Dakota Beacon

On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh?

But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the TSA swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions. Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs?  Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on US flights. In Toronto, no large purses.

Um, the Pantybomber didn’t have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren’t part of his carry-on (although, if reports of injuries sustained in his failed mission are correct, they may well have been part of his carry-off). But no matter. If in doubt, blame the victim. The TSA announced that for the last hour of the flight no passenger can use the toilets or have anything on his lap – not a laptop, not a blanket, not a stewardess, not even a paperback book. I can’t wait for the first lawsuit after an infidel flight attendant confiscates a litigious imam’s Koran as they’re coming into LAX.

You’re still free to read a paperback if you’re flying from Paris to Sydney, or Stockholm to Beijing, or Kuala Lumpur to Heathrow. But not to LAX or JFK. The TSA were responding as bonehead bureaucracies do: Don’t just stand there, do something. And every time the TSA does something, you’ll have to stand there, longer and longer, suffering ever more pointless indignities. Last week, guest-hosting The Rush Limbaugh Show, I took a call from a lady who said that, if it helps keep her safe, she’s happy to get to the airport “four, five, whatever hours” before the flight. Try to put a figure on “whatever” and you’ll get a sense of where America’s transportation system is headed. Ten years ago, you got to the airport 45 minutes, an hour before the flight. Now, thanks to the ever more demanding choreographers of the homeland security kabuki, it’s two, three, four, whatever. Look at O’Hare and imagine the size of airport we’ll need. And by then the Pantybomber won’t even need to get on the plane; he can kill more people blowing up the check-in line.

And remember, this was a bombing mission that “failed”. With failures like this, who needs victories? Joke, joke, joke. The only good news was that the derision was so universal that the TSA promptly reined in some of their wackier impositions a couple of days later. But by then Janet Incompetano, the Homeland Security Secretary, had gone on TV and declared to the world that there was nothing to worry about: “The system worked.”

Indeed, it worked “smoothly”. The al-Qaeda trainee on a terrorist watch list, a man banned from the United Kingdom and reported to the CIA by his own father, got on board the plane, assembled the bomb, and attempted to detonate it. But don’t worry ‘bout a thing; the system worked.

Twenty-four hours later, Secretary Incompetano was back on TV to protest that her words had been taken “out of context”. No doubt, the al Qaeda-trained CIA-reported cash-paying crotch-stuffed watch-list member’s smooth progress through check-in was also taken “out of context”. But by then the President of the United States had also taken to the airwaves.

For three days, he had remained silent – which I believed is a world record for the 44th president. Since January 20th 2009, it’s been difficult to switch on the TV and not find him yakking – accepting an award in Oslo for not being George W Bush, doing Special Olympics gags with Jay Leno, apologizing for America to some dictator or other… But across the electric wires an eerie still had descended. And when the President finally spoke, even making allowances for his usual detached cool, he sounded less like a commander-in-chief addressing the nation after an attempted attack than an assistant DA at a Cook County press conference announcing a drugs bust: “Here’s what we know so far… As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device… The suspect was immediately subdued… The suspect is now in custody and has been charged...”Etc, etc, piling up one desiccated legalism on another: “Allegedly…” “suspect…” “charged…”

The President can’t tell an allegedly alleged suspect (which is what he is in Obama fantasy-land) from an enemy combatant (which is what he is in cold hard reality). But worse than the complacent cop-show jargonizing was a phrase it’s hard to read as anything other than a deliberate attempt to mislead the public: the President referred to the Knickerbomber as an “isolated extremist”. By this time, it was already clear that young Umar had been radicalized by jihadist networks in London and fast-tracked to training in Yemen by terror operatives who understood the potentially high value of a westernized Muslim with excellent English from a respectable family. Yet President Obama tried to pass him off as some sort of lone misfit who wakes up one morning and goes bananas. Could happen to anyone.

But, if it takes the White House three days to react to an attack on the United States, their rapid-response unit can fire back in nothing flat when Dick Cheney speaks. “It is telling,” huffed the President’s Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, “that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers.”

“Condemning the attackers”? What happened to all the allegedly alleged stuff? Shouldn’t that be “condemning the alleged isolated attacker”? The Communications Director seems to be wandering a bit off-message here, whatever the message is: The system worked, so we’re inconveniencing you even more. The system failed, but the alleged suspect is an isolated extremist, so why won’t that cowardly squish Cheney have the guts to condemn the attacker and his vast network of associates?

The real message was conveyed by Fouad Ajami, discussing the new Administration’s foreign policy in The Wall Street Journal: “No despot fears Mr. Obama, and no blogger in Cairo or Damascus or Tehran, no demonstrator in those cruel Iranian streets, expects Mr. Obama to ride to the rescue.” True. Another Iranian deadline passed on New Year’s Eve, but the United States will set a new one for Groundhog Day or whenever.

And, just as the thug states understand they now have the run of the planet, so do the terror cells. A thwarted terror attack at Christmas is bad enough. Spending the following week making yourself a global joke is worse. Every A-list despot and dimestore jihadist got that message loud and clear – and so did American allies already feeling semi-abandoned by this most parochial of presidents. Expect a bumpy 12 months ahead. Happy New Year.

© 2010 Mark Steyn

Focus hard enough and the assertion of government impropriety runs clear and deep. In P.J. O’Rourke’s book “A Parliament of Whores” he humorously lambastes government in general, and politicians in particular, for their propensity to set aside principle for political gain.

It’s an annual tradition that the top news stories are reviewed at the end of a year. Regrettably, the biggest story of 2009 went unreported, that is, the story of political prostitution.

