Paradise Lost

Citation preview

PARADISE LOST

Paradise Lost the

Death of America

Robert Gates, Sr.

RED ANVIL PRESS OAKLAND, OREGON

Copyright © 2008 Robert Gates, Sr. All rights reserved. Cover art by Raven OKeefe No part of this publication, except for brief excerpts for purpose of review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

RED ANVIL PRESS 1393 Old Homestead Drive, Second floor Oakland, Oregon 97462—9506. E-MAIL: [email protected] TEL/FAX: 541.459.6043 http://elderberrypress.com All Red Anvil books are available from your favorite bookstore, amazon. com, or from our 24 hour order line: 1.800.431.1579 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008933894 Publisher’s Catalog—in—Publication Data Paradise Lost / Robert Gates, Sr. ISBN-13: 978-1-934956-06-9 ISBN-10: 1-934956-06-6 1. Politics. 2. Courts. 3. Council of Foreign Relations. 4. Politics. 5. Socialism. I. Title This book was written, printed and bound in the United States of America.

Contents

Introduction.................................................................................7 Chapter 1 Capitalism vs Socialism...........................................17. Chapter 2 The Socialization of the United States.......................51 Chapter 3 Building the Trojan Horse from Within....................67. Chapter 4 The International Conspiracy...................................87 Chapter 5 The Hidden Agenda...............................................109. Chapter 6 American’s Trojan Horse—The Judiciary................131 Chapter 7 American’s Trojan Horse—The Congress................169. Chapter 8 American’s Trojan Horse—The Bureaucracy..........231 Chapter 9 American’s Trojan Horse—The Educrats...............257. References................................................................................292

Introduction

The misconceptions that some have about political parties and their followers is astounding. One must understand that all countries are controlled by political parties (most of them are elected into office and some usurp their power (dictators)) who subscribe to an economic design which they feel will benefit the country (or themselves). It doesn’t matter what name they call themselves, its the basic economic philosophy that they support that is important. This book is filled with information that has already been published in one form or another but it is designed to presented in a historical manner of how man has (in the beginning) escape slavery (serfdom) to enter the realm of slavery again under the guise of Socialism. This march toward slavery is relentless. The socialist, world-wide, have the ingenuity of renaming themselves when one of their socialist system fails. Today, we hear terms such as liberal, left-wing, progressive, new-wave, etc. for any new movement. But remember, only the name changes. Socialism is still Socialism. For example: if you see a black animal with a white stripe down its back and it stinks to high-heaven, it is a skunk. You can call it by another name such as a polecat or even a cute kitten, but it is still a skunk! The same applies to Socialism. You can change the name but it doesn’t change its goal of enslaving the people. People have no rights according to a socialist. They must do as their told or the scheme of things will not work out. In other words, people must surrender their freedom for the good of all! Lay down and play dead. This is why the Illuminati (one-worlders) have selected Socialism over Capitalism. Socialism make sheep out of the people and therefore they are easily led into slavery without a whimper.!

8 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. In 1944, Friedrich A. Hayek wrote a book “The Road To Serfdom.” In it he tried to warn the public about how the path of Socialism leads to slavery. As he explains: “It does not affect our problem that some groups may want less Socialism than others, that some want Socialism mainly in the interest of one group and others in that of another. The important point is that, if we take the people whose views influence developments, they are now in the democracies in some measure all socialists. If it is no longer fashionable to emphasize that ‘we are all socialists now,’ this is so merely because the fact is too obvious. Scarcely anybody doubts that we must continue to move toward Socialism, and most people are merely trying to deflect this movement in the interest of a particular class or group. It is because nearly everybody wants it that we are moving in this direction.” He further stated, “Where freedom was concerned, the founders of Socialism made no bones about their intentions. ‘Freedom of thought’ was regarded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society, and Saint-Simon, one of the original social planners, stated that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be ‘treated as chattel.” It is because all socialist believe in a strong central government, be it headed by a President or a dictator, that the one-world government proponents select it over Capitalism. The world financers believe they can buy off a group of government employs and thereby control the world as opposed to the freedom enjoyed by all people under a capitalist system. Free people do not knowingly give up their freedoms easily. Capitalism has its faults but one of them is not slavery of the people. Friedrich Hayek based his warning of slavery on the history that was unfolding in the world around him. In the 1930-40s era, Socialism was rampant throughout Europe. As he pointed out, the conflict in existence between the National Socialists (‘Right”) and the communist “Left” in Germany, Russia and other countries in Europe was the kind of conflict that will always arise between rival socialist factions. This occurs because socialists do not know how they can

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 9 reach the end product of Socialism, that end in their minds means the entire world becomes a garden of Eden. Where an individual need only to reach up into the tree he is resting under and pluck whatever ‘fruit’ he wishes, and it is all free. Fascists have their ‘road’ (program) to reach Eden; communists have their ‘road’; democratic socialists have their ‘road’; and all other branches of Socialism have their blueprint to reach Eden. Thus Hayek’s statement that there will always be conflict between rival socialist factions. This rivalry results because each socialist faction knows that their road map (which differs from all others) is the true map to bliss. In reviewing our retreat from Liberalism (in the original meaning of the word: ‘a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and based on free competition, and self-regulating market, and the gold standard.’) he states: “Have not all our efforts and hopes been directed toward greater freedom, justice, and prosperity? If the outcome is so different from our aims, if, instead of freedom and prosperity, bondage and misery stare us in the face, is it not clear that sinister forces must have foiled our intentions, that we are victims of some evil power which must be conquered before we can resume the road to better things? However much we may differ when we name the culprit, whether it is the wicked capitalist or the vicious spirit of a particular nation, the stupidity of our elders, or a social system not yet known, although we have struggled against it for more than half a century, fully overthrown, we are all, or at least until recently, certain of one thing: that the leading ideas which during the last generation have become common to most people of good will and have determined the major changes in our social life cannot have been wrong. We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has produced results utterly different from those which we expected.” The concept of ‘redistribution of wealth’ can never be. Friedrick Hayek was very prophetic. He also stated: “Though for

10 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the time being the different ideals are represented by hostile nations fighting for their existence, we must not forget that this conflict has grown out of a struggle of ideas within what, not so long ago, was a common European civilization and that the tendencies which have culminated in the creation of the totalitarian systems were not confined to the countires which have succumbed to them. Though the first task must now be to win the war, to win it will only gain us another opportunity to face the basic problems and to find a way of averting the fate which has overtaken kindred civilizations.” It is difficult to think of the countries of Europe, not as they were before World War I, but as they are today. The countries are a product of a philosophical dream that was originally produced to free man from the medieval serfdom imposed by a social system developed under Kings and Noblemen. Yet the philosophical dream turned into another form of serfdom. Instead of freeing man, the new system merely changed managers. In this country, prior to 1931, it was easier to think that those countries in Europe were different from us and what was happening to them could not possibly happen here. Until recently, we still believed that we were governed by a constitution that gave certain minimum powers to the Federal Government and the people were for the most part free to go about earning a living in a free society. That is a false belief. Although Socialism was overrunning Europe prior to 1931, England and the United States were slow to move in the socialist direction. But once moved, the English government, regardless of party -became preoccupied with the management of the life of the people. Parliment became increasingly involved in legislation which was aimed at regulating the day-to-day affairs of the community. England finally adopted the socialist agenda and in a short space of 1931-1939, transformed its economic system beyond recognition. Yet this development merely confirms the warnings of those

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 11 who oppose Socialism.. We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existd in the past. Although we had been warned by some of greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by De Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that Socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of Socialism. And now that we have seen a new form of slavery arise before our eyes, we have so completely forgotten the warning that it scarcely occurs to us that the two things may be connected. One’s concept of serfdom may vary, but look at the history of Russia from 1917 to date. During the twentieth century did the people of Russia see their economic life improve? Not really. One reads of a miner that worked in a government gold mine in central Siberia. It was a government town, built to house and support the miners and the staff required to sustain them. This particular miner, like the rest of the miners, lived in a government apartment for which he paid rent. However, after six months of receiving no wages because the government couldn’t pay him, he was desperate. The government deducted from his wages (which he didn’t receive) and the Government general store deducted from his wages his food that he needed to live on but otherwise he had no money to spend on the little necessities that were not rationed. In protest to this work for no pay arrangement, he used a can of his rationed kerosene and doused himself with it. Then in the town square he set himself on fire. Life wasn’t worth living. In Moscow, old widows cannot survive on the government’s retirement check. The check cannot pay for the necessities of life. In order to survive, most widows use their retirement checks to buy their allocated rations of vodka and cigarettes. They then sell the vodka and cigarettes on the black market for additional money. The money they receive barely pays for the rent and enough food for one meal a day. Even in retirement, elderly widows still must work for the government. They are required to sweep the sidewalks and streets in front of their apartment. The government does not

12 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. supply brooms for these jobs and the elderly widows do not have the money to buy them. They must strip small twigs and branches from trees to make brooms. The penalty for not keeping the streets clean is loss of retirement checks. When there is an economic downturn, recovery is almost impossible. socialist governments are constantly expanding social services which they mandate that businesses must provide for their workers. For example in Germany (until recently, also France) today, when businesses hire employees, they must provide them with lifetime security, not to mention benefits such as health insurance and compensation for any mishap that occurs while in their employment. While this sounds compassionate and worker-friendly, it has disastrous consequences for millions of workers. Investments in new businesses are far below those in countries where economies are less controlled by government. How could people expect to start a business in a volitile market when they must sign up for life time support for their employees, regardless of what the market will do? No, the overall harm done by public policy rules, including politicians and bureaucrates, and because even the general public is beginning to feel the pinch of those policies (unemployment is high), some rumblings can be heard in the streets. By all accounts, welfare states are not compassionate, but extortionists. This can be seen in the eastern European bloc that has broken away from Russia’s domination. These countries are in serious trouble. The socialist concept of steal from the rich and give to the poor is a complete failure when there are no rich people to extort money from. Where do they get the money to run all these social schemes? They don’t. The poor people whom the socialists enlisted to put them in power, now receive nothing because there is nothing left to steal. So much for the Socialist’s promise of ‘heaven on earth.’

