirmed ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, served as understudy in the Clinton administration, first to Anthony Lake, and then to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, both of whom were (and are) LOST enthusiasts. For the past several years, Rice has worked at the liberal-left Brookings Institution under the tutelage of Clinton’s former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. This is the same Strobe Talbott who approvingly predicted in his 1992 Time magazine essay, “The Birth of the Global Nation,” that someday “nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority.” LOST would be a very important part of the emerging global authority Talbott envisions. So it is not surprising that this same Strobe Talbott, a foreign-policy adviser to Barack Obama and Susan Rice’s Brookings boss and mentor, is one of the “101 prominent Americans” who signed a letter to Senate leaders in 2007 urging approval of LOST.
Leon Panetta, President Obama’s choice to head the CIA, is also a major LOST promoter. Until recently, Panetta served as co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, one of the main organizations pushing the convention.
The new Democrat-controlled Senate is the friendliest environment the LOST proponents have ever faced, but it is the Republicans who are causing the most worry. On January 9, just a week and a half before handing over the White House to Barack Obama, President Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 66 (NSPD-66) on “Arctic Region Policy.” The executive order (also labeled Homeland Security Presidential Directive 25, HSPD-25), which brims with environmental shibboleths, declares:
The Senate should act favorably on U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea promptly, to protect and advance U.S. interests, including with respect to the Arctic. Joining will serve the national security interests of the United States, including the maritime mobility of our Armed Forces worldwide. It will secure U.S. sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the valuable natural resources they contain. Accession will promote U.S. interests in the environmental health of the oceans. And it will give the United States a seat at the table when the rights that are vital to our interests are debated and interpreted.
In addition to the citation above, NSPD-66/HSPD-25 specifically endorses LOST four more times. The Bush executive order may not have been prominently featured in the major media (indeed, it seems few Americans are even aware it was issued), but the message certainly reached Republicans in the Senate. For the umpteenth time, and now as one of its last acts in office, the Bush administration was signaling its strong support for LOST.
Many of President Bush’s staunchest supporters, as well as many of his harshest Democratic opponents, were shocked when, on November 27, 2001, Ambassador Sichan Siv, U.S. Representative on the UN Economic and Social Council, made the following statement in the UN General Assembly: “The United States has long accepted the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as embodying international law concerning traditional uses of the oceans…. I am pleased to inform you that the Administration of President George W. Bush supports accession of the United States to the Convention.”
On December 17, 2004, President Bush issued a report entitled the “U.S. Ocean Action Plan: The Bush Administration’s Response to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.” This presidential response stated that “as a matter of national security, economic self-interest, and international leadership, the Bush Administration is strongly committed to U.S. accession to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Administration urges Congress to provide advice and consent to this treaty as early as possible in the 109th Congress.”
President Bush’s unstinting support for LOST, along with endorsements from his top State Department officials (Secretaries Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte) and military appointees (General Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Admiral Vern Clark, former chief of Naval Operations), has been used by treaty advocates to undercut Republican and conservative opposition to the globalist scheme for UN control of the oceans.
Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) is now the most senior Republican in the U.S. Senate and one of the most ardent supporters of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Although usually described by liberal media commentators as “moderate,” Sen. Lugar is an avid internationalist and promoter of the United Nations. He has been instrumental in stacking the deck in favor of LOST at committee hearings, allowing pro-treaty witnesses to outnumber anti-treaty witnesses by three or four to one.
LOST: Spawn of the UN
The product of nearly a decade of negotiations at UNCLOS conferences, the treaty was finalized in 1982. However, the world’s most politically and economically powerful state, namely, the United States of America, which also happens to be the greatest naval power, refused to ratify the treaty. President Ronald Reagan opposed it for a number of reasons, though the one feature of the document that has received almost exclusive attention as being unacceptable, then as now, is the International Seabed Authority (ISA). The ISA is the UN entity that claims authority over all seabed resources as “the common heritage of mankind.” LOST declares that companies intending to mine the ocean floor must obtain permits from and pay royalties and fees to ISA, which then, supposedly, will distribute the proceeds equitably to all mankind. (And we know from vast experience that UN bureaucracies are famous for honesty, efficiency, and transparency, right?)LOST graphic from The New American cover
President Bill Clinton negotiated a few minor changes in the convention, declared that its defects had been remedied, and signed it. However, the Senate did not ratify it, as is required by the Constitution for a treaty to enter into force. Although hearings have been held several times over the years, the full Senate has yet to vote on it. The UN declared LOST to be in force in 1994, after it had been acceded to by 60 nations. There are now 157 nations on board, the United States being the main holdout.
Sovereignty Sellout
In his April 8, 2004 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, William J. Middendorf II, a former secretary of the Navy and former ambassador to the Netherlands and the Organization of American States, identified “loss of sovereignty” as the most important problem with the Law of the Sea Treaty.
Ambassador Middendorf warned:
Traditionally, treaties, with only narrow exceptions, have been defined as formal agreements between and among sovereign states that help define their relations to each other as sovereign states. They are inherently political agreements. The option to change such relations and the concomitant power to discontinue adhering to the terms of a treaty is solely the prerogative of the sovereign. First and foremost, the Convention represents a departure from that tradition. It establishes institutions with executive and judicial powers that in some instances are compulsory.
Part XV of the convention, notes Middendorf, “establishes dispute settlement procedures that are quasi-judicial and mandatory. Once drawn into this dispute settlement process, it will be very difficult for the U.S. to extricate itself from it.”
Advocates for LOST contend that fears of loss of sovereignty are utterly ridiculous. Professor John Norton Moore, a negotiator on LOST and one of the main guns called upon repeatedly to testify in favor of the treaty, had this to say at a conference on LOST at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York on March 28, 2008:
What’s the principal argument we heard initially out of the opponents? This was going to remove the sovereignty of the United States. They cannot point to an ounce of removal of sovereignty for the United States…. There is no loss of U.S. sovereignty whatsoever.
Prof. Moore knows better. In the area of pollution control alone, the treaty presents serious threats to national sovereignty, creating, in essence, a global Environmental Protection Agency. Some of the most extreme environmental activists have announced their intention to use LOST as a back door to force global regulations, such as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, on the United States.
Consider LOST’s Article 194, which says: “States shall take … all measures consistent with this Convention that are necessary to prevent, reduce and control pollution from any source … and they shall endeavor to harmonize their policies in this connection.”
Article 194 goes on to say that the measures taken shall be designed “to minimize to the fullest possible extent” pollution “from land-based sources” as well as “from or through the atmosphere.”
Article 213 says: “States shall … adopt laws and regulations and take other measures necessary to implement applicable international rules and standards established through competent international organizations or diplomatic conference to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from land-based sources.” (Emphasis added.)