By Christmas the greatest deliberative body in the world degenerated into a house of prostitution, to wit, the buyoff of Senators to insure a successful vote on the legislative health care monstrosity.

Before becoming incensed, check the definition of prostitution. The term “prostitute” broadly suggests more than a narrow sexual perspective. Prostitute (as a verb) -- To misuse something for gain. To use a skill or ability in a way that is considered unworthy, usually for financial gain. Any way you cut it, the etymology of the word connotes exactly what it says -- trading something for favors.

Here are blatant examples of senatorial health care buyoffs.

Senator Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, sold her vote for $300 million otherwise known as the “Second Louisiana Purchase.” Landrieu will get additional federal aid for Louisiana’s Medicaid recipients.

Nebraska Democrat Senator Ben Nelson sold his vote in the “Cornhusker Kickback.” He was the last holdout that kept Senate Democrats from reaching the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. His price? A permanent exemption of Nebraska’s share of payment for Medicaid expansion under the new health care legislation.

There is also the “Florida Flim-Flam” in which Florida Democrat Senator Bill Nelson also sold his health care vote. This special deal grandfathers Florida’s Medicare Advantage enrollees worth approximately $5 billion. Other states face Medicare Advantage cuts.

Vermont Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders sold his vote for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers. Three days prior to the vote he wasn’t sure he could support the Senate health care legislation.

Michigan Democrat Senator Carl Levin carved out exemptions in the health care legislation granting large excise tax exemptions to non-profit insurers.

Democrat Senators from North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Utah and Wyoming sold their votes, also. Their states will receive increases in Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors where at least half of the counties are referred to as “frontier counties,” that is, counties with small populations.

Meanwhile, Nevada Democrat Senator Harry Reid spoke unapologetically about the buyoffs. He argued that, by definition, legislating means deal-making. “You’ll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislating is all about. It’s compromise,” he said. He avoided saying that other states pick up the tab for deals cut.

A not-so-coincidental factor comes into play. Billions of dollars remain unspent from the stimulus and TARP funds. The unspent billions serve as a giant presidential “slush fund” with which to purchase congressional votes in support of health care and other major legislation. If this is true, then, by definition, the U.S. Congress serves as one huge house of prostitution.

O’Rourke’s book illustrates over and over the evolution of bloated, useless and wasteful government programs. In the end, however, it’s the American people who look bad. He clearly shows the reason for this. Government programs have their constituencies which, more often than not, comprise the work-a-day middle class. We in the middle class have an appetite for gargantuan government programs making us easy prey for politicians.

It’s always easier to talk about someone else than it is to criticize ourselves. The issue O’Rourke raises is whether democracy is ultimately doomed by a citizenry avoiding responsibility for their own lives. In his book “Democracy in America,“ Alexis de Tocqueville approached the same issue adroitly pointing out that, once people in a democracy realize they can simply blame others for problems of their own making, the democracy is morally doomed.

Ben Franklin’s observation was even more cutting. “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

In the end, it seems, we are the whores trading our freedom for financial gain.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Approximately 140 jets carrying socialists, communists, fascists and political elite descended upon Copenhagen for the UN’s Global Warming Summit. In freezing temperatures and “blizzards” they were chauffeured by approximately 1,200 limousines (some flown in).

Inside they sipped Champaign, ate caviar and plotted to keep the poor in poverty, destroy the middle class, transfer American wealth to brutal dictators and enrich themselves with cap and trade. Al gore hysterically claimed the polar caps would probably be gone by 2014. Communist dictators quoted Karl Marx and bashed American capitalism to standing ovations. Blizzards couldn’t keep Nancy Pelosi away. Pledging $100 billion annually to “fight” warming, President Obama fit right in.

Outside anti-capitalist warmers rioted and waved banners containing pro-socialism propaganda, Soviet hammer and sickles and images of Marx and mass murderer Che Guevara. The carbon footprint of this spectacle surpassed the annual footprint of small countries.

The Socialist Democratic Party claims that to save the planet they must lower our standard of living, eliminate jobs, enrich the political elite and implement socialism with cap and trade. Gore will become a billionaire with it. Their Wall Street buddies want to cash in.

Scientists/political hacks (with future funding contingent on global warming being fact) claim that CO2 from American capitalism warms the planet. Many real scientists disagree. East Anglia’s Climate Research scandal proves that “scientists” distorted data to hide flaws in their “research” like recent cooling trends.

This hoax is part of the Democrat’s radical Marxist agenda. Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad as well as Representative Earl Pomeroy embraced this “change” by endorsing Obama for president and voting for Reid and Pelosi as majority leaders of their respective chambers. Dorgan further advanced this “change” by defeating an amendment that would have prohibited the EPA from regulating harmless CO2.

These aren’t North Dakota values.

Last week, during a bit of banter on Fox News, my colleague Jonah Goldberg reminded me of something I’d all but forgotten. Last September, during his address to Congress on health care, Barack Obama declared: “I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”

Dream on. The monstrous mountain of toxic pustules sprouting from greasy boils metastasizing from malign carbuncles that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve is not the last word in “health” “care” but the first. It ensures that this is all we’ll be talking about, now and forever. Government can’t just annex “one-sixth of the US economy” (ie, the equivalent of annexing the entire British or French economy, or annexing the entire Indian economy twice over) and then just say: “Okay, what’s next? On to cap-and-trade…” Nations that governmentalize health care soon find themselves talking about little else.