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 13

There is no ‘heaven on earth’ if one looks at the development of mankind. Man has struggled to survive since he appeared on earth millions of years ago not as an individual but as a member of a growing society. Yet, although man has solved many problems that raised his standard of living, he has yet to find the method of producing ‘heaven on earth.’ Just imagine, since mankind begin walking on two legs, he has learned how to domesticate animals, fly like birds, plant seeds, mine ores, etc. Yet all this comes from hard work not as manna from heaven. Since no man is an island unto himself, he has had to rely on his fellow man to produce those necessities that he cannot produce himself. This has made survival difficult. In a colony of ants, each ant is equipped with an inborn instinct of what to do to keep the colony functioning for the survival of all. Man on the other hand is only born with one instinct, the will to survive. Therefore, in any large society, the multitude of tasks that must be done to keep that society functioning is mind boggling. If any of the tasks are ignored then the industrial and agricultural life will soon become disorganized and that society will fail. Every moment of life in todays world faces the possibility of a breakdown which will result in disaster. A good example is what happened in New Orleans when the “Katrina” hurricane hit the coast. Everyone in authority knew it was coming, but when it did, preparations to evacuate the people, feed them, give them much needed water, the system broke down. Why? Too many Chefs and not enough cooks. Yet Socialists say they have the solution of all the known and unknown factors that can be solved and each member of mankind will be king. Of course, kings must be slaves to the central committee which will tell them where to live, how to live, and where to work. Each must do as he/she is told or he/she will be discarded like chattel (Saint-Simon). One only has to look at the history of Russia since the 1917 Revolution when the Socialists took over. Time and again, the central committee established 5-year programs to improve

14 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. output of food, clothing and shelter for the people. Every plan failed except maybe the output of vodka. Who are these geniuses that will plan the world economy so that everyone will have a “goodie” tree in the garden of Eden? socialist leaders will not tell you who these geniuses are but one thing truly worries them. Today, there are underfed people in the world who live on a starvation diet. What are the socialist doing about it? Nothing. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ International Data Base there are over 6.375 billions of people in the world today. The projected population for the year 2050 is 9.084 billions, a 50 percent increase. How do the socialists plan on feeding the population? After 70 years of Socialism in Russia, with its large population, vast areas of land, and plenty of water, it still has to import food for its people. What will the International Socialists response be, “Let them eat cake?” Most Americans grew up anchored in place by certain ideas and values. They organized their lives around them. There was a consensus about right and wrong, and good and bad. They knew what the rules were, and moral guideposts clearly pointed in the direction they should go. But somewhere along the way, somehow, somebody changed the rules and tore down the guideposts. Those institutions, marriage, family, religion, schools, which historically have preserved our social learning curves, and served as bulwarks against moral degeneration, are under broad attack and crumbling. Alas the American family is in tatters, the church is in denial, our schools have been infiltrated, and our nation has had leaders with the political principles of Marx and ethics of Nero. We have judges who cannot read or understand the Constitution and rewrite it according to their desires not the desires of the majority. We have judges who, under the guise of social justice, are trying destroy the marriage rite. We have judges who believe that the criminal has more rights than the victim. It’s relatively easy to maintain values and inculcate them in one’s children if these values are supported and buttressed by popular heroes, media icons, political leaders and

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 15 educators. It is another matter to keep the faith when there are fears that the moral center is not holding, when others around you are retreating and sounding the alarm that merciless heathens have won the day and are advancing. Many social conservatives worry that their religious “walk” is out of step with the prevailing culture. They are no longer admired for their faith, they are castigated for it. When in the middle of the noise and clutter of current events and caught up in the passion of them, it is difficult to know what they mean. Are we experiencing a middle-age national crisis that will soon play itself out, or is this a momentous and enduring shift in the American character? In order to understand the evil that is running rampant in this great country, the public must be presented with facts that are shaping the destruction of their cherished freedoms—little by little—each day. To do this, they need a working knowledge of the new political philosophy, macroeconomics and how the different entities—world wide— approach their particular situations. Today, these facts are not given in any school room or in the socialist press—thus, this book will try to introduce a person into the realm of economics, how economics developed, and lastly how Socialism invaded this country in such a way so as to destroy our Constitution as written by our founding Fathers. As stated before, all the facts presented in the following chapters have been written before, and my attempt is to bring them together in one place and show the public how our so called protectors of freedom in government are destroying the country for their own self-interest and, above all, greed. Since the information is in many places, acknowledging the sources is impossible. Most of the information can be found on the internet using a search engine that is provided. Also, in the rear of this book is a limited list of References.

16 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 17

CHAPTER 1 CAPITALISM vs SOCIALISM

ECONOMICS The conflict in the world between Capitalism and Socialism is a conflict of economical beliefs. It is not a conflict between Communism and Democracy; it is not a conflict between any ’ism’ and Democracy because Democracy can also be socialistic. It is a conflict of ideas on economic well-being of a nation and its people. Economics is the social science concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. Economists focus on the way in which individuals, groups, business enterprises, and governments seek to achieve efficiently any economic objective they select. Other fields of study also contribute to this knowledge: Psychology and ethics try to explain how objectives are formed; history records changes in human objectives; sociology interprets human behavior in social contexts. Standard economics can be divided into two major fields. The first, price theory, or microeconomics, explains how the interplay of supply and demand in competitive markets creates a multitude of individual prices, wage rates, profit margins, and rental charges. Microeconomics assumes that people behave rationally. Consumers try to spend their incomes in ways that give them as much pleasure as possible. As economists say, they maximize utility. For their part, entrepreneurs seek as much profit as they can extract from their operations. The second field, macroeconomics, deals with modern explana-

18 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. tions of national income and employment. Macroeconomics dates from the book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1935), by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. His explanation of prosperity and depression centers on the total or aggregate demand for goods and services by consumers, business investors, and government. The problem of production and distribution has always been with us. However, we survive in wealthy nations because the needs we cannot do for ourselves can be done by others. If we cannot grow food, we can buy it. Other needs which we cannot furnish ourselves will be furnished by others—for a price. The enormous division of labor enables us to benefit from other men’s skills as well as our own. It is not that simple, however, because in order to partake in the fruits provided by others, a society must organize a system that assures the production of enough goods and services for it own survival. In addition, this society must arrange the distribution of production and services so that more production and available services can occur. Reviewing the economic history of the world, it can be seen that man has succeeded in solving the production and distribution problems in three ways: Tradition, Command, and Market (or Capitalism). The economic system within any society will take on one or a combination of the three ways to solve their immediate economic problems. CAPITALISM In a way it can be said that Capitalism began when the first caravans carried their goods down the Euphrates River to the cities of Mesopotamia thousands of years before Christ; however, in the modern sense, capitalism had its origin in the late medieval Europe when banking and money-lending became an art with the Italians—especially the Florentine bankers. It flourished in its own

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 19 right during the Industrial Revolution period. Capitalism is a system in which private individuals and business firms carry on the production and exchange of goods and services through a complex network of prices and markets. Although rooted in antiquity, capitalism is primarily European in its origins. It evolved through a number of stages, reaching its zenith in the 19th century. From Europe, and especially from England, capitalism spread throughout the world, largely unchallenged as the dominant economic and social system, until World War I ushered in modern communism (or Marxism) as a vigorous and hostile competing system. The term capitalism was first introduced in the mid-19th century by Karl Marx, the founder of Communism. Free enterprise and market system are terms also frequently employed to describe modern non-communist economies. Sometimes the term mixed economy is used to designate the kind of economic system most often found in Western nations. The individual that comes closest to being the originator of contemporary capitalism is the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, who first set forth the essential economic principles that underscore the system. In his classic ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ (1776), Smith sought to show how it was possible to pursue private gain in ways that would further not just the interests of the individual but those of society as a whole. Society’s interests are met by maximum production of the things that people want. In a now famous phrase, Smith said that the combination of self-interest, private property, and competition among sellers in markets will lead producers “as by an invisible hand” to an end that they did not intend, namely, the well-being of society. Adam Smith focused his attention on two huge problems. First, he wanted to find out what mechanism held society together. Second, with no central planning authority, how does society get those tasks done which are necessary for survival? These questions led Smith to formulate laws of the market.

20 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. To Smith and the other great economists of his time, society was not a static thing. Society was like a river, always changing. Therefore, the great objective of economic science was to predict the things that would come and to isolate those forces which pushed society along its way. Adam Smith’s laws of the market are simple. They tell us that the outcome of a certain kind of behavior in a certain social framework, will bring about perfectly definite and foreseeable results. Specifically, they show us how the drive of individual self-interests in an environment of similarly motivated individuals will result in competition; and they further demonstrate how competition will result in the provision of those goods that society wants, in the quantities that society desires, and at the prices society is prepared to pay. It comes about in the first place because self-interest acts as a driving force to guide men to whatever work society is willing to pay for. But, self-interest is not the full picture. It drives men to action but something else prevents the pushing of profit-hungry individuals from holding society up to exorbitant prices. This brake to exorbitant prices is called competition. For each man out to do his best for himself with no thought of social cost, is faced with a group of similarly motivated individuals who are in the same boat. Thus, if a person charges too much for his wares or if he refuses to pay as much as everyone else for his workers, he will soon find himself without buyers in the one case and without employees in the other. Self-interest and competition, acting one against the other, prevents the gouging of society. Consider what Adam Smith has done with his concepts of selfinterest and competition. First, he has explained how prices are kept from ranging arbitrarily away from the actual cost of producing goods. Second, he has explained how society can induce its producers of commodities to provide it with what it wants. Third, he has pointed out why high prices are a self-curing disease, for they cause production in those lines to increase. Finally, he has accounted for a basic similarity of incomes at each level of the great producing