As previously noted, legal activists are eagerly anticipating the havoc they would be able to inflict on the U.S. constitutional system and the potential for building world government through these and other provisions of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
William C.G. Burns, an environmental law professor and global-warming alarmist, contends LOST “may prove to be one of the primary battlegrounds for climate change issues in the future.” He notes that “the potential impacts of rising sea surface temperatures, rising sea levels, and changes in ocean pH as a consequence of rising levels of carbon dioxide in sea water” could “give rise to actions under the Convention’s marine pollution provisions.”
This a golden opportunity for environmental activists. “While very few of the drafters [of LOST] may have contemplated that it would one day become a mechanism to confront climate change,” Burns says, “it clearly may play this role in the future.”
Extrapolating from current and recent past experience, it should not take too much imagination to visualize the horrors this would unleash. Lawyers from Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the World Wildlife Fund (to name but a few) would keep every court in the land (as well as every international tribunal) flooded with perpetual litigation aimed at every productive enterprise. Forget about drilling any new oil or gas wells, building any new refineries or power plants, or opening any new mines. Farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, processors, transporters — virtually everyone who does anything on land, air, or sea is a potential target.
One of LOST’s most avid proponents is University of Miami Law Professor Bernard H. Oxman, who served on the convention’s drafting committee and has sat as a judge ad hoc of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Writing in 1996 in the European Journal of International Law, Prof. Oxman acknowledged that the convention’s text was definitely lacking in the crisp, clear meaning its adherents often ascribed to it. “Like many complex bodies of written law,” he wrote, “it is amply endowed with indeterminate principles, mind-numbing cross-references, institutional redundancies, exasperating opacity and inelegant drafting, not to mention a potpourri of provisions.”
The UN’s Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea insists LOST is not “a static instrument, but rather a dynamic and evolving body of law.” This mind-numbing, “dynamic and evolving” mélange of “indeterminate principles” and “exasperating opacity” is causing elation amongst those who would undermine our constitutional foundations and, at the same time, inspiring dread amongst those who contemplate the havoc that subversive lawyers and activist judges could inflict on our republic.
University of Virginia School of Law Professor John Norton Moore, a supporter of the treaty, calls it “one of the most important law-defining international conventions of the Twentieth Century.”
“This is quite an assertion,” Ambassador Middendorf says of Moore’s statement. “In fact, it is the most troubling aspect of the Convention.” Middendorf continues:
Unacknowledged in the language about fostering the rule of law in international relations is the reality that in this particular case it entails subordinating the powers of the participating states to the dictates of an international authority…. The Convention is a vehicle for transferring these essential powers from the participating states to the international authority established by the treaty itself. It represents the establishment of the rule of law over sovereign states more than it is establishing a rule of law made by them.
Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, warns that “LOST could be treated as self-enforcing, that is, found to create obligations enforceable by U.S. courts.” In Medellin v. Texas, he notes, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a criminal conviction for failure to fulfill the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The majority ruled that the consular treaty does not constitute “directly enforceable federal law.”
Bandow, who was a special assistant to President Reagan and served as deputy representative to the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, says:
Treaty advocates make the same claim for LOST. However, Annex III, Article 21(2) states that LOST tribunal decisions “shall be enforceable in the territory of each State Party.” And in Medellin, Justice John Paul Stevens contrasted the Vienna Convention with LOST, which he opined did “incorporate international judgments into international law.”
“The issue isn’t going to be settled,” says Bandow, “until a suit is filed under LOST, if the U.S. is foolish enough to ratify the Treaty.”
Ratification would be foolish indeed. The treaty proponents have offered no pressing exigencies to justify the claim that U.S. ratification of LOST is “urgently” needed, or that any supposed benefits outweigh the evident dangers we would be inviting. Contrary to the claims of proponents, failure to adopt the treaty will not harm the operations of our navy or our commercial shipping.
On the other hand, ratification would almost certainly lead to actions that would be very harmful to our naval and commercial operations. Critics predicted chaos at our failure to ratify LOST in 1982. They were wrong; the United States has functioned quite well without it. No nation has had the will or the wherewithal to challenge our use of the seas. And if they had, the UN and LOST would not have helped.
Americans must let their senators know in no uncertain terms that LOST was unacceptable in 1982 and nothing has changed to make it acceptable now.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/801
Posted in 
What’s Wrong With Global Government
Sometimes, I get so caught up in being opposed to something I fail to remind myself as to WHY I’m opposed to it. Yesterday I found myself – in the wake of so much news in the past few months regarding swine flu and the WHO; climate change and Copenhagen; and the manufactured economic crisis and the G20 – wondering if I could articulate to one who is not so politically aware or analytical just why I think Global Governance is such a terrible idea. Here are some of the reasons I knew that I knew, but just hadn’t taken the time to spell out to myself.
1. The loss of the people’s voice. Today in Washington, Americans on all sides of the political spectrum increasingly feel that we have no say in the decisions made by our leaders. Even though we vote, our choices of leaders are unsatisfying, frequently leading us to choose the “lesser of two evils.” John McCain isn’t a true Conservative, and thus left true Conservatives without a candidate. Barack Obama claimed to be a centrist but it turns out that he’s as much in the bag for the bankers as any good Globalist should be. Neither one of these two men – or any of the other candidates in the 2008 election, save one – were good for this country, and many people knew it but felt it their civic duty to vote for SOMEONE. For those of us who are not caught up in the false left-right paradigm, we looked at the candidates and thought, what is going on here, with this cult of personality battling it out against reluctant followers of a false war hero who in no way represents the traditional Republican ideals? We look at our members of Congress and think, what makes you think you can get away with continuing to put lobbyists and special interests ahead of your constituents? Yet they do get away with it because there’s just too much power behind Washington in the form of special interests, a lack of government transparency, and sheer arrogance.
If you think you lack a voice now, wait until we have Global Government. It would necessarily have to be tyrannical. It could not be a Democratic Republic (not that we really have that now) for the simple reason that it would be too difficult for the World leaders to control. We can relatively easily get on a plane or train, or hop in our cars and get ourselves to Washington DC and see our leaders face-to-face now. Our presence – if we wake up and start holding these officials accountable in whatever ways we have left – may once again remind them that they work for us, we don’t work for them or their lobbyist fundraisers. We can still have a march in DC including tens of thousands – like that of the Ron Paul Revolution or the tea party marches – to let them know that we’re watching. In a World Government model, it would be vastly more difficult to organize. We’d have to do it on a global scale and rely on the people of India or Afghanistan or Spain or Zimbabwe to have this march, people who generally are much worse off than we and are worried about how they’re going to feed their families tomorrow than going to a political march. The World leaders will be very comfortable in their ivory towers because they will know that they will be untouchable. So, your voice will be lost simply because of logistics. Regardless of who’s in power, your opposition to decisions made by a world body will be meaningless. If you’re liberal who truly cares about the plight of the hungry (and there aren’t as many of you as you may think), you will have no recourse to destructive policies made under the guise of “environmentalism,” and if you’re a conservative, you will scream at the top of your lungs about spending and no one will care. No one will even hear you. They’ll be too far away and too insulated for your voice to break through the walls.