In Canada, once the wait times for MRIs and hip surgery start creeping up over two years, the government distracts the citizenry with a Royal Commission appointed to study possible “reforms” which reports back a couple of years later usually with recommendations to “strengthen” the government’s “commitment” to every Canadian’s “right” to health care by renaming the Department of Health the Department of Health Services and abolishing the Agency of Health Administration and replacing it with a new Agency of Administrative Health Operations which would report to a reformed Council of Health Policy Administrative Coordination to be supervised by a streamlined Public Health Operations & Administration Assessment Bureau. This package of “reforms” would cost a mere 12.3 gazillion dollars and usually keeps the lid on the pot until the wait times for MRIs start creeping up over three years.

The other alternative is what the British did earlier this year: They created an exciting new “Patient’s Bill of Rights”, promising every Briton the “right” to hospital treatment within 18 weeks. Believe it or not, that distant deadline shimmering woozily in the languid desert haze can be oddly reassuring if you’ve ever visited a Scottish emergency room on a holiday weekend. And, if the four-and-a-half months go by and you still haven’t been treated, you get your (tax) money back? Ah, no. But there is a free helpline you can call which will give you continuously updated estimates on which month your operation has been rescheduled for.

I mention these not as a preview of the horrors to come, but because I’ve come to the bleak conclusion that US-style “health” “reform” is going to be far worse. We were told we had to do it because of the however many millions of uninsured, yet this bill will leave some 25 million Americans uninsured. On the other hand, millions of young fit healthy Americans in their first jobs who currently take the entirely reasonable view that they do not require health insurance at this stage in their lives will be forced to pay for coverage they neither want nor need. On the other other hand, those Americans who’ve done the boring responsible grown-up thing and have health plans Harry Reid determines to be excessively “generous” will be subject to punitive taxes up to 40 per cent. On the other other other hand, if you’re the member of a union which enjoys privileged relations with Commissar Reid you’ll be exempt from that 40 per cent shakedown. On the other other other other hand, if you’re already enjoying government health care, well, you’re 83 years old and, let’s face it, it’s hardly worth us giving you that surgery for the minimal contribution you make to society, so in the cause of extending government health care to millions of people who don’t currently get it we’re going to ration it for those currently entitled to it. Looking at the millions of Americans it leaves uninsured, and the millions it leaves with worse treatment and reduced access, and the millions it makes pay significantly more for their current health care, one can only marvel at Harry Reid’s genius: government health care turns out to be all government and no health care.  Adding up the zillions of new taxes and bureaucracies and regulations it imposes on the citizenry, one might almost think that was the only point of the exercise.

That’s why I believe America’s belated embrace of government health care is going to be far more expensive and disastrous than the Euro-Canadian models. Whatever one’s philosophical objection to the Canadian health system, it is, broadly, fair: Unless you’re a cabinet minister or a bigtime hockey player, you’ll enjoy the same equality of crappiness and universal lack of access that everybody else does. But, even before it’s up-and-running, Pelosi-Reid-Obamacare is an impenetrable thicket of contradictory boondoggles, shameless payoffs and arbitrary shakedowns.

That’s why Nebraska’s grotesque zombie senator Ben Nelson is the perfect poster boy for the new arrangements, and not just another so-called Blue Dog Democrat spayed into compliance by a massive cash injection. There is no reason on earth why Nebraska should be the only state in this Union to have every dime of its increased Medicare tab picked up by the 49 others. So either that privilege will be extended to all, or to favored others, or its asymmetry will be balanced by other precisely targeted lollipops hither and yon. Whatever happens, it’s a dagger at the heart of American federalism, just as the bill’s magisterial proclamation that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board can only be abolished by a two-thirds vote of the Senate strikes at one of the most basic principles of a free society – that no parliament can bind its successors.

These details are obnoxious not merely in and of themselves but because they tell us the truth about where we’re headed: Think of the way almost every Big Government project bursts its bodice and winds up bigger and more bloated than its creators allegedly foresaw. In this instance, the stays come pre-loosened, and studded with loopholes. Because the Democrat operators – the Nancy Pelosis and Barney Franks – know that what matters is to get something, anything across the river, and then burn the bridge behind you. My Republican friends often seem to miss the point in this debate: The so-called “public option” is not Page 3,079, Section (f), Clause VII. The entire bill is a public option – because that’s where it leads, remorselessly. The so-called “death panel” is not Page 2,721, Paragraph 19, Sub-section (d), but again the entire bill – because it inserts the power of the state between you and your doctor, and in effect assumes jurisdiction over your body. As the savvier Dems have always known, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can endlessly re-reform your health reform until the end of time, and all the stuff you didn’t get this go-round will fall into place, and very quickly.

As I’ve been saying for over a year now, “health care” is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture. The unlovely Democrats on public display in the week before Christmas may seem like just a bunch of jelly-spined opportunists, grubby wardheelers and rapacious kleptocrats, but the smarter ones are showing great strategic clarity. Alas for the rest of us, Euro-style government on a Harry Reid/Chris Dodd/Ben Nelson scale will lead to ruin.

© 2009 Mark Steyn

Why the Mess?

Pondering as to why the world and our nation are in such a mess, Gulliver comes to mind.  Here was a giant of a man, bound by numerous cords, few at first, then many as he slept on, eventually immobilized and powerless.

What other body is basically powerless, bound and having little impact on our society, culture and the world?  If your answer to this question is the 'CHURCH', we are on the same thought track.

What are the cords that bind the church? (defined as the totality of those who believe that Jesus is the Christ, and have accepted him.)