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 21 strata of the nation. He has found in the mechanism of the market a self-regulating system for society’s orderly performance. The market, which is the acme of individual economic freedom, is the strictest task-master of all. Economic freedom is more illusory than it at first appears. One can do as one pleases in the market. But if one pleases to do what the market disapproves, the price of individual freedom is economic undoing. Today, does the competitive market mechanism still work? Not hardly. We no longer live in a world of competition where an entrepeneur can jump into the system and make an impression. Today’s market mechanism is characterized by the huge size of its participants: giant corporations and equally giant labor unions. These giants do not behave as if they are individual proprietors and workers. Their very bulk enables them to stand out against pressures of competetion. Indeed, the growth of government intervention suppresses competition more than it helps. And when the government takes sides in disputes between organizations and unions, the government side usually wins. For example, government intervention in wages that workers are paid is one of the causes of inflation. When the government passes a minimum wage law, those wages are etched in stone and will never be lowered. During a recession, organizations have no recourse but to lay workers off (except for some socialist countries where the socialist governments have forced lifetime jobs on an enterprise). The Key Characteristics of Capitalism: First, basic production facilities, land and capital, are privately owned. Capital in this sense means the buildings, machines, and other equipment used to produce goods and services that are ultimately consumed. Second, economic activity is organized and coordinated through the interaction of buyers and sellers ( or producers) in markets. Third, owners of land and capital as well as workers they employ are free to pursue their own self-interests in seeking maximum gain from the use of their resources and labor in production. Consumers are free to spend their incomes in ways that they believe will yield the greatest satisfaction. This principle, called consumer sovereignty,

22 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. reflects the idea that under capitalism producers will be forced by competition to use their resources in ways that will best satisfy the wants of the consumers. Self-interest and the pursuit of gain lead them to do this. Fourth, under this system a minimum of government supervision is required, if competition is present, economic activity will be self-regulating. Government will be necessary only to protect society from foreign attack, uphold the rights of private property, and guarantee contracts. This 19th century view of government’s role in the capitalist system has been significantly modified by ideas and events of the 20th century. Capitalism, as a coherent economic system, had its origins in Europe in the 13th century toward the close of the feudal era. Human beings, Adam Smith said, have always had a propensity to “truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” This inclination toward trade and exchange was rekindled and stimulated by the series of Crusades that absorbed the energies of much of Europe from the 11th through the 13th centuries. However, emphasis on production did not come until the rise of industrialism in the 19th century. At that time, an important figure in the capitalistic system began to emerge: the entrepreneur, or risk taker. A key element in capitalism is the undertaking of activity in the expectation that it will yield gain in the future.Because the future is unknown, both the risk of loss and the possibility of gain always existed. From the 15th through the 18th centuries, capitalism not only took on a commercial characteristic but also developed in another special direction known as mercantilism. The expansion of modern nationalism during the 16th century shifted attention to the problem of increasing the wealth and power of the various nation-states. The economic policy of the leaders of that time sought to encourage national self-sufficiency. The peak of the mercantilist school in England and western Europe occurred during the 16th through the early 18th centuries. Mercantilists valued gold and silver as an index of national power. Without the gold or silver mines in the New World, from which Spain drew its riches, a nation could accumulate these precious met-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 23 als only by selling more merchandise to foreigners than it bought from them. This favorable balance of trade necessarily compelled foreigners to cover their deficits by shipping gold and silver. Mercantilists took for granted that their own country was either at war with its neighbors, recovering from a recent conflict, or getting ready to plunge into a new war. With gold and silver, a ruler could hire mercenaries to fight, a practice followed by King George III of Great Britain when he used Hessian troops during the American Revolution. As needed, the monarch could also buy weapons, uniforms, and food to supply the soldiers and sailors. Mercantilist preoccupation with precious metals also inspired several domestic policies. It was vital for a nation to keep wages low and the population large and growing. A large, ill-paid population produced more goods to be sold at low prices to foreigners. Ordinary men and women were encouraged to work hard and avoid such extravagances as tea, gin, ribbons, ruffles, and silks. It also followed that the earlier that children began to work, the better it was for their country’s prosperity. One mercantilist writer had a plan for children of the poor: “When these children are four years old, they shall be sent to the county workhouse and there taught to read two hours a day and be kept fully employed the rest of the time in any of the manufactures of the house which best suits their age, strength, and capacity.” MODERN CAPITALISM Mercantilism advancements paved the way for the emergence of modern capitalism, both took place in the latter half of the 18th century. The first was the appearance of the physiocrats in France after 1750; and the second was the devastating impact that the ideas of Adam Smith had on the principles and practices of mercantilism. Physiocrats is the term applied to a school of economic thought that suggested the existence of a natural order in economics, one that does not require direction from the state for people to be

24 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. prosperous. The leader of the physiocrats, the economist Francois Quesnay, set forth the basic principles in his Tableau economique (1758), in which he traced the flow of money and goods through the economy. Simply put, this flow was seen to be both circular and self-sustaining. More important, however, was that it rested on the division of society into three classes: (1) The productive half of the population. (2) The proprietary class consisted of landed proprietors and those supported by them, which amounted to one-quarter of the population. (3) The artisan, or sterile, class, made up of the rest of the population. Quesnay’s Tableau is significant because it expressed the belief that only the agricultural classes are capable of producing a surplus or net product, out of which the state either could find the capital to support an expansion of the flow of goods and money or could levy taxes to meet its needs.Other activities, such as manufacturing, were regarded as essentially sterile, because they did not produce new wealth but simply transformed or circulated the output of the productive class. It was this aspect of physiocratic thought that was turned against mercantilism. If industry did not create wealth, then it was futile for the state to try to enhance society’s wealth by a detailed regulation and direction of the economic activity. The physiocrats were partisans of free trade and laissez-faire. They maintained that the revenue of the state should be raised by a single direct tax levied on the land. Adam Smith met the leading physiocrats and wrote (for the most part) that he gladly accepted and acknowledged their theory on the circulation of wealth, but the idea that industry was somehow sterile and barren struck him as a peculiar construction of the world. After all, had he not grown up where one could see wealth being created at every hand in the workshops and factories of craftmen?

THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL As a coherent economic theory, classical economics starts with Adam Smith, continues with the British economists Thomas Rob-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 25 ert Malthus and David Ricardo, and climaxes in the synthesis of John Stuart Mill, who as a young man was a follower of Ricardo. Although differences of opinion were numerous among the classical economists the three-quarters of a century between Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848), members of the group agreed on major principles. All believed in private property, free markets, and, in Mill’s words, that “only through the principle of competition has political economy any pretension to the character of a science.” They shared Smith’s strong suspicion of government and his ardent confidence in the power of self-interest represented by his famous “invisible hand,” which reconciled public benefit with individual pursuit of private gain. From Ricardo, classicists derived the notion of diminishing returns, which held that as more labor and capital were applied to land, outputs after “a certain and not very advanced stage in the progress of agriculture steadily diminished.” Through Smith’s emphasis on competition, rather than on production, the range of economics was considerably broadened. Smith was optimistic about the chances of improving standards of life. He called attention to the importances of permitting individuals to follow their self-interest as a means of promoting national prosperity. “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable,” he said. And having made such a radical statement, he proceeded to demonstrate that society was in fact constantly improving. It was being pushed toward a positive end. It was not moving because anyone willed it to, or because the Government might pass laws or the Country win a war. It moved because there was a hidden energy beneath the surface of things which powered the social whole like a gigantic engine. This force was the enormous gain in productivity which sprang from the division and specialization of labor. One must remember when reading Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’ that it is a program for action, not a blue-print for Utopia. To Adam Smith the least government is certainly the best: governments

26 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. are spendthrifts, irresponsible and unproductive. Yet he was not opposed to all government action which has as its end the promotion of the general welfare. What Smith was against was the meddling of the government with the market mechanism. He was against restraints on imports and bounties on exports, against government laws which sheltered industry from competition, and against government spending for unproductive ends. Notice that these activities of the government largely have the interest of the merchant class at heart. Smith never faced the problem of whether the government weakens or strengthens the market mechanism when it steps in with welfare legislation. In addition to the great problem of poverty, England was concerned with the problem of population throughout the eighteenth century. The situation was that Englands natural enemies on the Continent bulged with what must have appeared as a flood of humanity, while England, with her slender resources, was convinced that her own population was on the decline. Was the population declining? Then it should be encouraged to grow, and grow it would under the laws which Adam Smith had shown to be the guiding principles of a free market economy. Was the population growing? All to the good, because everyone agreed that a growing population was a national source of wealth. The projection of these types of thoughts was favorable to an optimistic future for society. Perhaps no one summed up this optimistic outlook more completely than William Godwin, a minister and pamphleteer. In 1793, he published ‘Political Justice’, a book which criticized the present but gave promise of a distant future in which ‘there would no longer be a handful of rich and a multitude of poor....There will be no war, no crime and no government. In addition there would be no disease, no melancholy, no anguish or resentment.’ Godwin’s Utopia called for complete equality for all.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 27 Godwins ideas were the rage of the times. Everyone was debating, pro or con, these ideas of a future Utopia. One such discussion occurred between an eccentric old gentleman, Daniel Malthus and his son, the Reverand Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus the elder, believe in the Utopian future while his son Thomas had his doubts. During their numerous debates, young Malthus began keeping notes concerning his doubts about the future. After a time, young Malthus gave the notes to his father to read. After reading them, Malthus, the elder, convinced his son that he should have them published. The rest is history. Young Malthus printed his enormously influential book “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798. It conveyed a tone of gloom to classical economics, arguing that hopes for prosperity were fated to break down when confrounted with excessive population growth. Food, he believed, would increase in arithmetic ratio (2, 4 -...., 10, 12 and so on), but population tended to double in each generation unless that doubling were checked either by nature or human intervention. According to Mathus, nature’s check was “positive”: “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.” The shapes it took included war, epidemics, pestilence and plague, human vices, and famine, all combining to level the world’s population with the world’s food supply. The only escape from population pressure and the horrors of the positive check was in voluntary limitation of population, not by contraception, rejected on religious grounds by Malthus, but by late marriage and, consequently smaller families. These pessimistic doctrines of classical economists earned for economics the epithet of the “dismal science.” Mixed in with the classical economists were idealists referred to as the Utopians. Robert Owens, Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and a number of others fell into this group. The Utopians were reform-