2. Control. In a World Government model, there would necessarily have to be a technological control grid. The government simply can’t control 6 billion people (if that many are left when they’re done) without some sort of biotech or tracking devices. It will start with convenience, but the real reason will be control. We see this now even in America and Britain with the abundance of “traffic cameras” that automatically send you tickets for violating any one of our thousands of traffic laws. They can’t even control the population of a large metropolis – how will they do it on a global scale? A global government can’t control your “carbon emissions” (since that seems to be what they’ve resorted to), it can’t control your salary, it can’t control your internet activity, it can’t control your money, it can’t control your health unless we are all electronically tracked. Since the trend of global governance is heavily reliant on controlling people in order to achieve some sort of “greater good,” we must be tracked to make things “fair” for all people in the world. Yes – this is a joke. It is socialism at its worst. There are already RFID chips in our passports and our drivers’ licenses, but imagine what else the governors of this World body can use to track us. GPS on our cars, tracking where we go and storing that information just in case they need it later? Chips in our forearms? How else would a global health care system know what we’re putting into our bodies and if it adheres to our government-prescribed diet? How else will the government know if we’re going to our required one hour gym visit? Do I sound paranoid? I shouldn’t – the trend is towards less human-to-human interaction and more human-machine interaction. Think of ATMs, online ordering, and touch-tone menus when you call almost any company. Last time I went to the doctor, she had me put all my information not on a piece of paper, but a wireless entry system that sent my personal, intimate details to God-knows-where.
3. Management. We have the UN now, which is basically a useless organization, luckily for us. Even though member states donate their money to the UN, the leadership of a global government would have to be a financial body capable of compelling member states to pay to a coffer from which they will draw, supposedly to orchestrate the needs of the globe. Re-read that: “orchestrate the needs of the globe.” This is an impossibility. A small government body can’t orchestrate the needs of its small population, let alone the needs of 6 billion people. (This is ignoring the idea that we even need government to orchestrate our needs, which is debatable since most of what government gets involved in gets all screwed up, anyways.) Regardless of where on the political spectrum you lie, think about it on an accessible scale: public schools. Look at the school systems of any large metropolis…say, Chicago. In Chicago, we have hundreds of government workers, including teachers, principals, staff, security, secretaries, financial operators, etc. All of these people are working in tandem, supposedly to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of students in the system. Yet we still have failing schools, incredible government waste, teachers failing to get their paychecks, staff at human resources who let their phones ring and ring while they paint their nails, schools without textbooks but cappuccino machines and flat screen televisions in the downtown offices. Why? Because the vision of any large governmental organization that BY LAW must exist will falter because it’s too big. The workers “downtown” (or wherever this world body is based) is completely out of touch with the needs of the people to whom it’s dictating. Some banker in Copenhagen has no idea how I should best educate my child. And if you think that the global body will rely on the member states to communicate to it what those individuals need, again think of CPS. It’s global governance-in-training. It doesn’t work. The money isn’t used appropriately, people slip through the cracks, and we have no control over our own fates.
Lest some of you jump in here and say that it’s hypocritical to think that we will have a government that can’t manage its own money but can track our movements and actions, think of this: We have a government now that can’t run a DMV efficiently, but can track, record, catalog, and use your phone calls and emails against you at any moment, when it decides that you represent a threat to someone. We have a government now that can manipulate voter data in two minutes via hacking, and we have government agencies that can genetically modify our food, thus changing our DNA. The waste and fraud are not about incompetence – they’re about the simple fact that the people committing these acts of fraud and waste because THEY CAN. can storm into the DMV or the Chicago Public Schools’ Human Resources department and scream and I’ll be heard…somewhat. I can’t walk over to Copenhagen and scream. Again, it goes back to the loss of my voice as an individual.
4. The loss of our individual rights at the expense of others’. Think about this: In 2004, France passed a law prohibiting in schools “symbols or clothes through which students conspicuously display their religious affiliation.” In Switzerland, the building of new minarets is illegal. In America, we have new hate crime legislation that allows the federal government to re-try you if it’s unsatisfied with a not-guilty verdict in a hate crimes case, thus destroying our protections against double-jeopardy. There are now certain groups of people against whom crimes are more heinous than others. In all of these cases, the rights of the individual are completely wiped away because of group identity.
Diversity is an important aspect to living in a country such as America and a world such as ours. However, at what point to your individual rights to believe what you want, say what you want, and behave in a manner in which you want become less important than hurting someone else’s feelings? Imagine this on a global scale. Our bill of rights – which our founders wrote so as to keep the individual’s rights protected from government infringement – will be destroyed at the expense of “diversity.” It ceases to become diversity when only certain opinions are allowed. Imagine if suddenly – around the world – Muslim women who chose to wear the hijab were not allowed to do so. Imagine if suddenly – around the world – the construction of new Presbyterian churches was illegal. What would happen to diversity at the expense of diversity?
What does this have to do with World government? Conformity. The destruction of the individual and his or her desires, needs, dreams, personalities will be complete. Again, necessarily World government will have to streamline and level the world population, curbing our speech, beliefs, and actions. We’re easier to control then.
These are just some of the problems with World government. There are more – many more. Consider this a call to action – perhaps to add your own ideas, but more simply to become aware that this is our fate unless you wake up to the realities of what’s going on around you. The trend is towards global governance; it is almost upon us. According to the new EU president Herman van Rompuy, 2009 was the first year of World governance. Despite what I want, I agree with him. It happened seemingly without warning, but in truth people have been screaming about this for decades. They’re crazy, though; the “conspiracy theorists’ who are derided on television by the accepted talking heads tell us so, and many people believe them.
World government will be inevitable unless people start taking action in whatever way they need to in order to avoid it. We must take back the power that we’ve been letting go of gradually since this country’s founding. We must wake up. For those of you who voted for him, Barack Obama is NOT the savior of this country – you must see that by now. He’s committed to using the farce of climate change and destroying the United States financially in order to bring about Global governance, regardless if it’s what’s best for you, the individual.