As I picture this giant bound by cords, the cords began to develop names:

1. religion                                                                 16. truth

2. denominations                                                       17.biblical truth

3. traditions of man                                                    18.the trinity of God and man           

4.baptisms                                                                19.kingdom building

5. diets                                                                     20. philosophy

6. abortion                                                                21.theology

7.gay and lesbians rights                                            22.sects

8.clergy who are gay                                                   23.error

9.doctrines of man                                                     24.the way and to where

10. music                                                                  25.died spiritually (Jesus)

11.apparel                                                                 26.believing

12.prayer                                                                  27.faith, doubt

13. tongues                                                               28.sin

14.prophesy                                                              29.theology

15. gifts of the Spirit                                                  30.unscriptural unions

Add your own, there are many more!

 A thoughtful and prayerful contemplation of Jesus' words (words in red in many bibles) shows two aspects of his message.  They are:   The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that brings a person to salvation.  The good news of the  kingdom (gospel) unhooks a person from the worlds system and their old style of living.  So what did he preach?  Mt. 4:18, from this point he began to proclaim, "Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.  He then proceeded to demonstrate the Kingdom, its dominion and authority, which Adam had lost, by healing the sick, casting out devils and proclaiming liberty. 

Liberty from what? The kingdom of darkness, ruled by an errant and deviate spirit, satan, dominating and attempting to destroy Gods creation,  mankind, which had lost its position, dignity, authority and revelation of God in the Garden of Eden.  I.e.: a spiritually dead man, needing to be born from above.

The church spends much of its time being for or against many things, debating and at times fighting about them.  What things? Abortion, gay rights, federal programs for the poor, its tax exempt status, tithes, etc..(See 1-32 above.)  In reality preaching everything but that which Jesus directed: THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!

The church was designed and directed to be a body, army if you will, whose instructions were to, 'occupy till I come'.  A military term, meaning just that.  Occupy areas taken by conquest, by preaching of the gospel (of the kingdom), and demonstrating its reality!

How many messages have you heard about the Kingdom?  How many Kingdom works have you seen demonstrated: healing the sick, casting out devils, raising the dead, or dominion being exercised, in every area of life?  A typical believer will respond in several ways:  None, never heard of the kingdom, these things all passed away, God gave us doctors.  Our purpose is to get people to heaven (born again) etc.

Heaven is an interesting place.  It is the seat of the government of God. Christians are dying to get there, but few looking forward to the trip.  Consider this: mankind didn’t lose heaven when he sinned; he lost dominion over the issues of his life.  He fell from one of relationship with God.  He fell from revelation knowledge, to mental knowledge.  He fell from dominion to being dominated.  He fell from fellowship with God, to separation from God.

If heaven was the goal Jesus had, he didn’t preach it.  Matter of fact, he prayed 'thy kingdom come' that heaven would come to earth.  God is the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega.  He always ends at the beginning and mankind will end up where it started, here on earth.  The difference, however, is that God is now dwelling with us.

The kingdom Jesus proclaimed, stirred the hearts (spirits) of man so that they violently were forcing their way into it.  'The violent take it by force.'  Seen any church services lately where people are forcing their way in to get the message, much less get into this marvelous kingdom?

Probably not, most churches are struggling to maintain membership, finances, budgets and defending their doctrines.

Seen any churches with holes in the roof where a paralytic and friends made an entrance, to be healed?

Kingdoms are unique.  They are ruled by a king.  Citizens have no vote.  What the king proclaims is law.  Kings have absolute authority, and own everything.  A king's success is measured by the well being of his citizens.  One of his goals is to share his wealth with his citizens, meeting their every need.  The term is commonwealth.

Kings typically have a senate or governing body, designed to implement their word, which is law.  The term for this governing group is 'ecclesia', in Gods case, the church.  Heard that word before?  This ecclesia has failed miserably, in establishing the Kings Decrees and directives.  The Kings decree?  Proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to the whole world, with signs following.

All kingdoms have a constitution setting its standards.  The Bible is the standard/constitution of the church.  It probably is as unread and miss-interpreted as the US Constitution.  The bible is a book of the spirit for a spiritual people, believers, a book of blessing when believed and adhered to, a book of rules and regulations for the religious.

A pastor friend of mine said; "Religion makes you stupid. Christianity is about a one on one relationship with God and his kingdom members." 

Consider this.  Less than 18 percent of those who proclaim to  be Christians tithe. The tithe from the constitution is at least 10% of your increase.  God asks this to, operates his kingdom on earth.  Why, because he needs it?  No, its an avenue of obedience and increase for his kingdom members.  How does 10% compare with the IRS rates?  God is not broke, the US is.. nor does he borrow, nor is he in debt.  Must be a message in that somewhere!

So here we are, the most powerful force on earth, the Body Of Christ, the Church, the Kingdom of God in manifestation, here and now, bound..even worse the head of this body, the Lord Jesus Christ being limited, his body as Gulliver, all tied up..

What an opportunity we have to cut the cords than bind us, release and turn the church loose to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom, and do Kingdom work as the sons of God.  All of creation is waiting for us.

The new world order, socialism, communism, one world government, fascism etc, will not be an issue, when the sleeping giant awakes.  The church was never intended to co-exist with and fight against the worlds (Babylonian) system, but to take it over.  How? By proclaiming the Kingdom of God, Jesus the King of Kings, following his directives and obeying his words.

Is it time to follow orders? Preach the Kingdom!!!

"Thy Kingdom Come."