28 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. ers of the heart rather than of the head. Their type of reform can be found in the welfare ideals of socialist England or Scandinavia rather than in the social theories of Soviet Russia. Utopian builders have existed since Plato but it was not until the French Revolution that they began to react to economic as well as political injustices. The Utopians wanted something better than reform, they wanted a new society in which ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ could take priority over the current philosophy of ‘use any means on others for self-gain.’ The Utopians were men of good will but, for all their good intentions and earnest efforts, they lack the chrisma of respectability. They need someone who could speak for them. They found such a person in the most unlikely place, in the ultimate conversion to Socialism of the greatest economist of the age, John Stuart Mill. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy was the leading text on the subject until the end of the 19th century. Although Mill accepted the major theories of his classical predecessors, he held out more hope than did Ricardo and Malthus that the working class could be educated into rational limitation of their own numbers. Mill was also a reformer who was quite willing to tax inheritances heavily and even to allow government a larger role in protecting children and workers. He was far more critical than other classical economists of business behavior and favored worker ownership of factories. Mill thus represents a bridge between classical laissez-faire economics and an emerging welfare state. However, the above reference of Mill’s thoughts on government does not give carte blanche to government interference in the market place. In his book “On Liberty (1859)” one can only find his condemnation of government authority over individuals. In the book, he defends individual rights to think and act for themselves. He states that all human action should aim at creating, maintaining, and increasing the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Actions are right when they do that; wrong when they do not.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 29

Mill’s book is not a defense of irresponsibility. The phrase “think and act for yourself ” does not mean, “think and act as you please.” It is a protest against external ‘authority.’ It is a protest against groups, governments or institutions which would tell people what to think and what to do, refusing to leave them to work things out for themselves. When people are so dealt with they are deprived of individual responsibility for their beliefs and actions. Mill objected to this. To him, the greatest reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function added to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the railroads, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any country free otherwise than in name only. So spoke John Stuart Mill over 150 years ago. How prophetic when one looks at the United States government today. It is run by unelected civilians (Civil Service) that cannot be fired except for the most extreme violations of law. The classical economists also accepted Say’s Law of Markets, the doctrine of the French economist Jean Baptiste Say. Say’s law holds that the danger of general unemployment or “glut” in a competitive economy is negligible because supply tends to create its own matching demand up to the limit of human labor and the natural resources available for production. Each enlargement of output adds to the wages and other incomes that constitute the funds needed to purchase added capital.

30 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

SOCIALISM Socialism is a general term for the political and economic theory that advocates a system of collective or government ownership and management of the means of production and distribution of goods. The socialist doctrine, in fact, demands state ownership and control of the fundamental means of production and distribution, democratic, and parliamentary means. The doctrine specifically advocates nationalization of natural resources, basic industries, banking and credit facilities, and public utilities. It places special emphasis on the nationalization of monopolized branches of industry and trade, viewing monopolies as unfriendly to the public welfare. It also advocates state ownership of corporations in which the ownership functions has passed from stockholders to managerial personnel. Smaller and less vital enterprises would be left under private ownership, and privately held cooperatives would be encouraged. Some believe that the basic principles of Socialism were taken from the philosophy of Plato, the teachings of the Hebrew prophets, and some parts of the New Testament. Also the introduction of liberal principles during the first phase of the French Revolution (1789-1793), the scrapping of the feudal and mercantilist economic order, and the emergence of dynamic markets and new production techniques completely changed the old static societies. Large numbers of small-scale businesses, organized in traditional craft guilds, disappeared, and industrial undertakings took their place. Similar to today’s pressures of globalization, new explanations of the world came to the fore. The first socialist movement emerged in France after the Revolution and was led by Francois Babeuf, Filippo Buonarrotti, and Louis Auguste Blanqui. Other early socialists thinkers, such as comte de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Etienne Cabet in France and Robert Owen and William Thompson in England, believed in the

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 31 possibility of peaceful and gradual transformation to a social society by the founding of small experimental communities. These socialist thinkers were later labeled Utopian. But the most impressive thinker, at least in continental Europe during the 19th century, was Karl Marx, who in his theory of capitalism argued that he had discovered the iron laws of the development of human societies. In his theory on the eras of history, he claimed that capitalism inevitably would be replaced by Socialism and, later, by full-fledged communism and the classless society. Socialism became “scientific”—a construct of ideas according to which the end is already known, and in which any endeavors to change the course of events would be fruitless. The Marxist Movement. The ideas presented by Smith and the physiocrats provided the ideological and psychological background for the Industrial Revolution, the material side of the sweeping transformations in society and the world that characterized the 19th century. No precise date can be given for this “revolution”, but it is generally conceded to have begun in he late 18th century. The fundamental characteristic of the industrialization process was the introduction of mechanical power (originally steam) to replace human and animal power in the production of goods and services. As the mechanization of production gained momentum in England and gradually spread to other parts of the world, several basic changes occurred. Production became more specialized and concentrated in larger units, called factories. The artisans and small shops of the 18th century did not disappear, but they were consigned to the outer edge of economic activity in the leading nations, especially in England, the U.S. and Germany. The modern working class began to emerge. Workers no longer owned their tools, they had little property, and generally they had to exchange their labor for a money wage. The application of mechanical power to production brought with it a great increase in worker efficiency, which made goods abundant and cheap. Consequently, the real standard of living rose throughout much of the world during the 19th century. Unfortunately, the development

32 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. of industrial capitalism had serious human costs. The early days of the Industrial Revolution was marred by appalling conditions for large numbers of workers, especially in England. Abusive child labor, long working hours, and dangerous and unhealthy workplaces were common. Marx adopted, for example, a version of Ricardo’s labor theory of value. With a few qualifications, Ricardo had explained prices as the result of the different quantities of human labor needed to produce different products. Accordingly, if a shirt is priced at $6 and a pair of socks at $2, it is because three times as many hours of human labor entered into the making of the shirt as the socks. For Ricardo, this theory of value was a reasonable deduction, a way of making sense of the multitude of different prices in shops. For Marx, the labor theory was a clue to the inner workings of capitalism, the master key to the inequities and exploitations of an unjust system. An exile from Germany, Marx spent most of his mature years in London, supported by his friend and collaborator, the German revolutionist Friedrich Engels, and by the proceeds from occasional contributions to newspapers. He conducted his extensive research in the reading room of the British Museum. Marx’s historical studies convinced him that profit and other property income are the proceeds from force and fraud inflected by the strong on the weak. “Primitive accumulation” in English economic history was epitomized by the record of land enclosure in the 17th and 18th centuries, landowners used their control of Parliament to rob their tenants of traditional rights to common lands. Taking these lands for their own use, they drove their victims reluctantly into cities and factories. Deprived both of tools and land, British men, women, and children had to work for wages. Thus, Marx’s central conflict was between so-called capitalists who owned the means of production, factories and machines, and workers or proletarians who possessed nothing but their bare hands. Exploitation, the heart of Marxist doctrine, is measured by the capacity of capitalists to pay no more than subsistence wages to their employees and extract for themselves as profit (or surplus value) the difference between these wages and

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 33 the selling price of market commodities.The first important document on Marxism, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848), written with Engels, asserted that all known history is essentially the history of social classes locked in conflict. On this subject, Marx wrote not in the tradition of English classical economics but rather out of his training in the metaphysics of the German philosopher G.W. F. Hegel. Hegel interpreted the movement of human history and thought as a progression of triads: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Marx viewed human history as always having a ruling class and an oppressed class. The modern era that Marx saw was characterized by the capitalist mode of production with manufacturing industry and a free market, would lead to the growing intensity of the struggle between capitalists and workers (the proletariat), with the latter getting poorer and poorer which would result in the workers revolting. To Marx and Engels, Hegle’s triad was unfolding before them. To them the thesis was the set of economic arrangements that was Capitalism, in opposition, or antithesis, was Socialism; between thesis and antithesis, would evolve into a higher stage of synthesis, communism. Marx further asserted, in his most famous work, “Das Kapital”, that the capitalist employer of labor had, in order to make a profit, to extract ‘surplus value’ from his employees, thereby exploiting them and reducing them to ‘wage slavery.’ The modern state, with its government and law-enforcing agencies, was solely the executive organ of the capitalist class. Religion, philosophy, and most other forms of culture likewise simply fulfilled the ideological function of making the working class contented with their subordinate position. Capitalism, however, as Marx claimed, would soon and necessarily grind to a halt: economic factors, such as the diminishing rate of profit, as well as the political factor of increasing proletarian ‘class consciousness’ would result in the forcible overthrow of the existing system and its immediate replacement by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This dictatorship would soon be superseded by the system of Socialism, in which private ownership is abolished and all people are remunerated according to their work, and Socialism would lead

34 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. eventually to communism, a society of abundance characterized by the complete disappearance of the state, social classes, law, politics, and all forms of compulsion. Under this ideal condition goods would be distributed according to need, and the unity of all mankind would be assured because of the elimination of greed. European socialist Movements. All socialist European parties came under the influence of Marx’s thinking. Even today, radical Marxism plays an important role for many in the left wing. In other words, Marx is not dead. Marx and his followers were so preoccupied with their theory of human history that they did not realize the incompatibility of their position with the pretension of Socialism to being an ethical system. If history inevitably moved along the road toward a classless society, then all efforts either to change or to accelerate the course of events would be senseless. In spite of some ambiguities in Marx’s theory, the only matter of dispute among socialist thinkers was whether a revolution or a peaceful development sped up by the introduction of universal suffrage would be either necessary or sufficient to reach the end stage of history. The controversy surrounding this point was one of the reasons the leftist political movement in continental Europe split into a communist and pro-revolutionary wing on the one hand, and a social democratic grouping, favoring the democratic approach to the accepted end-state of society, on the other. Left-wing parties didn’t come into power before the end of World War I (1914-1918). When this happened, they realized that the whole Marxian body of thought would not be very helpful in coping with the problems they were facing in the war-torn societies. Since then, two schools of thought can be distinguished: totalitarian Socialism, on the one hand, and democratic Socialism on the other. The totalitarian movement seized power in Russia (1917), and what was later called the Soviet model and democratic Socialism was successful mainly in West European countries, among them Germany and Austria.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 35 The totalitarian socialists or communists resorted to the meager 10-point program of the Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. In this document, the two authors recommend: 1. The abolition of private ownership of land and application of all rents toward public purposes; 2. A progressive income tax; 3. The abolition of the right of inheritance; 4. The confiscation of all property belonging to emigrants and rebels; 5. The centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly; 6. The centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state; 7. An increase in the number and size of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; 8. Equal liability of all towards labor; 9. The combination of agriculture with industrial production; and, finally, 10. Free education for all children in public (i.e., state) schools, along with the abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form and the practice of combining education with industrial production, and other things. When trying to determine if a country is socialist or capitalist (especially the U.S.), one can use the above list. The Democratic Socialists (Communists) in Congress are easily identified by their tax votes especially those governing the progressive income tax and the inheritance ) tax. From the short list just mentioned, you can deduce easily that collective property, central planning, and the elimination of markets are compatible with the original ideas of Marx. In Western Europe, the 1920s and 1930s were the decades in which totalitarian and authoritarian movements came to power,