Beth Srigley
Infowars.com
December 23, 2009
http://www.infowars.com/whats-wrong-with-global-government/
SOLD: Senator Nelson’s Bribe
SOLD: Senator Nelson’s Bribe
by Publius
We’ll be blunt. The ‘health care reform’ legislation under consideration in the Senate is the most corrupt piece of legislation in our nation’s history. Yes, we understand that is a strong statement and there have been other abominations throughout our nation’s life. But never before did corrupt legislation threaten to radically and forever change the live’s of every American.
Exhibit A is the outright bribe extracted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Corn Huckster State) from Sen. Harry Reid. As a result of Nelson’s performance in his role of Hamlet in the health care deliberations, we will have two health care systems in this country; one for Nebraska and one for the other 49 states.
In its quixotic attempt to ensure everyone has health insurance, the Reid legislation greatly expands Medicaid eligibility. Because Medicaid is a program whose costs are split between the federal and state governments, this expansion in eligibility raise costs dramatically for states. States will be forced to either raise taxes or cut other services to accommodate the forced increase in Medicaid spending.
Unless that state is Nebraska.
Below is the text for Nelson’s bribe. Under this language the federal government will forever cover the costs of Medicaid expansion in Nebraska. Taxpayers in every other state will forever be responsible for the expanded Medicaid program in Nebraska.
Outrageous doesn’t do justice to describe this situation. Sen. Nelson also secured an exemption from a new insurance tax for non-profit companies in his state. Mutual of Omaha and Nebraska’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield won’t have to pay a tax other companies will be required to pay.
There is next to nothing honest about the entire health care debate anymore. The current legislative text was released just hours ago. The first votes are expected within hours. The health care sector accounts for 1/7th of our economy. And the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” will have just hours to consider its radical transformation. However much they say the legislation will cost, don’t believe it. Rarely has a bill been so manipulated to hide its true cost.
Consider this from the most recent CBO estimate of the cost of the legislation:
These longer-term calculations assume that the provisions are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation. For example, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) mechanism governing Medicare’s payments to physicians has frequently been modified (either through legislation or administrative action) to avoid reductions in those payments, and legislation to do so again is currently under consideration in the Congress.
And this,
The legislation would maintain and put into effect a number of procedures that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. Under current law and under the proposal, payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare would be reduced by about 21 percent in 2010 and then decline further in subsequent years.
(Hey, American Medical Association, how’s that endorsement of this bill working for you?)
And, this gem:
It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care.
Soon, 60 Senators will vote for this.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/19/sen-nelsons-bribe/
New Amnesty Bill Introduced
New Amnesty Bill Introduced:
Our chief House opponent, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), has introduced a bill that is much, much more radical than any Amnesty bill ever introduced.
A super-condensed summary of the two-page bill. Some features are so outrageous you may think we are making them up. But it’s all true!
* The bill outlaws all state and local laws against illegal immigration. It overthrows laws like those in Arizona, Oklahoma, and Georgia that punish companies for hiring illegal aliens.
* It eliminates the 287(g) program in which local law enforcement helps identify and detect illegal aliens for the feds.
* Job verification would no longer be possible, because this bill would ELIMINATE E-Verify! All our gains in verification over the last decade would be destroyed if this bill were to become law.
* All Illegal Aliens in U.S. as of day-before-yesterday will be given immediate Amnesty.
* The only ones not given the Amnesty are those who’ve committed a “serious crime.” BUT, if the criminal is above 65 years old, no problem–they get the amnesty. (New industry–older criminals smuggled into U.S. to escape punishment in home countries?)
* Importation of foreign-workers or permanent immigrants will be GREATLY increased.
* And amnesty would be immediate so they do not have to return to their country of origin.
Gutierrez Introduces Amnesty Legislation
Rep. Gutierrez Introduces Amnesty Legislation
Call your Representatives and SAY NO to Amnesty!
Today, long-time amnesty advocate Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) is introducing a massive amnesty bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to various news sources, the bill will grant amnesty to the 11-12 million illegal aliens in the U.S.; dramatically increase legal immigration; include the AgJobs amnesty for illegal alien farm workers; and, through the DREAM Act amnesty, authorize in-state college tuition for illegal aliens.
Call your Representatives today! To find your Representative’s phone numbers, click here.
You can also fax your Member of Congress and tell them you oppose the Gutierrez bill.
When you’re done, please reach out to your family and friends and ask them to call/fax too.
The unveiling of this legislation is considered to be the opening move in the latest battle to enact “comprehensive” immigration reform, one that the White House has promised to support. “Everything’s going very well. Full steam ahead,” Gutierrez said about today’s unveiling of his bill. (Roll Call, Dec. 12, 2009) “We’ve said that this bill will be to immigration what the public option was to health care. It will be progressive, it will be expansive, it will be compassionate and it will be comprehensive.” (Id.)
Battle lines on Capitol Hill are being drawn and we need your help! Please make two phone calls today: one to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (202-225-0100) and the other to your U.S. Representative. Tell them:
*
Our immigration system is badly broken and you want it fixed.
* Illegal aliens and foreign guest workers take jobs from Americans and drive down wages in an economy that is already suffering the worst unemployment in decades.
* You want our immigration laws enforced not mass amnesty.
* Amnesty violates the rule of law and is fundamentally unfair to those who come legally.
* Amnesty will cost taxpayers billions and billions of dollars—a price tag we can’t afford.
* Amnesty threatens our national security as it will be impossible Homeland Security to thoroughly check the millions of applications that will swamp government agencies.
* Increasing legal immigration—when all new arrivals will need jobs—makes no sense when the nation is suffering record unemployment.
We need to send a forceful message to Capitol Hill TODAY that the American people oppose destructive immigration policies that grant amnesty to illegal aliens and bring in more foreign workers.
Call your Representatives today! To find your Representative’s phone numbers, click here.
You can also fax your Member of Congress! and tell them you oppose the Gutierrez bill.
When you’re done, please reach out to your family and friends and ask them to call/fax too.
Stay tuned to FAIR for more information on the Gutierrez amnesty legislation.
December 16, 2009
House Democrats Support Latest Amnesty Bill
Wonder who is co-sponsoring Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s (D-IL) Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security Act (CIR ASAP) of 2009? Below is a list of 90 House Democrats that have signed on to co-sponsor this latest push for amnesty. If you live in any of these representatives’ districts we encourage you to click here to read our alert and call to let them know that you oppose this bill.