What should governments do to combat recessions? In the United States, before the Great Depression of the 1930s, the answer was “very little.” Of course, the federal government was much smaller then compared to the size of the private sector, so its options were limited.

The Depression changed all of that. In the mid-1930s, the British economist John Maynard Keynes developed a new paradigm: “The economy” was reified; that is, it was regarded as an entity in itself, sort of like a mechanism that could be repaired and fine-tuned, thereby “smoothing out” the booms and busts of the business cycle. Keynes shifted the focus of attention from individual economic behavior (“microeconomics”) to collective statistics such as “aggregate demand,” “price levels,” “unemployment rates,” etc. “Macroeconomics” was born.

The two primary “tools” of macroeconomic mechanics are fiscal and monetary policy. In the decades immediately after the Keynesian revolution, governments embraced “contracyclical” fiscal policy—responding to recessions by increasing deficit spending.

After the horrible stagflation (simultaneous economic sluggishness, high unemployment, and high inflation) of the 1970s, monetarism—Milton Friedman’s theory that monetary policy was of primary importance in keeping “the economy” on a steady growth path—gained popularity.

Fast forward to today, and we find our economy mired in its worst downturn since the Great Depression. Fiscal and monetary policies have not prevented the current mess, and in fact have produced it (detailing how would require a book). What macroeconomic policy is government employing?

Chairman Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve has decided on an easy-money policy, holding short-term interest rates near zero percent, doubling the monetary base, and continually purchasing all sorts of dubious financial assets from banks and government agencies.

Presidents Bush and Obama both pushed “stimulus” spending bills through Congress. Keynesian deficit-spending is still being used as a macroeconomic tool against recession (as usual, without notable success). Where do we go from here?

One macroeconomic viewpoint currently gaining traction is Richard Koo’s “balance sheet recession” theory. Dr. Koo, chief economist of Nomura Research Institute in Japan, sees today’s post-bubble U.S. economic predicament as being similar to Japan’s post-bubble situation in the early ‘90s: Because banks’ balance sheets are so weak, bank lending is declining, despite the Fed supplying massive amounts of reserves. The Fed is “pushing on a string”—i.e, powerless to compel banks to issue loans or customers from borrowing funds.

American banks are emulating the Japanese strategy: borrow from the central bank at miniscule interest rates and purchase safe, higher-yielding longer-term government bonds, slowly repairing their balance sheets with this risk-free interest-rate spread. Because this mending process takes many years, Koo asserts that Uncle Sam should continue running large deficits—in other words, use fiscal policy to compensate for the lack of lending, thereby preventing a deflationary collapse featuring a chain reaction of bank failures and debt liquidation. It worked in Japan and can work here, too, he maintains.

Prominent economic commentators like Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman have jumped on this bandwagon. They agree that the United States should not reduce fiscal deficits until a recovery is firmly established. Unfortunately, nobody is asking the crucial question: Are the costs of such a policy worth it?

True, Japan has avoided a financial wipeout and the sweeping economic adjustments and restructuring that would have followed. The price has been nearly two decades of economic stagnation. The Japanese economy remains subdued, and is now saddled with an accumulated debt of 200 percent of GDP, a burden that will retard economic activity for additional decades unless an economic cataclysm forces the needed restructuring. Also, because Japanese banks have financed governments instead of private firms, Japan’s public sector has grown at the expense of its private sector, another formula for economic stagnation.

In short, Japan has won the battle against a deflationary collapse, but lost the war for economic prosperity. Do we want to follow Japan down the dreary road of decades-long stagnation?

Unfortunately, there is no pain-free alternative. Decades of government intervention have prevented needed adjustments, resulting in a gargantuan, rotten financial house of cards looming over us. Whenever the inevitable collapse happens, GDP will plunge. It will be like the economy has been hit by a financial neutron bomb. The problem is, the longer we wait for this to happen, the larger and more painful the collapse.

What is the “right” macroeconomic policy? I reject the macroeconomic premise that the economy is a mechanism that can be mastered by government. Macroeconomics is an epistemological absurdity undergirding economic fallacies used to justify political frauds.

The right public policy is summarized in one word: Freedom. Abolish the central bank, scrap legal tender laws, and limit government to its original constitutional function of protecting individual rights.

If, by some miracle, free markets were allowed to function, we would pass through a couple of years of wrenching adjustments and economic hell that would produce a solid, economically rational foundation leading to a prolonged period of strong, sustainable economic growth. But then our children then would inherit a much more economically healthy future.

There is no economic pain-free utopia, but free markets will optimize wealth creation and minimize the jarring disruptions of inflation, deflation, recession, booms and busts that government intervention invariably produces.

— Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson is an adjunct faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.

I respectfully disagree with Ken Rogers assertion "we are all to blame" for the encroachment of cap and trade upon North Dakota. His assessment is accurate, if "we" means our congressional delegation and those who support our delegation without condition.  However, I agree we should look outward to see the sacrifices others and how they have combated the concept of global warming.

The principle at hand is not conservative or liberal political philosophy. The issue is not the science/religion of the global warming concept.  The issue is leadership. North Dakota needs proactive leadership in Washington which has our best interests in mind.  I believe it would be a waste of our Washington delegations advertised influence and seniority not to sway the political concept of global warming.

Let us assume the concept of global warming is 100% accurate. And, let us assume global warming will be reduced by limiting greenhouse gases.  Were alternative solutions' to Cap and Trade brought forth by our delegation?  Would responsible North Dakota leadership endorse a presidential candidate who publicly stated "I will tax the coal industry into submission?"  Were coalitions created with leaders like Senator Jim Webb from Virginia to offer a coordinated proactive rear guard action to defend the coal industry? The answer on all counts are no.
 