36 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the most destructive of which was Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism. After World War II and during the reconstruction period, democratic socialists in Europe had to rework their political programs. In Sweden, where the socialist Party has ruled, with minor exceptions, since the 1940s, a democratic version of Socialism was developed that led to the well-known welfare state program that plays an important role in other Scandinavian countries. In Great Britain, the Labor Party came into power immediately after the war and introduced the equivalent of the Swedish model based on Fabian thinking—and not on Marxist views. In continental Europe, classical liberal ideas under the heading of social market economics experienced success in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, West Germany, and Austria, whereas France was inclined to follow the ideas of the so-called economié concerteé—a somewhat shaky mixture of central planning without compulsory commands by state authorities—plus other all-encompassing interventions into the economy. “Third Way” Movement Inside Social Democratic Parties. The social democratic modernizers are also an important group to consider. But what is the model they are striving for? For several decades, Sweden, one of the few European states that stayed neutral during World War II, was a role model for social democratic modernizers. For a long time, Sweden was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Its system of social services covered all sorts of risks. Its society was egalitarian, and the overwhelming majority of its citizens was in favor of the folkhemmet. (This term is literally a combination of folk—that is, people”—and hem, which means home. If the all-embracing welfare state, which substituted the security of the government for the traditional ties of family, had not run into grave financial problems, Sweden would still be “Mecca” for social democrats. But Sweden’s extremely high level of government expenditures on its social welfare programs could not be sustained. In fact, government spending rose from approximately half of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1975 to two-thirds in 1995. The record was set in 1993—ironically, under the non-socialist administration

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 37 headed by Carl Bildt—when public spending equaled 74 percent of GDP. In Economic Freedom of the World: 1997 Annual Report (Vancouver, B.C., Canada: The Fraser Institute, 1997), James Gwartney and Robert Lawson rank Sweden 42nd out of 115 in its measure of economic freedom. According to the 1999 edition of the Index of Economic Freedom, edited by Bryan T. Johnson, Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D., and Melanie R. Kirkpatrick (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, 1998), Sweden comes in 33rd among 160 states. These findings indicate Sweden lags behind such countries of approximately the same size as, for example, Austria, Belgium, and many developing countries. This performance is not very impressive. Further, in recent years Sweden’s social democratic government has pursued a policy of trimming down its welfare state; public spending is now down to approximately 50 percent of GDP, but this is still very high. At the same time, the government’s highly interventionist economic policies were reduced, and more market-oriented policies were adopted. This leaves the social democratic parties in Western Europe in an unpleasant situation: Which path should they follow? and what does social democracy stand for now? Prime Minister Blair created the concept of “New Labor” and Chancellor Schroeder won an electoral victory in September 1998 by coining the slogan of a “new middle.” From the point of view of political economy, the latter sounds like a simple application of the median-voter theorem of public choice theory. Nevertheless, Schroeder’s wording was successful, and the CDU—the party of Germany’s seemingly life-long Chancellor, Kohl—was defeated, receiving only 35 percent of the total vote. The Schroeder strategy led to an extensive public discussion of whether left-wing parties now follow the route known as the “third way” in public policy deliberations. The term “third way” has been used many times. Wilhelm Roepke, one of Germany’s staunch neoliberals who was expelled by the Hitler government in 1933 and, together with F. A. Hayek, founder of the classical liberal Mont Pelerin Society, described his concept of a free society as the third

38 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. way between Socialism, on the one hand, and “historical”—as he used to say—liberalism on the other. Ota Sic, Minister of Economic Affairs of Czechoslovakia who left his home country after the demise of the “Prague Spring” in 1968 at the hand of occupying Soviet troops, called his market socialist design a “third way,” too. In Great Britain, the “third way” has come to be associated with the politics of Tony Blair, and his break with the old Labor and his creation of New Labor. And Anthony Giddens, one of the most influential advisers to New Labor, used the term as the title for his latest book, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press, 1998). People tend to see authors who favor the idea of a third way as starting from the idea that the only other possible choice is between either a capitalist or a socialist economic order. From this perspective, the third way seems to be a mixture of both economic systems, the market and central planning. But a closer look reveals this to be false. Roepke, for example, defended the market order against all approaches that used convergence theory, which was popular during his lifetime and which taught that the two economic systems of the bipolar world over the long run would approach one another—that is, that they would converge. When choosing the notion “third way,” Roepke’s point was that Western societies suffered from moral decay, from worshipping the large-scale, and—worst—from proletarianization. He declared that 19th century capitalism might have created the modern proletariat, but that Socialism was enlarging that class to include the whole of humanity. Salvation would lay in a third choice: Socialism, collectivism...are after all, only the last consequence of our yesterday; they are the last conclusions of the nineteenth century, and only in them do we reach the lowest point of a century-old development along the wrong road; these are the hopeless final stages toward which we drift unless we act...the new path is precisely the one that will lead us out of the dilemma of “capitalism” and collectivism. It consists of the economic humanism of the “Third Way.”

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 39 Roepke was a classical liberal fighting for a “humane society”—a society in which the proletariat dwindles, private property is a central institution, individual rights are secure, and not only an economic equilibrium but also a social equilibrium prevails. But what about the “third way” that is on the agenda of the social democrats? Not much has changed—at least, not much has changed in continental Europe. Social democratic parties have learned that their old idea to create a New Society run by New Men—that is, people who act only in an altruistic manner—is utopian. Therefore, the parties have moved, largely for opportunistic reasons, toward the political center. They call their new position as “center-left.” This should not mean, as they say, a compromise in the middle of the more clear-cut alternatives. On the contrary, the new middle is described as the “active middle” or the “radical center,” which implies it is not the same as the “moderate left.” The man on the street might have difficulties with this hair-splitting distinction; perhaps this is one of the more hidden aims of this terminology. . But what is the substance of this so-called renewed center-left social democracy? Social justice and emancipation politics are at the core of its program. For example, it is said that a reformed welfare state has to meet criteria of social justice. That simply means that social democrats want to keep welfare spending high and that they reject the libertarian position to privatize large parts of the welfare state, leaving only a minimal safety net for those who cannot care for themselves. But how should social justice—whatever that means—be implemented? Of course, to adherents to the “center-left,” government should be the agent. Contrary to the classical liberal view and the sustained libertarian critique of the role of government in social and economic life today, the socialist agenda for the state is very long. Just to name a few topics taken from a longer list by Anthony Giddens in The Third Way as to the reasons a government should exist: 1. The provision of public goods; 2. The regulation of markets in the public interest; 3. The fostering of social peace; 4. The active development of human capital through a central

40 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. role by the state in the education system, thereby shaping norms and values; 5. The provision of infrastructure; 6. The fostering of regional and transnational alliances and the pursuit of global goals; and, finally, 7. The role as a prime employer in macro- and microeconomic institutions and, especially, in ecological matters.

Despite the fact that the first, third and fifth topic could be on the list of a classical liberal author writing on the agenda of the state, this is simply the old picture of giving de facto unlimited power to the politicians. In the social democratic world, there are only acting high-minded men and women who work in the public interest and who, of course, know what is in the interest of their fellow citizens. The universal welfare state, in a very wide sense, is at the core of the social democratic philosophy. This is what in German is called der Vater Staat—”the state as your father”—taking care and acting always in the interest of his children. It is difficult to understand this paternalistic view against the background of the emancipation rhetoric of social democratic parties. In a world that defines the individual as autonomous and free to act so long as his acts do not interfere with the freedom of others, governments should play only a subsidiary role and should not be looked on as instruments that shape and control society. From this view also follows the belief that interventions should be limitless, according to the discretion of those in power. On the contrary, political power should be limited, following strict rules and respecting narrow boundaries. Most European Union (EU) member-states are under social democratic governments today. Therefore, a short glimpse of how they act in parochial affairs might be interesting. The dominant problem in the EU—with the exception of Great Britain, Austria, and the Netherlands—is high rates of unemployment. A total of 20 million people are without jobs; major EU countries have double-digit unemployment rates. How do their social democratic governments react? For example, in Germany, the answer is corporatism, not struc-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 41 tural reform. The catch phrase is “alliance for work” (Bündnis für Arbeit). Germany may restructure its highly centralized wage-setting system according to the views held by Chancellor Schroeder—as a permanent conference among the unions, the representatives of entrepreneurial associations, and the federal government. In this conference, the delegates will decide how to reduce unemployment. On the agenda of “alliance for work” are initiatives to reduce and standardize the work week not only in France and Germany but also in the entire internal European market to 35 hours; lowering and standardizing the retirement age, thereby reducing the size of the labor force; increasing public-sector investment; harmonizing government tax and spending levels; and expanding government-run labor-market programs. Not many German economists back that program. The majority of economists warns the government that the outcome of such policies may be the opposite of what is intended—namely, a dramatic increase in, instead of the lowering of, the rate of unemployment. But European politicians are convinced that the new euro will allow them to return to old Keynesian methods of steering their economies according to the aim of full employment without taking recourse to market-oriented reforms in their sclerotic labor markets. The social democratic “third way” model is not a disguised libertarian program. It does not describe a new chapter in social democratic thinking and ideology. In contrast to the views taken by those who favor a free society, the starting point of “third-way” adherents is not the freedom of the individual but the collectivistic ideas that are alive still in the background of socialist thinking. Therefore, the collective—not the individual—is important; the politician—not the entrepreneur or the wealth-seeking individual—is at the heart of the socialist design. There are those who have great doubts that policies based on socialist ideology will prove helpful in meeting the challenges with which we are confronted. The social democratic “third way” is a halfway house in which the ideas of the old left remain prominent,