Rep Abercrombie, Neil [HI-1]
Rep Andrews, Robert E. [NJ-1]
Rep Baca, Joe [CA-43]
Rep Becerra, Xavier [CA-31]
Rep Berkley, Shelley [NV-1]
Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28]
Rep Blumenauer, Earl [OR-3]
Rep Bordallo, Madeleine Z. [GU]
Rep Brown, Corrine [FL-3]
Rep Capps, Lois [CA-23]
Rep Capuano, Michael E. [MA-8]
Rep Carson, Andre [IN-7]
Rep Christensen, Donna M. [VI]
Rep Chu, Judy [CA-32]
Rep Clarke, Yvette D. [NY-11]
Rep Clay, Wm. Lacy [MO-1]
Rep Cleaver, Emanuel [MO-5]
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14]
Rep Crowley, Joseph [NY-7]
Rep Cuellar, Henry [TX-28]
Rep Davis, Danny K. [IL-7]
Rep DeGette, Diana [CO-1]
Rep Edwards, Donna F. [MD-4]
Rep Ellison, Keith [MN-5]
Rep Engel, Eliot L. [NY-17]
Rep Faleomavaega, Eni F.H. [AS]
Rep Farr, Sam [CA-17]
Rep Fattah, Chaka [PA-2]
Rep Filner, Bob [CA-51]
Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4]
Rep Fudge, Marcia L. [OH-11]
Rep Gonzalez, Charles A. [TX-20]
Rep Green, Al [TX-9]
Rep Green, Gene [TX-29]
Rep Grijalva, Raul M. [AZ-7]
Rep Gutierrez, Luis V. [IL-4]
Rep Hastings, Alcee L. [FL-23]
Rep Heinrich, Martin [NM-1]
Rep Hinojosa, Ruben [TX-15]
Rep Hirono, Mazie K. [HI-2]
Rep Honda, Michael M. [CA-15]
Rep Israel, Steve [NY-2]
Rep Jackson, Jesse L., Jr. [IL-2]
Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [TX-18]
Rep Johnson, Eddie Bernice [TX-30]
Rep Johnson, Henry C. “Hank,” Jr. [GA-4]
Rep Kilpatrick, Carolyn C. [MI-13]
Rep Kucinich, Dennis J. [OH-10]
Rep Lee, Barbara [CA-9]
Rep Lewis, John [GA-5]
Rep Lujan, Ben Ray [NM-3]
Rep Maloney, Carolyn B. [NY-14]
Rep Matsui, Doris O. [CA-5]
Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7]
Rep McGovern, James P. [MA-3]
Rep Meek, Kendrick B. [FL-17]
Rep Meeks, Gregory W. [NY-6]
Rep Moore, Gwen [WI-4]
Rep Moran, James P. [VA-8]
Rep Nadler, Jerrold [NY-8]
Rep Napolitano, Grace F. [CA-38]
Rep Neal, Richard E. [MA-2]
Rep Norton, Eleanor Holmes [DC]
Rep Olver, John W. [MA-1]
Rep Pallone, Frank, Jr. [NJ-6]
Rep Pastor, Ed [AZ-4]
Rep Perlmutter, Ed [CO-7]
Rep Pierluisi, Pedro R. [PR]
Rep Pingree, Chellie [ME-1]
Rep Polis, Jared [CO-2]
Rep Quigley, Mike [IL-5]
Rep Rangel, Charles B. [NY-15]
Rep Reyes, Silvestre [TX-16]
Rep Richardson, Laura [CA-37]
Rep Roybal-Allard, Lucille [CA-34]
Rep Rush, Bobby L. [IL-1]
Rep Sablan, Gregorio [MP]
Rep Salazar, John T. [CO-3]
Rep Schakowsky, Janice D. [IL-9]
Rep Scott, Robert C. “Bobby” [VA-3]
Rep Serrano, Jose E. [NY-16]
Rep Sires, Albio [NJ-13]
Rep Stark, Fortney Pete [CA-13]
Rep Towns, Edolphus [NY-10]
Rep Velazquez, Nydia M. [NY-12]
Rep Waters, Maxine [CA-35]
Rep Watson, Diane E. [CA-33]
Rep Waxman, Henry A. [CA-30]
Rep Weiner, Anthony D. [NY-9]
Rep Welch, Peter [VT]
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [CA-6]
http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/profiles/blogs/house-democrats-support-latest
http://www.steinreport.com/archives/013052.html
https://secure2.convio.net/fair/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=339&JServSessionIdr004=en06f4les3.app28b
Minimum wage laws
Minimum wage laws set legal minimums for the hourly wages paid to certain groups of workers. In the United States, amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act have increased the federal minimum wage from $.25 per hour in 1938 to $5.15 in 1997. Minimum wage laws were invented in Australia and New Zealand with the purpose of guaranteeing a minimum standard of living for unskilled workers. Most noneconomists believe that minimum wage laws protect workers from exploitation by employers and reduce poverty. Most economists believe that minimum wage laws cause unnecessary hardship for the very people they are supposed to help.
The reason is simple: although minimum wage laws can set wages, they cannot guarantee jobs. In practice they often price low-skilled workers out of the labor market. Employers typically are not willing to pay a worker more than the value of the additional product that he produces. This means that an unskilled youth who produces $4.00 worth of goods in an hour will have a very difficult time finding a job if he must, by law, be paid $5.15 an hour. As Princeton economist David F. Bradford wrote, “The minimum wage law can be described as saying to the potential worker: ‘Unless you can find a job paying at least the minimum wage, you may not accept employment.’”
Several decades of studies using aggregate time-series data from a variety of countries have found that minimum wage laws reduce employment. At current U.S. wage levels, estimates of job losses suggest that a 10 percent in crease in the minimum wage would decrease employment of low-skilled workers by 1 or 2 percent. The job losses for black U.S. teenagers have been found to be even greater, presumably because, on average, they have fewer skills. As liberal economist Paul A. Samuelson wrote in 1973, “What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2.00 per hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?” In a 1997 response to a request from the Irish National Minimum Wage Commission, economists for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) summarized economic research results on the minimum wage: “If the wage floor set by statutory minimum wages is too high, this may have detrimental effects on employment, especially among young people.” This agreement over the general effect of minimum wages is long-standing. According to a 1978 article in American Economic Review, 90 percent of the economists surveyed agreed that the minimum wage increases unemployment among low-skilled workers.
Australia provided one of the earliest practical demonstrations of the harmful effects of minimum wage laws when the federal court created a minimum wage for unskilled men in 1921. The court set the wage at what it thought employees needed for a decent living, independent of what employers would willingly pay. Laborers whose productivity was worth less than the mandated wage could find work only in occupations not covered by the law or with employers willing to break it. Aggressive reporting of violations by vigilant unions made evasion difficult. The historical record shows that unemployment remained a particular problem for unskilled laborers for the rest of the decade.
At about the same time, a hospital in the United States fired a group of women after the Minimum Wage Board in the District of Columbia ordered that their wages be raised to the legal minimum. The women sued to halt enforcement of the minimum wage law. In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, ruled that the minimum wage law was price fixing and that it represented an unreasonable infringement on individuals’ freedom to determine the price at which they would sell their services.