North Dakota should look to urban America to evaluate "sacrifices" to combat global warming.  The late Senator Edward Kennedy in June 2005 quashed a wind farm in Cape Cod Sound for aesthetics. The state of California has denied the construction of wind farms off its coast on 2 occasions for aesthetics.  If global warming were so imminent why has the state of California not made mass public transportation its number one priority? This being stated: Cap and Trade is about our way of life and the defense of our prerogatives.

Finally, the urbanization of the ruling party power base should not mitigate our delegations responsibility to North Dakota.  The delegation should look west and North Dakota citizens should look for change.

The best summation of the UN climate circus in Denmark comes from Andrew Bolt of Australia’s Herald Sun: “Nothing is real in Copenhagen - not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the ‘solution’.”

Just so. Reuters, for example, carried a moving account of the speech by Ian Fry, lead negotiator for Tuvalu, the beleaguered Pacific island nation soon to be underwater because of a planet-devastating combination of your SUV and unsustainable bovine flatulence from Vermont farms. “The fate of my country rests in your hands,” Fry told the meeting. “I make this as a strong and impassioned plea... I woke this morning and I was crying and that was not easy for a grown man to admit,” he continued,
“his voice choking with emotion”, in the Reuters reporter’s words. Who could fail to be moved?

“My country, ‘tis of thee
Sweet land near rising sea
Of thee I choke!”

Alas, nowhere in this emotionally harrowing dispatch was there room to mention that Ian Fry’s country is not Tuvalu but Australia, where he lives relatively safe from rising sea levels given that he’s a hundred
miles inland. A career doom-monger, he’s resided in Queanbeyan, New South Wales for over a decade while working his way, in the revealing phrase of his neighbor Michelle Ormay, to being “very high up in climate change”. As to whether the emotion-choked lachrymose pleader has ever lived in “his” endangered country of Tuvalu, his wife told Samantha Maiden of The Australian that she would “rather not comment”. Like his fellow Copenhagen delegate Brad Pitt, Ian Fry is an actor: He’s not a Tuvaluan, but he plays one on the world stage.

Whether he’s an Aussie or a Tuvaluan, Fry’s future king is Welsh, since under the British ommonwealth’s environmentally responsible king-share program, the Prince of Wales is simultaneously heir to the thrones of Britain, Australian, Tuvalu and a bunch of other countries. His Royal Highness was also in Copenhagen last week, telling delegates that there were now only seven years left to save the planet.

Prince Charles is so famously concerned about the environment that he’s known as the Green Prince. Just for the record, his annual carbon footprint is 2,601 tons. The carbon footprint of an average Briton (ie, all those wasteful, consumerist, environmentally unsustainable deadbeats) is 11 tons. To get him to Copenhagen to deliver his speech, His Highness was flown in by one of the Royal Air Force’s fleet of VIP jets from the Royal Squadron.

Total carbon emissions: 6.4 tons. In other words, the Green Prince used up seven months’ of an average Brit’s annual carbon footprint on one short flight to give one mediocre speech of alarmist boilerplate.

But relax, it’s all cool, because he offsets!

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the Prince will be investing in exciting new green initiatives. “Investing” as in “using your own money”, you mean? Not exactly. Apparently, it will be taxpayers’ money.

So he’ll “offset” the cost of using up seven months of an average peasant’s carbon footprint on one flight by taking the peasant’s money and tossing it down some sinkhole. No wonder he feels so virtuous.

Oh, don’t worry, though. He does have to pay a personal penalty for the sin of flying by private jet: Seventy pounds. Which is the cost of about six new trees, or rather less than the bill for parking at Heathrow would have been.

So just to recap: The Prince of Wales, a man who has never drawn his own curtains, ramps up a carbon footprint of 2,601 tons while telling us that western capitalist excess is destroying the planet. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who heads the International Panel on Climate Change and has demanded that “hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying”, flew 443,226 miles on “IPCC business” in the year and a half before the Copenhagen summit. And Al Gore is a carbon billionaire: He makes more money buying offsets from himself than his dad did from investing in Occidental Petroleum.

All of the above are, as that ersatz Tuvaluan delegate’s neighbor would say, “very high up in climate change”. But what about all the non-high-ups? Not just the low-level toadies like Associated Press “science” reporter Seth Borenstein, who dutifully pooh-poohed the idea that the leaked Climategate e-mails were of any significance and for his pains was rewarded by having to stand in line with thousands of other no-name warm-mongers for seven hours in the freezing streets of Copenhagen. All because the IPCC accredited 45,000 delegates to a space that accommodates 15,000 – but don’t worry, when it comes to recalibrating the planet’s climate, I’m sure they’ll run the numbers more carefully.

But forget Borenstein and other hangers-on. Even making allowances for the stupidity of youthful idealism, the protesters in the streets of  Copenhagen seem especially obtuse. Far from sticking it to the

Man, they’re cheerleading for the biggest Man of all: they’re supporting a new globalized feudalism in which Prince Charles, Prince Al, Prince Rajendra and others “very high up in climate change” jet around the world at public expense telling the rest of us we need to stay put. A British parliamentarian recently proposed that everyone be issued with an annual “carbon allowance” that would be drawn down every time he booked a flight, or filled up his car, or bought a washer and dryer instead of beating his laundry on the rocks down by the river with the village women every week. You think the Prince of Wales or any other member of the new global elite will be subject to that “allowance”?