42 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. and it shows that no full-fledged alternative to contemporary libertarian thinking has been formed yet. In opposition to some, at the Heritage Foundation, Christian Watrin, a professor at the Institute for Economic Policy Research at the University of Cologne in Germany, presents his definition of the Third Way, refuting the argument that the third way model is a “disguised libertarian program.” Watrin maintains that the starting point of third-way adherents is the collectivist ideas (and not freedom of the individual) still present in socialist thinking: the provision of public good; regulation of markets in the public interest; the fostering of social peace; and the active development of human capital. In conclusion, Watrin expresses his doubts that “policies based on socialist ideology will prove helpful in meeting the challenges with which we are confronted.” Are the “new” social democratic parties in Europe simply disguised libertarians, still calling themselves “socialist” but basically supporting neo-liberal ideas? This has often been claimed in recent public policy debates. For example, in Great Britain it has been claimed that Tony Blair and his “new” Labor Party have continued the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party. Equally, the economic reforms in New Zealand, which turned the economy from a sclerotic, collectivist welfare state into a modern, flourishing market economy, were partly initiated by a party from the left. And didn’t President Bill Clinton promise to “end welfare as we know it?” And isn’t Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), together with its left-wing Green coalition partner, in the process of abandoning its deep-rooted pacifism of the left by entering the Kosovo war? Who can say where or what will be the result. Moderate Socialism. Other varieties of Socialism continued to exist alongside Marxism, such as Christian Socialism, spread from the beginning in England to France and Germany. Charles Kingsley, John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow, and Frederick Denison Maurice were among its founders. They supported moderate social

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 43 democracy, emphasizing what they understood as the central message of the church in social ethics, notably the values of cooperation, brotherhood, simplicity of tastes, and the spirit of self-sacrifice. Ferdinad Lassalle, founder of the first workers’ party in Germany, promoted the idea of achieving Socialism through state action in individual nations, as opposed to the Marxian doctrine of international revolution. Through the efforts of Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, Lassalle’s group was brought into the mainstream of Marxian Socialism. The moderates sought to achieve Socialism by parliamentary means and by appealing deliberately to the middle class. Fabianism had as one of its intellectual forebearers the utilitarian invidualism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and it became a doctrine that sought to reconcile the values of liberty, democracy, economic progress, and social justice. The Fabians believed that the cause of Socialism would also be aided by the advancement of the social sciences, especially, economics and sociology. These doctrines, collectively known as social democracy, did not, like Marxism, look toward the complete abolition of private property and the disappearance of the state but instead envisioned Socialism more as a form of society in which fully democratic control would be exercised over wealth, and production would be controlled by a group of responsible experts working in the interest of the whole community. The achievement of Socialism was seen by social democrats as a long-term goal, the result of an evolutionary process involving the growth of economic efficiency, education in moral responsibility, and the voluntary acceptance of equal shares in benefits and burdens. Socialism would be the triumph of common sense, the inevitable outcome of liberalism, the extension of democracy from politics to industry. Radical Socialism. On the other hand, many doctrines and movements were decidedly more militant than Marxism. Anarchists influenced mainly by the ideas of the Frenchman Pierre Joseph Proudhon and later of the Russian emigres Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin and Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin were intent on imme-

44 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. diately overthrowing the capitalist state and replacing it with small independent communities. Unlike the Marxists, whom they bitterly criticized, anarchists were against the formation of socialist parties, and they repudiated parliamentary politics as well as the idea of revolutionary dictatorship. Their followers, never very numerous, were and are found mainly in the Latin countries of Europe and America. Syndicalism, an offshoot of anarchism, was a movement of militant working-class trade unionists who endeavored to achieve Socialism through industrial action only, notably by using the weapon of the general strike. Their doctrine was similar to Marxism in that they also believed that Socialism was to be achieved only by and for the working class, but unlike the Marxist they rejected the notion of a future centralized socialist state. Their most eminent theorist was Georges Sorel. Syndicalist ideas also had intermittent success in the British and American trade union movements. Guild Socialism in England, dominated by George Douglas Howard Cole, the academic economist and historian, represented a modified and milder form of syndicalism. In Russia, where it was impossible to organize openly a popular socialist movement under the tsarist regime, Socialism became mainly the ideology of young militant intellectuals whose favored means of furthering the cause were secret conspiracies and acts of individual terrorism. Debate raged between those who believed in the native socialist ethos of the Russian village community and those who wanted to adopt Western ideas of modernization. The latter party, which eventually emerged victorious, soon came under Marxist influence. Among its adherents was V.I. Lenin, who emerged as the leader of a small but dedicated group of “professional revolutionaries” the Bolshevik wing of the illegal Russian Social Democratic Worker’s party. Lenin was also the theorist who irrevocably gave a markedly elitist and authoritarian twist to Marxism. He worked out the theory of the proletarian vanguard, that is, the Communist party, which was destined to lead the masses toward Socialism, irrespective of the masses’ inclination.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 45 Disagreements in Philosophy. Throughout the 19th century the socialist movement was beset by a number of ever-deepening conflicts and doctrinal controversies. The International Workingmen’s Association (First International), founded in 1864, was expected to achieve unity among various socialist and militant trade union organizations, but its efforts were greatly hindered by the conflict between the followers of Bakunin and those of Marx. It came to an end soon after the suppression of the Commune of Paris (1871). The Second International (1889, 1914) assumed for a time at least an outward appearance of unity, in that it represented the high watermark of classical Marxist influence in West European Socialism. It was dominated by the largest socialist parties then in existence, the French, led by Jean Jaures, Jules Guesde, and Paul Lafargue, and the German-led by August Bebel, Karl Johann Kautsky, and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who agreed at least in their broad understanding of the aims and methods of Socialism. Their spokesmen emphasized the need to foster international solidarity among the mass of the working class and thus to avert the threat of a major war in Europe. This effort proved singularly unseccessful because nationalism in 1914 and later proved a much stronger mass emotion than Socialism. Apart from a few exceptions, such as Lenin and his Bolshevik group, socialist movements supported the war effort of their respective governments. As a result of the general conflagration in 1914, the Second International disintegrated and therewith also the hopes of socialist unity. Revisionism. Another important controversy broke out in the 1890s within Marxism, involving the German Social Democratic party. This party was divided between a militant revolutionary left wing, an orthodox center that held to the classical Marxist doctrine of economic determinism, and a right wing moving toward a position of open reformism. The right wing had as its most renowned spokesman, Eduard Bernstein, a personal friend of Marx and Engels, who was, however, also influenced by English Fabian ideas.

46 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Bernstein repudiated the notion of violent revolution and argued that conditions in civilized countries such as Germany made possible a peaceful, gradual transformation to Socialism. He sought to reinterpret Marxist doctrine in the light of fresh advances made in economic science, such as those also embraced in Fabian doctrine, and argued that Socialism was compatible with individual economics responsibility. He rejected the idea of “class morality,” which judged all actions according to their revolutionary import. Instead he advocated a code of indiviual morality, derived from Kant’s moral philosophy. Consequently, Bernstein asserted the need for socialist to concentrate on immediate tasks instead of ultimate and remote objectives. The movement, he wrote, was everything, the goal, nothing.This doctrine, henceforth called revisionism, immediately became the subject of bitter attack by the revolutionary left wing, represented by Rosa Luxemburg, which on this issue was supported by the orthodox center and its principal theorist, Karl Kautsky. The terms of the debate on revisionism centered on the facts, noted by Bernstein, of considerable improvement in the living standards of the working class, its resultant political integration in the constitutional state (republican or monarchical), the purely reformist stance of trade unions, and the virtual absence of any desire for a radical change on the part of the great majority of workers. The opponents of revisionism, while acknowledging the tendencies, argued that material improvements were insufficient and ephemeral. They felt that if the working class and its organizations accepted the constitutional state they were merely posponing indefinitely the change to Socialism. According to them, the principle tasks of the socialist leader are to arouse dissatisfaction with existing conditions and to reemphasize constantly the worth of the ultimate goal. The arguments on both sides continue with only slight changes in the debate between reformist and revolutionary socialists everywhere. In Marxist jargon the term revisionism became synonymous with treason. Ironically, but in a way that pointed toward the subsequent fate of Marxist doctrine, the orthodox center in the German party was soon to be denounce by left-wingers as revisionist. Lenin, too,

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 47 in turn, came to condemn sharply the German social democrats and the “renegade” Kautsky. The latter, in turn, vehemently denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks for their adoption of terrorist methods in the consolidation of their revolutionary gains in Russia. Marxist unity, like the Second International, thus also fell victim to World War I and its aftermath. From then on Marxists have tended to be either Marxist-Leninists, that is, communists embracing the elitist doctrine of the vanguard party, or moderate revisionsits moving ever closer to reformist social democracy. European Social Democracy. In Western Europe, despite the presence of large Marxist parties (as in Italy and France) and the Marxist influence among intellectuals, Socialism was, and still is, principally represented by widely based social democratic and labor movements, which generally enjoy the active support of trade unions. This predominance of reformist trends over revolutionary aspirations undoubtably was occasioned by economic stability and the deterrent example of Marxist rule in the East. The social democratic parties of Sweden, Britain, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany (the former West Germany and present reunified state), governed their respective countries for lengthy periods during the postwar era through constitutional means, fully accepting the principles of parliamentary liberal democracy. The spirit of these Western European parties has tended to be pragmatic and tolerant, seeking accommodation rather than confrontation. Their programs repudiate the doctrines of class war, revolution, and communism. Instead they have relied on the expedients of progressive taxation, deficit financing, selective nationalization, the mixed economy, and vast welfare programs in order to bring about Socialism; their political success has depended on considerable middle-class support. Although most of these parties have recently accommodated themselves to free-market reforms, they remain committed to the social democratic vision of a ‘middle way’ between the extremes of communism and unfettered captalism. In domestic politics, European social democrats generally refused