In addition to making jobs hard to find, minimum wage laws may also harm workers by changing how they are compensated. Fringe benefits—such as paid vacation, free room and board, inexpensive insurance, subsidized child care, and on-the-job training—are an important part of the total compensation package for many low-wage workers. When minimum wages rise, employers can control total compensation costs by cutting benefits. In extreme cases, employers convert low-wage full-time jobs with benefits to high-wage part-time jobs with no benefits and fewer hours. David Neumark and William Wascher found that a 10 percent increase in minimum wages decreased on-the-job training for young people by 1.5–1.8 percent. Since on-the-job training is the way most people build their salable skills, these findings suggest that minimum wage laws also reduce future opportunities for the unskilled.
A particularly graphic example of benefits reduction occurred in 1990, when the U.S. Department of Labor ordered the Salvation Army to pay the minimum wage to voluntary participants in its work therapy programs. In exchange for processing donated goods, the programs provided participants, many of whom were homeless alcoholics and drug addicts, with a small weekly stipend and up to ninety days of food, shelter, and counseling. The Salvation Army said that the expense of complying with the minimum wage order would force it to close the programs. Ignoring both the fact that the beneficiaries of the program could leave to take higher-paying jobs at any time and the cash value of the food, shelter, and supervision, the Labor Department insisted that it was protecting workers’ rights by enforcing the minimum wage. After a public outcry, the Labor Department backed down. Its Wage and Hour Division Field Operations Handbook now contains a special section on minimum wage enforcement and the Salvation Army.
Minimum wage increases make unskilled workers more expensive relative to all other factors of production. If skilled workers make fifteen dollars an hour and unskilled workers make three dollars an hour, skilled workers are five times as expensive as the unskilled. Imposing a minimum wage of five dollars an hour makes skilled workers relatively more attractive by making them only three times as expensive as unskilled workers. This explains why unions, whose members have historically been highly skilled and seldom hold minimum wage jobs, invariably support legislation increasing minimum wages. As in the Australian case, unions also protect themselves against competitive threats by assiduously helping labor authorities find and prosecute suspected violators.
Many employers in the U.S. construction industry have found it less expensive to hire unskilled workers at low wages and train them on the job. By accepting lower wages in return for training, unskilled workers increase their expected future income. With high minimum wages like those specified for government construction by the Davis-Bacon Act, the cost of wages and training for the unskilled may rise enough to make employers prefer more productive union members. In effect, higher minimum wages reduce the competition faced by union members while leaving the unskilled unemployed. Of course, employers may also respond to minimum wage laws by decreasing overall employment, substituting machines for people, moving production abroad, or shutting down labor-intensive businesses.
While those rendered unemployed by a minimum wage increase are largely invisible, it is easy to calculate the increased income enjoyed by those who keep their jobs after an increase. This asymmetry has led many advocates to mistakenly assume that increasing the minimum wage is an effective way to fight poverty. Using 1997 Census data, D. Mark Wilson found that only 11.7 percent of minimum-wage workers were the sole breadwinners in their families, and that more than 40 percent of the sole breadwinners earning the minimum wage were voluntary part-time workers. Richard Burkhauser used 1996 U.S. Census data to identify the likely beneficiaries from the 1996 increase in the federal minimum wage. He concluded that the “20.9 percent of minimum wage workers who lived in poor families only received 16.8 percent of the benefits.”
Additional evidence on the distributional effect of minimum wages comes from David Neumark, Mark Schweitzer, and William Wascher. Raising the minimum wage increases both the probability that a poor family will escape poverty through higher wages and the probability that another nonpoor family will become poor as minimum wage increases price it out of the labor market. They found that the unemployment caused by minimum wage increases is concentrated among low-income families. This suggests that minimum wage increases generally redistribute income among low-income families rather than moving it from those with high incomes to those with low incomes. The authors found that although some families do benefit, minimum wage increases generally increase the proportion of families that are poor and near-poor. Minimum wage increases also decrease the proportion of families with incomes between one and a half and three times the poverty level, suggesting that they make it more difficult to escape poverty.
In the early 1990s, after a telephone survey of 410 fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, economists David Card and Alan B. Krueger challenged the consensus view that higher minimum wages shrink employment opportunities. Their results appeared to demonstrate that a minimum wage increase resulted in increased employment. Because telephone survey data are notoriously prone to measurement error, Neumark and Wascher repeated Card and Krueger’s analysis using payroll records from a similar sample of restaurants over the same time period. The results from the payroll data showed that “the minimum-wage increase led to a decline in employment in New Jersey fast food restaurants relative to the Pennsylvania control group.” After an extended academic debate, Card and Krueger retreated from their earlier position, writing that “the increase in New Jersey’s minimum wage probably had no effect on total employment in New Jersey’s fast-food industry, and possibly had a small positive effect.”
Even without the results from the payroll data, the contrary results from the Card and Krueger study would have had a limited impact on economists’ belief that increasing the minimum wage increases unemployment. As labor economist Finis Welch pointed out, the consensus theory does not predict how any one firm or industry is affected by minimum wage increases. Even if nationally recognized fast-food restaurants did not reduce hiring in response to higher minimum wages, Card and Krueger were silent about what happened at less-visible businesses, such as small retailers and local pizza and sandwich shops.
Furthermore, estimates of the overall effect of minimum wage increases often lead people to overlook the fact that regional and sectoral wage differentials average together to produce the national result. A federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour may substantially reduce employment in rural areas, where it exceeds the prevailing wage, but have little effect on employment in large cities, where almost everyone earns more. Regional studies leave little doubt that substantial increases in the minimum wage can shrink local industries and inhibit job creation in areas with market wages below the new minimum. The growth of the textile industry in the southern United States, for example, was propelled by low wages. Had the federal minimum wage been set at the wage earned by northern workers, the migration of textile workers to the South might never have occurred.
It is also easy to overlook the fact that raising the minimum wage applicable to a relatively small proportion of occupations will not necessarily increase measured unemployment. Some people will lose their jobs in covered occupations and withdraw from the labor market entirely. They will not be included in the unemployment statistics. Others will seek jobs at lower pay in uncovered occupations. Though the labor influx reduces wages in the uncovered sector, people do have jobs, and unemployment may not change. As minimum wage laws cover more occupations, however, the shrinking uncovered sector may not be able to absorb all of the people thrown out of work. The 1989 U.S. minimum wage legislation brought us one step closer to this possibility by extending coverage to all workers engaged in interstate commerce, regardless of employer size.