If you’re young and you fall for this, you’re a sap. Indeed, you’re oozing so much sap the settled scientists should be measuring your tree rings. Remember that story a couple of weeks ago about how Danish prostitutes were offering free sex to Copenhagen delegates for the duration of the conference? I initially assumed it was just an amusing marketing cash-in by savvy Nordic strumpets. But no, the local “sex workers’ union” Sexarbejdernes Interesseorganisation was responding to the municipal government’s campaign to discourage attendees from partaking of prostitutes. The City of Copenhagen distributed cards to every hotel room showing a lady of the evening at a seedy street corner over the slogan “BE SUSTAINABLE: Don’t Buy Sex.”

“Be sustainable”? Prostitution happens to be legal in Copenhagen, and the “sex workers” were understandably peeved at being lumped into the same category of planet-wreckers as Big Oil, car manufacturers, travel agents and other notorious pariahs. So Big Sex decided they weren’t going to take it lying down. Yet, in an odd way, that municipal postcard gets to the heart of what’s going on: Government can – and will – use a “sustainable” environment as a pretext for anything that tickles its fancy. All ambitious projects – Communism, the new Caliphate – have global ambitions, but, when the globe itself is the cover for those ambitions, freeborn citizens should beware. Nico Little, a Canadian leftie at the Rabble website, distilled the logic into a single headline:

“Hookers Are Killing Polar Bears And Now You Can’t Water Your Lawn.”

Write that down. And next time the Prince of Wales, Al Gore, Dr Pachauri or the delegation from Tuvalu give an “impassioned” speech keep it handy as a useful précis.

 © Mark Steyn 2009

ARLINGTON, VA -- Barack Obama's election to the presidency gave citizens at least two reasons to feel satisfaction.

First, it meant the end (or so we thought at the time) of the Bush Administration's idiocy in how to fight the "global war on terrorism." It turns out, alas, that our new Commander-in-Chief just brings a slightly different rhetorical slant and a substantial amount of "dithering" to the idiocy.

Second, we had reason to hope that the election of an African-American would help end the silliness of racism -- the most vapid theory of human relations ever spawned by the mind of man. Vapid, but insidious. Racism is like one of Sigourney Weaver's alien parasites, attaching itself superficially but germinating within, eventually to burst forth in horror.

It also takes a variety of forms. The easiest, perhaps, to deal with is the open, snarling, hateful bigotry of the insecure people who merge their identity with the color of their skin. In encounters with this elementary form, one merely shakes one's head and passes by, knowing that the poor souls were probably infected by ignorant and irresponsible parents, and hoping that they will not transplant the beast into the bosoms of their children.

The most difficult to deal with is unconscious racism, which most commonly infects those who obsess over it, even with the best of intentions. John Brown thought himself chosen by God to annihilate the whites who oppressed African slaves. The liberal establishment of our own era considers itself anointed to end racism with the power of the federal government. This has led to policies devastating to black family structures and ruinous to the economic commonwealth, the patrimony of both blacks and whites.

Historians will marvel, after we are gone, that these unconscious racists actually inflicted official racism on America, christening it with the euphemism of "affirmative action." The scriptwriters of Alien could not have concocted a more surreptitious monster.

The creature's disgusting inner wrigglings were on display most recently when former President Carter accused President Obama's critics of having racist motivation. The charge was ridiculous to everyone but Carter himself, who no doubt imagines that anyone who disagrees with him is biased against peanut farmers.

This is not to say that there are not still many Americans of the open, snarling racist type. It is to say, however, that it is only the unconscious racists who can espy racism in every nook and cranny of American life. They feel no embarrassment at this comical posture precisely because they are unconscious of their racism.

The healthy middle ground, I believer, is held by those who can confidently announce their opposition to the manifestly catastrophic policies of the Obama Administration. If they were actually motivated by racism, they would be snarling and spewing saliva on bystanders -- or restraining their public opposition for fear that their secret racism might be exposed.

Benjamin Franklin was once described as a "lecherous old hypocrite." Andrew Jackson said Henry Clay was the "meanest scoundrel that ever disgraced the image of God," and predicted that John Calhoun "would die a traitor or a madman." Harpers magazine wrote that Lincoln was a "filthy storyteller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, and ignoramus."

Even among our Founding Fathers, suspicion, slander, and scandalmongering were so rampant that the John Adams Administration pushed through the Alien and Sedition Acts partly to defend itself from scurrilous or sometimes justified attacks. Thomas Jefferson reportedly paid one of the chief scandalmongers to attack Adams and other Federalists.

All these gentlemen were white men, wholly unaffected by racist sentiment in their dealings with one another.

If now we hear our president pilloried as the Messiah who failed, as the Teleprompter-Reader-in-Chief or as the Idiot-in-Chief -- well, the unconscious racists in our midst should go down to the river, get baptized, and shout Hallelujah that a color-blind America is on the rise. Our first African-American president is now a fully fledged member of a very exclusive club.

The Unrepentant Traditionalist is copyright (c) 2009 by Frank Creel and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, http://www.fgfbooks.com. All rights reserved.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner for 49 Nobel laureates. The occasion provided the opportunity for JFK to display his keen wit in the memorable quote, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

I wonder how many of today’s high school and college students appreciate Jefferson’s genius. Our third president, author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the University of Virginia, was a masterful scholar of history, a political philosopher for the ages, a noted horticulturist, an archaeologist, architect, and inventor. He also knew a thing or two about money and banking. Let’s take a moment here to review the wise insights on money and banking left to us by this consummate Renaissance man.