48 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. to cooperate with communist parties and other extremist socialist groups. The Social Democratic party (SPD) in Germany, although at one time the citadel of orthodox Marxism, has since 1959 been a purely reformist party, abandoning its original goals. The British Labour party, socialist in its aims (its constitution since 1919 has had reference to ‘public ownership’), has never had any serious doctrinal policies. A dispute with the leftists prompted a group of Labour moderates to secede in 1981 and found the Social Democratic party, which merged (1988) with the Liberal party to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (later, Liberal Democrats). The French socialist party, which had long since abandoned its orthodox Marxism, allied itself with the Communists during the 1960s, but under the leadership of Francois Metterrand, it won the presidency on its own and gained a majority in the National Assembly in 1981. In the same year, the Greek Socialists came to power under Andreas Papandreou, and in 1982, Felipe Gonzalez Marquez formed Spain’s first socialist government since the Spanish Civil War. Bettino Craxi became Italy’s first socialist premier, heading a coalition government from 1983 to 1987. Although Scandinavia’s social democrats suffered electoral defeats in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the political parties of Europe’s moderate left retained broad popular support. The French Communist paty was long known for its subservience to the USSR and its rigid Stalinism. The Italian Communist party, on the other hand, relied on the indigenous Marxist tradition associated mainly with the teaching of Antonio Gramsci, one of the party’s founders, who is widely regarded as one of the most significant of European Marxist thinkers. The Italian party, at one time the largest in Western Europe, frequently obtained the highest percentage of the popular vote in Italy’s parliamentary elections and continuously governed a number of Italian municipalities (Bologna is a prime example). During the 1970s the Italian Communists under Enrico Berlinguer, the French Communists under Georges Marchais, and the Spanish Communists under Santiago Carillo embraced a doctrine

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 49 known as Eurocommunism. The Eurocommunists, breaking not only with Stalinism but with some aspects of the Leninist tradition, began moving toward full acceptance of parliamentary democracy and the multiparty system, in many ways prefiguring the glasnostperestroika reforms that dramatically changed the Communist world in the Gorbachev era. To the left of the Communists were a number of new groups of militant revolutionaries, such as West Germany’s Red Army (Baader-Meinhof) Faction and Italy’s Red Brigades, which carried out campaigns of abduction, subversion, and terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. Socialism in the Third World. Socialism has assumed a number of distinct forms in the Third World. But only in Israel has moderate social democracy proved successful for long periods, mainly as a result of the European socialist tradition brought in by immigrants. There the Labor party in various forms has had a large following and has governed the country longer than any other party. Israel has other socialist parties as well, including a militant Marxist party. At least of equal significance, however, are the cooperative agricultural communes (kibbutzim), which have flourished since 1948. Commentators have argued that kibbutzim more than anything else show the viability of socialist principles in practice, however, the peculiarities of Israeli conditions (for example, religious tradition and constant war readiness necessitated by the hostility of Israel’s Arab neighbors) could not easily by duplicated. Elsewhere in the Third World, Marxism and various indigenous traditions have been predominant in socialist movements. In developing countries Socialism as an ideology generally has been fused with various doctrines of nationalism, also a European cultural import but enriched by diverse motifs drawn from local traditions and cast in the idiom of indigenous cultures. In India, for example, the largest socialist movement has partially adapted the pacifist teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, and distinct native brands of Socialism exist in Japan, Burma, and Indonesia. Similarly, in black Africa native traditions were used in the adaptation of socialist, mainly, Marxist, doctrines and political systems based on them. Some noteworthy

50 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. instances were the socialist system of Tanzania (decentralized under the international supported economic reform program of the early 1990s) and the socialist theories of intellectual leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius K Nyerere of Tanzania, Leoplold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, and Sekou Toure of Guinea. Socialism in these theories is usually understood as a combination of Marxism, anticolonialism, and the updated tradition of communal landownership and tribal customs of decision making. Most of sub-Saharan Africa’s Socialist countries adopted free-market reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s. Arab Socialism represents an effort to combine modern European socialist ideology with some Islamic principles. The Baath party of Iraq and Syria and the Destour party in Tunisia have held power for consideralbe periods. Algeria also has had a socialist system since its independence. In the Third World, Socialism has often been simply an ideology of anticolonialism and modernization. Overtly Marxist movements, aided by the USSR, China, and Cuba, nevertheless seized power in such African countries as Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozanbique. South Africa’s African National Congress was also strongly influenced by Marsist ideas. In review of the foregoing discussion of Socialism, one can see that every socialist has his/her idea on how to bring ‘heaven to earth’. But after centuries of experimenting they have yet to arrive at one conclusion—nor will they. Like the saying about economists: “If you laid all economists in a row on the ground, you would never come to a conclusion.”

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CHAPTER 2 THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES

EARLY STAGES IN THE U.S.A. In the United States the socialist movement never had a very large following, and although the country has produced noted socialist (authors and popular leaders), they have not been distinguished for their originality or for their affect on the worldwide development of Socialism. Socialism did not take roots in the United States for several reasons. Two of the most important are the country’s individualist traditions and its wealth in natural resources. On the other hand, in Europe, the distribution of wealth was a problem, bringing about the rise of socialist movments. In the United States, the open frontier meant the constant creation of new land and wealth with its accessibility to those with initiative and a spirit of individual enterprise. Thus in the United States even radical thinkers tended to be “individualists” and “anarchists,” rather than socialists. In this development, the country’s tradition of republican self-governnent and its guiding beliefs of human equality and democracy also played a decisive role, unlike Europe, the United States had no entrenched aristocratic privileges or monarchical absolutism and consequently no need for democratic aspiations to be combined with the socialist demand for economic equality and security. Labor unions also, for the most part, concentrated on the achievement of higher earnings and were not greatly interested in economic and social organization. A few socialistic communities did flourish in the U. S., however,

52 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. during the early 19th century. Indeed, economist Henry George, and writers of repute, such as Edward Bellamy, advocated Socialism, and socialist political leaders, such as Victor L. Berger, Eugene V. Debs, Daniel De Leon, and Norman Thomas had at one time considerable popular appeal. The U.S. socialist party, founded in 1901, reached its greatest strength in the 1912 and 1920 presidential elections, when its candidate, Debs, received 900,000 votes. In 1932, Norman Thomas, running on the socialist ticket, polled more than 800,000 votes. Thereafter the party’s strength ebbed. The New Deal in the 1930s tended to draw votes away from the party. A few socialistic communities did flourish in the U.S., however, during the early 19th century. Indeed, economist, Henry George, and writers of repute, such as Edward Bellamy, advocated New Deal policies of economic redistribution seemed to meet demands of those who previously supported the Socialists. They now joined the Democratic Party, to infiltrate and use the Democratic Party as a platform for their social agendas. With a country in such an upheaval brought on by the great depression, people were ready for any change that would give them relief. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 inaugurated a period of Democratic dominance that usually included control of one or both houses of Congress, even under Republican presidents. From 1933 through 1999, the Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress for 52 years; for 6 years Congress has been split, and for 8 years the Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress. As these numbers indicate, Democrats blaming Republicans in Congress or Republican Presidents for all that is wrong in the country doesn’t stand up under facts. The Constitution is quite clear, all laws, budget and otherwise, originate in Congress. When signed by the President, it is the EXECUTIVE branch of the government that executes the law.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 53 SOCIALIST TAKEOVER OF DEMOCRATIC PARTY The first political party in the U.S. dedicated to the promotion of Socialism was the socialist Labor party, founded in 1877. In 1890 leadership of this party was assumed by Daniel De Leon, an authoritarian follower of Karl Marx’s revolutionary policies. In 1899, moderate members of the socialist Labor party, led by the American lawyer Morris Hillquit, resigned. Meanwhile, in 1898, the Social Democratic party had been founded by the American labor leader Eugene V. Debs and the American editor and legislator Victor Berger. This party had some early success in local elections in Massachusetts, and Debs received about 96,000 votes as its presidential candidate in 1900. The American Congregationalist minister George Davis Herron became a socialist in 1899, hoping to give the movement a Christian orientation. In 1901 Hillquit and his faction of the socialist Labor party joined Debs, Berger, and other Social Democrats and the Christian Socialists to form the socialist Party of America. By 1912 party membership had increased to approximately 118,000. Debs, presidential candidate of the party in 1904 and 1908, received 900,672 votes (6 percent of the popular vote), in the 1912 presidential election. In that year the party had more than 1000 members in public office. The reformist policies, or “immediate demands,” of the party, dedicated to achieving Socialism through peaceful democratic methods, were disseminated by influential publications. The party also played an important role in the growth of trade unions in the U.S. The socialist party denounced World War I and the belligerent role of the United States in what it regarded as an imperialist conflict, although some of the party’s leaders resigned to support the war. This antiwar stance was one factor in the party’s undoing. Debs was arrested in Canton, Ohio, for criticizing the war effort and sentenced to ten years in prison under the Espionage Act of 1917. Dozens of like-minded Socialists were jailed under the Sedition Act of 1918. In 1920, while in prison, Debs was again the party candidate for

54 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the presidency. He received 919,799 votes, the largest vote ever cast for a presidential candidate of the socialist party. Meanwhile, the Russian Revolution of 1917 led to a split in the party. The left wing, which later came to constitute the Communist party, advocated similar revolutionary methods and recommended the establishment of a workers’ dictatorship in the U.S. Following the party split, in 1919, the socialist party declined in membership to approximately one-fourth its former size. In 1924 the socialist party, striving to create a farmer-labor coalition, endorsed U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette, presidential candidate of the League for Progressive Political Action. La Follette polled about 4,831,000 votes. After the dissolution of the La Follette movement, the socialist party was led by Norman M. Thomas, the party candidate for the presidency in six elections from 1928 through 1948. While the socialist party declined in numbers and influence, many of the social reforms it had advocated became accepted facts of American life. During the first administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, much social legislation was passed that had first been advocated by socialist party members. Prior to the onset of World War II Earl Browder, head of the Communist Party USA, adopted Stalin’s idea of the “popular front”, whereby the Communists work with a wing of the “liberal bourgeoisie” to fight the Nazis. The Communist Party began working with the Democratic Party, backing all of Roosevelt’s policies in order to gain support for the CP. The CP was reconstituted as the “Communist Political Association” (CPA) and entered the Democratic Party as part of its left wing. Browder was arrested in 1939 for a passport violation and sentenced to four years. From prison, he ran for President again in 1940 and still received over 46,251 votes. Becoming friendly with Joseph Stalin, Roosevelt commuted Browder’s sentence in 1942. In 1937 a split within the socialist party resulted in the formation of the Social Democratic Federation, which subsequently supported