The fact that gross unemployment statistics do not necessarily reflect the harm done by minimum wage laws with limited coverage probably explains the popularity of the living-wage ordinances now in vogue in American cities with strong union ties. Living-wage ordinances set minimum wages for businesses and nonprofits that receive contracts or subsidies from local government. To arrive at the appropriate minimum living wage, advocates calculate the amount required to pay for a basket of goods containing “decent” housing, child care, food, transportation, health insurance, clothing, and taxes for various family sizes. The minimum is then set at the rate that produces enough money to buy the basket when someone works forty hours a week for a year. Initial empirical studies by Neumark suggest that the trade-off between wages and employment is the same for living wages as for minimum wages.
In San Francisco in 2001, passage of a living-wage law raised the compensation of airport skycaps from $4.75 an hour to $10.00 an hour plus health insurance. By the end of 2002, the Economic Policy Institute, an advocacy group supported by labor unions and liberal foundations, reported that living-wage ordinances had set minimum wages ranging from $6.25 an hour in Milwaukee to $12.00 an hour in Santa Cruz, California. In September 2003, the California Assembly passed a $10 minimum-wage requirement for contractors doing business with the state.
By one reckoning, the total cost of the typical basket of worker necessities used to arrive at living-wage minimums exceeds the incomes of almost a third of all families in the United States.19 It will not be surprising, therefore, as the number of cities with “living-wage” laws expands, to see unskilled workers harmed by falling employment, fewer entry-level jobs, and a reduction in job-related training and educational opportunities.
——————————————————————————–
About the Author
Linda Gorman is a senior fellow with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado. She was previously an economics professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MinimumWages.html
AP Declared Obama “Kenyan-Born” in 2004
Sunday, June 27, 2004
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http://web.archive.org/web/20040627142700/eastandard.net/headlines/news26060403.htm
The world is COOLING not warming says scientist Peter Taylor
Copenhagen climate change summit: The world is COOLING not warming says scientist Peter Taylor … and we’re not prepared
Last updated at 10:12 AM on 11th December 2009
In his provocative book Chill, he warns that the world is cooling not warming and that solutions proposed at Copenhagen ignore the risks of a possible return of the Ice Age…
Like a magician who fools themselves but not audience, the Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) lobby have identified the wrong problem and the wrong solution.
Global cooling threatens disaster for humanity in the developed and developing world alike, yet the media and the scientific consensus ignores this peril.
The Climategate controversy revolves around whether warming has been real and why it has not persisted – but it misses the point.
Cycles are involved, not short-term trends, and many respected scientists, especially those in Russia and China, think that a cooling cycle is coming.
The AGW brigade have mistaken the current warm period for a trend caused by carbon emissions. But the detailed science says it could be natural and part of a cycle.
Behind the scenes at the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change there is no consensus – the dissenting views have been covered over in the summary documents for policy makers – and among UK and EU politicians it’s even worse, and criminally expensive for the British taxpayer.
Natural climate change, especially cooling, is already dangerous for very large numbers of people who are vulnerable to climate changing - the urban poor in the developed world, including the UK, plus the poor nations currently dependent on food aid.
Cooling reduces food surpluses upon which we all depend. The biofuels programmes aimed at preventing climate change will expose them to greater risk by decreasing the amount of land available and raising costs of food, while this problem coupled with peak oil will affect everyone worldwide and drive up transport and manufacturing costs to levels even the super rich will struggle to afford.
These threats are real and here now, not in 50 years time.
Some dramatic changes are needed but not those proposed the EU, IPCC and UK politicians as they try to hunt down the will-of-the-wisp that is CO2 emissions.
Business as usual is not an option since cooling actually does put humanity at risk. The apocalyptic scaremongering has made us weary and casual about such threats but we need to act if we are to maintain our humanity.
Our human ecosystems are threatened by the world development model and unintelligent economic growth. No one yet has found a way to develop economically without massive increase in demand for scarce resources – soil, water, timber, land and food.
However, it can be done – with changes in developed economies, and restructuring development in poor countries – and it will require billions.
We need to showcase the projects that work – the unglamorous grass-roots initiatives that enhance the quality of life – rather than indulge in the theatrical gestures about solving a AGW that doesn’t exist.
Copenhagen won’t broker a solution – not only has the IPCC hyped the warming and misrepresented the science with regard to CO2 and ‘warming’ – but it has also proposed a system of cap-and-trade and technology transfer that means huge profits for banks and brokers.
These useless technology sales coupled with a massive global and unelected bureaucracy that decides which technology and which projects get funded – merely provide jobs for the boys rather than address the issues
What we need is the creation of resilience – the rich world is unstable and will try to buy its way out of problems, by buying food on the world market – the rest of the world is at grave risk of starvation.
Food not energy will be the big issue we urgently need to address in the next few years. In the developed world we need to systematically restructure and reduce demand and in the developing world, people need to stay in communities on the land and not be forced to seek work in unsustainable megacities
Climategate does not just demonstrate the corruption of science and peer-review; it also demonstrates the incompetence of specialists who do not understand planetary ecology, especially its cycles.
We’re being fatally led up the wrong garden path by green businesses, politicians, the IPCC and their computer geeks with their doctored spreadsheets and forecasts. They need to get out more and study the real world – not their virtual reality – because, like the asset bubbles of the financial crisis, the global warming bubble is about to burst…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1234515/Copenhagen-climate-change-summit-The-world-COOLING-warming-says-scientist-Peter-Taylor—prepared.html
U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.
The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush’s administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would support the talks as long as the negotiating forum, the so-called Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, “operates under the rules of consensus decision-making.”
“Consensus is needed to ensure the widest possible support for the Treaty and to avoid loopholes in the Treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly,” Clinton said in a written statement.
While praising the Obama administration’s decision to overturn the Bush-era policy and to proceed with negotiations to regulate conventional arms sales, some groups criticized the U.S. insistence that decisions on the treaty be unanimous.
“The shift in position by the world’s biggest arms exporter is a major breakthrough in launching formal negotiations at the United Nations in order to prevent irresponsible arms transfers,” Amnesty International and Oxfam International said in a joint statement.
However, they said insisting that decisions on the treaty be made by consensus “could fatally weaken a final deal.”
“Governments must resist US demands to give any single state the power to veto the treaty as this could hold the process hostage during the course of negotiations. We call on all governments to reject such a veto clause,” said Oxfam International’s policy adviser Debbie Hillier.
The proposed legally binding treaty would tighten regulation of, and set international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons.
Supporters say it would give worldwide coverage to close gaps in existing regional and national arms export control systems that allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.
Nations would remain in charge of their arms export control arrangements but would be legally obliged to assess each export against criteria agreed under the treaty. Governments would have to authorize transfers in writing and in advance.