Regarding money, Jefferson commented, “Paper is poverty … it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.” We should remember this when we contemplate the loss of 95 percent of the purchasing power of the paper currency called “Federal Reserve notes” in less than a century. As Ben Bernanke and the Fed create trillions of new paper “dollars,” we, the richest country in history, face the possibility of a hyperinflationary collapse and accompanying impoverishment.

Jefferson, like other Founding Fathers, understood vividly the vulnerability of paper currencies, because of the devastating hyperinflation of the paper Continental dollar during the War for Independence. That is why the Coinage Act of 1792 stipulates gold and silver, NOT paper, as money. Jefferson and the Founders knew that for money to be sound, it needed to be something objective, tangible, unvarying, as well as something that people valued independent of its use as money—something like a fixed weight of gold or silver—rather than something as transitory and insubstantial as “the full faith and credit” of a government of unreliable human beings.

Jefferson intuitively grasped one of the basic principles of free-market economics: In a free, open competitive market, people choose good stuff (food, machines, tools, etc.) over bad stuff, and so goods of superior quality and value push inferior products into oblivion. The only reason Americans today have such an inferior currency is political. Government legislation denies us the freedom to choose what to accept as money. Jefferson wrote, “I now deny [the federal government’s] power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender.” What a terrible price we have paid and will pay for legal-tender laws forcing us to accept mere paper as money.

Anticipating the Federal Reserve System, Jefferson believed that, “The incorporation of a bank and the powers assumed [by legislation doing so] have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They are not among the powers specially enumerated.” In Jefferson’s eyes, a central bank is unconstitutional.

Jefferson warned, “If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied … I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.”

Today, Uncle Sam is woefully dependent on the Fed and a few “too-big-to-fail” banks. That is because Uncle Sam is the world’s largest debtor, and without these giant banks to maintain a market for its oceans of debt, the federal government would have to shut down.

I once spoke with a congressman after hearing him complain about Federal Reserve policy. When I reminded him that the Fed had been created by an act of Congress, and that the creator controls the creation, he turned ashen, speechless. Is Congress a bunch of cowards or do the banks have a choke-hold on our government?

Are the Fed and the giant money-center banks as “dangerous” as Jefferson believed? Certainly, their power is undeniable.

The wealth of the American people is jeopardized by paper money and big banks. We should have heeded Jefferson’s warnings.

— Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson is an adjunct faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.

Fear of Global warming has taken the world by storm, so to speak.  According to theorists, universally claiming not to be theorists but purveyors of scientific truth, man is bringing the earth to a boil.  We’re told without worldwide management of human activities, life as we’ve known it will come to a disastrous end.

The world climate conference in Copenhagen is making clear which “human activities” must be brought under control.  Zhao Baige, China’s vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning equated population with climate change.  She pointed to China’s one child policy as the right way to deal with climate change.

Canada’s leading newspaper, the Financial Times, is calling for imposition of a China one-child policy on a global scale.  The paper warns readers that this will be difficult because of fundamentalist religions and leaders in emerging countries that see children as a social safety net for their elderly populations.

Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown stated, “This world deal at Copenhagen must be ambitious, global, comprehensive and legally binding within six months.”  Britain’s Parliament commissioned a study which called for establishing a “sustainable” British population. The study concluded a sustainable population was 30 million.  The current population is approximately 60 million.

Conference speakers tell us the world’s other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity’s soaring reproduction rate.

The actual global warming agenda is clear – mandatory, government imposed, population control.  This agenda is predicated on the claim that global warming is happening, it is negative, human beings are the cause, and if not radically and immediately addressed, the consequences will be unimaginable.

Similar historical “the sky is falling” assertions have been promoted.  All have proven false.  The claims of global warming promoters are “unimaginable” because they are simply an attempt to impose an ideology while seeking to dominate the lives of others or to make a quick buck.

In 1798 Thomas Malthus a Professor of History and Political Economy published, An Essay on the Principle of Population.  He claimed, “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”

Professor Malthus’ concerns of over population and the earth’s capacity to support it have proven totally false.  Over the last 200 years, as populations have increased dramatically, the only impediment to providing for the needs of population growth has been political interference, not a lack of resources.

In 1968, at the behest of David Browner, executive director of the Sierra Club, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote, The Population Bomb.  It warned of the mass starvation of humans due to overpopulation.  He advocated immediate action to limit population growth.  The book was essentially a repetition of discredited Malthusian arguments.  In a magazine article in 1969 he predicted the U.S. would see life expectancy drop to 42 years by 1980 and the nation’s population would drop to 22.6 million by 1999.

Malthus feared and Elrich hated population.  Both are considered gladiators of the environmental movement, a movement that believes human population is a cancer on the environment.             

In the mid 70’s Elrich and those of his persuasion claimed the world was about to enter the next ice age – caused by human activity.  That failed to move the public.  The newest catastrophic push is global warming.  The goal is the same - imposing worldwide population control.

The “fear of global warming”, whether real or not, has been shouted so loud and so long that it is considered a fact.    

World governments and special interest groups are using this fear to justify imposing massive new universal taxes; direct what we can and cannot drive, do or eat; calling for universal regulatory authority and the power to control human reproduction – i.e. population growth. 

What Global Warming is really all about is now clear.  It’s about centralizing government control over people on a world scale - creating a top down Brave New World.

The result will be less of everything for fewer and fewer of us.  However, for those in control it will be their version of heaven on earth.  For the rest it will be a living hell - maybe that is what the global warming promoters really have in mind.