The main opponent of the treaty in the past was the U.S. Bush administration, which said national controls were better. Last year, the United States accounted for more than two-thirds of some $55.2 billion in global arms transfer deals.
Arms exporters China, Russia and Israel abstained last year in a U.N. vote on the issue.
The proposed treaty is opposed by conservative U.S. think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which said last month that it would not restrict the access of “dictators and terrorists” to arms but would be used to reduce the ability of democracies such as Israel to defend their people.
The U.S. lobbying group the National Rifle Association has also opposed the treaty.
A resolution before the U.N. General Assembly is sponsored by seven nations including major arms exporter Britain. It calls for preparatory meetings in 2010 and 2011 for a conference to negotiate a treaty in 2012.
(Editing by Eric Beech)
UN Documents Outline “End Run” Around National Sovereignty
Bombshell UN Documents Outline Plan To Use Climategate Crooks In “End Run” Around National Sovereignty
| Written by Paul Joseph Watson – InfoWars.com |
| WEDNESDAY, 02 DECEMBER 2009 01:39 |
Shocking newly uncovered UN strategy documents reveal how elitists are recruiting members of academia from all over the globe in an effort to hide the “end-run” around national sovereignty that their agenda represents, emphasizing how the climategate crooks who were recently caught manipulating scientific data in order to “hide the decline” in global warming are working with the United Nations in the pursuit of a world government justified by the global warming fraud that they are helping to perpetrate.
One of the planning papers, entitled “The UNEP That We Want,” was produced by a specially selected group of influential environmental bureaucrats and delivered to the UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the regulatory body that established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the politicized organization that has attempted to slam the lid shut on global warming skepticism by claiming it is the supreme authority, despite the fact that scientists used by the IPCC were caught manipulating data and conspiring to hide evidence of global cooling during the climategate scandal.
The IPCC has attempted to deny the gravitas of climategate by claiming that it has no bearing on their conclusions about global warming, despite the fact that scientists at the University of East Anglia used intimidation and academic witch hunts to ensure that data they didn’t agree with politically was blocked from appearing in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007.
Participants who contributed to the first UNEP document included Janos Pasztor, currently head of the team pushing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s unprecedented Seal the Deal lobbying campaign to pressure U.N. member governments into signing a new environmental agreement at Copenhagen, Dominic Waughray, currently head of environmental initiatives at the World Economic Forum; and Maria Ivanova, and Bulgarian academic Maria Ivanova, director of the Global Economic Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.
The first document is very similar to a second UNEP paper entitled, “ Proposed Medium Term Strategy 2010-2013.”
The documents outline a program of implementing a global system of governance based around environmental regulations and laws, stressing the agenda for the “evolutionary nature of strengthening international environmental governance.”
The aim of elevating UNEP’s influence to a position where it dictates rules to nation states, rather than nation states being the supervisors of UNEP as is currently the case, is advocated.
The documents discuss recruiting academia to further the power of UNEP, noteworthy in light of the recent climategate scandal where scientists at major universities were caught hiding evidence of global cooling.
“As the Swiss paper puts it, UNEP “should pioneer a new style of work. This requires going beyond a narrow interpretation of UNEP’s stakeholders as comprising its member states – or even the world’s governments – and recruiting a far wider community of support, in civil society, the academic world and the private sector.” At the same time the paper warns that these groups need to be “harnessed to the UNEP mission without appearing to make an end-run around the member governments,” summarizes Fox News’ George Russell.
This passage is fairly damning, as the UN is all but admitting that the program does represent an “end-run around member governments,” and that they have to do their best to hide the fact. That academics should be “harnessed to the UNEP mission” and not harnessed to producing unbiased scientific data about global warming also reveals how the climate change issue has been hijacked to serve the requirements of a global elite hell-bent on world government.
The first document also calls for an “Environmental Bretton Woods for the 21st Century,” where the environmental agenda is inextricably linked with the economy and the UN’s role is to have command over the economies of national governments.
The goals included in the four-year strategy paper include “efforts at local, national and global levels” to raise “sufficient finance to meet environmental challenges, including climate change,” which translates as using the problem of global warming to raise money for the operation of the global government structure which is being called for in the planning papers.
The goals enshrined in the documents, a counterpart to the globally binding agreement the UN is seeking to achieve in Copenhagen next month, are “certain to remain a UNEP rallying cry long after the Copenhagen meeting is over – and while the other brainstorming ideas that went into the new four-year strategy, not to mention the strategy itself, go into effect,” writes Russell.
This document represents yet another smoking gun proving that the climate cult movement is all about expanding the power of a dictatorial, unelected global government, diluting powers of nation states, seizing control of the global economy, eviscerating the middle class with a raft of new regulations and laws, and shutting down industry with impossible CO2 reduction mandates, while erecting environmentalism, which is really a thin veil for global fascism, as the new universal religion.
This has nothing to do with saving the earth and, as the climategate scandal has illustrated, nothing to do with the real science - but everything to do with a relatively small clique of globalists running roughshod over humanity itself in pursuit of their malthusian control freak agenda.
Paul Joseph Watson contributing author for InfoWars.com and PrisonPlanet.com.
Bloomington, Indiana Herald-Times Treats Law-Abiding Gun Owners like Registered Sex Offenders!
Bloomington, Indiana Herald-Times Treats Law-Abiding Gun Owners like Registered Sex Offenders!
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
On November 30, 2009, the Bloomington Herald-Times made the following announcement:
“This week, HeraldTimesOnline.com will launch its new gun permit database. You’ll be able to search gun permit records by county, city or town and street.”
The Herald-Times has begun receiving calls and emails, and their response is a defiant defense of their online gun permit database.
Anyone who visits the newspaper website will be able to search the number of permits on a given street or neighborhood. Although at this point the names and house numbers are not listed, the newspaper’s website treats law-abiding Indiana gun owners like sex offenders on a searchable database.
It is NRA’s firm belief that there is no public good served by the publishing or cataloguing private citizens’ gun ownership information, and that more harm is done by such an action. Law-abiding Hoosiers should not be subjected to the same treatment as sex offenders, and if the newspaper won’t listen to their constituents and customers, then NRA Members and Indiana gun owners should send a financial message by cancelling their subscriptions to the Bloomington Herald-Times.
Please contact the Bloomington Herald-Times to respectfully voice your displeasure at the irresponsible action the newspaper has made.
Scott Schurz, Sunday Hoosier Times/Editor-in-Chief
(812) 331-4250
Sschurz@heraldt.com
E. Mayer Maloney Jr., Publisher
(812) 331-4251
Mmaloney@heraldt.com
Bob Zaltsberg, Editor
(812) 331-4364
rzaltsberg@heraldt.com