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 55 national candidates of the Democratic party. The last presidential candidate of the socialist party was Darlington Hoopes, who received 20,203 votes in 1952 and 2192 write-in votes in 1956. In 1957 the socialist party and the Social Democratic Federation reunited. The resultant socialist party-Social Democratic party (SP-SDP), joined in 1958 by the left-wing Independent socialist League, became a member of the socialist International, a federation of world democratic socialist parties. Neither the socialist Labor party nor the socialist Workers party, two small American political parties advocating international revolution, is a member of the socialist International; each of these parties runs independent candidates for office. In 1968, with the death of Norman Thomas, Hoopes was named honorary chairman of the SP-SDP, and in 1970 he and the American labor leader A. Philip Randolph were named honorary cochairmen. The party, which was renamed Social Democrats, U.S.A. by the majority faction in December 1972, no longer runs its own candidates for office but remains an active educational and organizing force in such fields as labor and civil rights. In 1973, another faction of the SP-SDP— the Debs Caucus, which had opposed the war in Vietnam and also opposed the party’s support of the Democratic party—broke away and reestablished the socialist Party of the U.S.A. Bayard Rustin, a leader in the American civil rights movement, became chairman of the Social Democrats in 1974. A PARTY NOT HEARD FROM. The following is a history (taken verbatim) from the web site of the Democratic Socialists of America (www.dsausa.org). Some of it is a repeat of the above socialist history of the U.S.A. However, it is important to state the history of the DSA in the words supplied by that organization. It has become the mole that wormed its way into the Democratic Party and now controls it. A brief verbatim history of the DSA is as follows: ‘Eugene Debs wrote in September 1900 that the outlook for Socialism in the United States was promising indeed. When Debs ran for President in 1900 as a candidate of the newly unified socialist

56 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. movement, he attracted a mere one hundred thousand votes. Twelve years later, he won nearly a million votes. In some states, such as Oklahoma, Washington, and California, the Socialists share of the vote climbed into the double digits. Over the same twelve-year period, the Socialist Party expanded its membership from 10,000 to nearly 120,000. Twelve hundred of these Socialists were elected to public office accross the United States, including mayors from Flint, Butte, and Berkeley. Socialist also were installed in the leadership of some major American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions, as well as in independent unions such as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Socialist and non-Socialist radicals in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) pioneered in the organization of unions among immigant workers in mass production industries in cities like Lawrence and Patterson, and among migrant workers in the lumber camps and mining towns of the far west. While the Socialist Party was not immune to the racism endemic in turn-of-the-century America, Socialists were among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The ideas of the Socialist movement attracted a growing following on college campuses, in church groups, and in the settlement house and women’s movements. The key to the Socialist Party’s success in the 1910s was unity in diversity. In the long run, Deb’s optimism proved misplaced. The year 1912 was the high-water mark of Socialist strength. They fell on hard times with the coming of the First World War. Pre-existing internal tensions were exacerbated by debates over the party’s attitude towards American involvement in the war, followed by debates over whether (or how best) to support the Russian Revolution....As a Communist Party on the Russian model split from the Socialist Party, and the IWW went into a sharp decline, the radical movement in general slipped into the doldrums in the 1920’s. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, however,

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 57 faith in American capitalism went into a tailspin, and the fortunes of the radical movement revived. Despite the deep divisions that beset the left, radicals from a number of different groups -Socialists, Communists, and Trotskyists among them, played a central role in the struggles of the unemployed to win adequate relief in the early 1930s, and in the vast expansion of industrial unionism through the organizations of the new Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) in the later 1930s. Socialists helped to organize Detroit auto workers and southern sharecroppers; Communists were influential in drives to organize the auto, steel, electrical, and longshore industries, among others. While neither socialist nor Communists were able to replicate the electoral successes of the Debsian era, the Socialists were able to attract a million votes for Norman Thomas, their Presidential candidate in 1932. Running in the Democratic primary, the socialist novelist Upton Sinclair captured the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in California in 1934. And durng the “Popular Front” era of the later 1930s, when Communists sought to build a broadbased American movement not so explicitly tied to the Soviet model, the Communists developed a considerable political base and measure of influence within the Democratic Party in such states as Washington, Minnesota, and California, and in the American Labor Party in New York. The Thirties did not usher in “the Revolution,” contrary to the expectations of many at the start of the decade. Nevertheless, much had changed for the better in American politics in the space of a few years. While Franklin Roosevelt’s administration was never the hotbed of radicalism , it is certainly true that radicals helped play midwife at the birth of the liberal-labor “New Deal coalition” that would shape the contours of Democratic Party politics over the following decades. Radicals were not, however in a position to take independent advantage of the new political possibilites opening before them. The socialist Party finished the decade once again in disarray, wounded by an internal factional battle with Trotskyists (with whom they

58 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. shared little beyond a hatred of Stalinism), and divided over the question of whether they should abandon their long-standing refusal to back Democratic Paty candidates. The Communist Party, though nominally more “revolutionar” than the Socialists, had proven tactically more flexible, and its tacit alliance with Roosevelt helped it to grow to perhaps as many as 75,000 members by 1938 (with another 20,000 in the Young Communist League). After a bruising few years when its international guide, Stalin, was allied with Hitler, the American Communist Party, seemed to emerge triumphant during the years of the “Grand Alliance,” when the United States and the Soviet Union were allied against fascism and it was possible to be both “patriotic” and “pro-Soviet.” But with onset of the Cold War in 1945, radicalism of any sort was again suspect, and the Communists came under particular ferocious attack.....In the end, the Communist Party was able to survive McCarthyism. What finally led to its demise as the most important force on the left was its own internal disagreements, brought to a head in 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of his now safely-dead predecessor Stalin. This “de-Stalinization crisis” led many American Communists to question not only their previous unquestioning support of Soviet policies, but also the undemocratic nature of Soviet-style Socialism and the authoritarian nature of their own movement. Most of these dissenters left the party after 1956. COMMUNIST PARTY, USA. Near the end of WWII, Browder came under attack from other Communists for his views. The first sign of this came in 1945 when Jacques Duclos of the French Communist Party published a polemical article against the American Communist leader. Browder’s predecessor, William Foster, also opposed his dissolving of the CP-USA into the Democratic Party. This extreme popular frontism — known as “Browderism” by the Soviet Communists — was the official reason for his expulsion from the American CP in 1946. William Foster returned to serve as CP national chairperson, and Eugene Dennis became national secretary.

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After the 50’s, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) was led by Gus Hall (1959, 2000), but his leadership was marred by accusations that Hall had accepted money from other nations. Perhaps the most famous member of the CPUSA was Angela Davis. The Communist Party was decimated by Senator Joe McCarthy and his anti-Communist Campaign. However, during the New Left movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the CPUSA managed to grow in membership to about 25,000 members, despite the exodus of numerous anti-revisionist and Maoist groups from its ranks. In 1984, seeing the onslaught of Ronald Reagan’s anti-Communist administration and decreased CPUSA membership, Gus Hall chose to end the CPUSA’s nation-wide electoraal campaigns, and the CPUSA has endorsed the Democratic Party in every national election ever since. The CPUSA still runs candidates for local office. Even as the Communist Party began to disintegrated in the mid1950s, a new wave of radical activism began to take shape. This time, however, it would not be the traditional socialist parties of the left that would lead the way, nor would the organization of the industrial working class be the main concern of the new radicals. Starting with the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and accelerating with the sit-in movement launched by black students in Greensboro and a dozen other southern cities in 1960, movements emerged that were destined to change the U.S. political landscape. White students, inspired by the example of their black counterparts in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), were drawn into civil rights protests, and from there into a wide range of movements for peace, university reform, and social change. Many joined a new campus group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which became the main organizational vehicle for what was beginning to be called the “new left.” Following the 1960s, the rehabilitation of the American Com-

60 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. munist movement gathered speed, helped by the ethos of the period. For most activists of the 1960s there was no enemy on the left; the enemies of the establishment, the ruling class, or the military-industrial complex were their friends, including American Communists and fellow travelers. Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs became martyrs, the latter the subject of a veritable cult. The American Communist movement came to be sentimentalized and entered the pantheon of the virtuous victims of American political repression, and in that capacity continues to enjoy a favorable reputation among many on the left. Crucial to the efforts to rehabilitate and idealize the American Communist Party was the contention that it was a grassroots organization of socially conscious Americans, fighting for social justice, concerned with mainly American conditions, and not subservient to the USSR. Only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and subsequent access to the archives of the Soviet Communist Party did definitive proof become available that the CPUSA was almost totally subservient to Soviet policies and instructions . The Secret World of American Communism (1995) documented the clandestine links between the CPUSA and the Soviet authorities, including the Soviet intelligence agency, the NKVD. Spying on behalf of the Soviet Union became acceptable for American Communists convinced that any contribution to the power, influence, and welfare of the USSR was morally legitimate. (The Soviet documents confirmed, among other things, that the younger sister of American party leader Earl Browder was an agent of the NKVD.) The Soviet documents also revealed that “the CPUSA was engaged in a conspiracy financed by a hostile foreign power that recruited members for clandestine work, developed an elaborate underground apparatus, and used that apparatus to collaborate with espionage services of that power. At the end of the 1960s the left again faltered. If the old left Socialists and Communists had been too wedded to the “New

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 61 Deal coalition” of urban ethnics and industrial workers to respond adequately, to the new black, youth, and women’s insurgencies, nevertheless those new constituencies alone could not build a stable base for a mass new left. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 hastened the demise of the civil rights movement, while SNCC and SDS collapsed from sectarian excesses....This liberal weakness became progressively clearer as Nixon’s fall in the Watergate scandal led, not to a revival of the New Deal coalition, but to a long-term revival of conservatism in the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan. From the beginning of this long period of deepening conservatism in the early 1970s, several groups continued to uphold the traditions of the American left. Two in particular sought to recreate the broad and tolerant spirit of the Debsian socialist Party, while absorbing also the new lessons, causes, and constituencies over which the left had stumbled in the intervening decades. The Democratic socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) had been founded by Michael Harrington out of some fragments of the old socialist Party. DSOC continued to operate, in the old socialist or Communist manner, as the left-wing of the New Deal coalition, clearly now not as a separate political party but as an explicitly socialist force within the Democratic Party and the labor movement. (My bold-italic reference to the Democratic Socialists becoming part of the Democratic Party.) The DSOO met with some success in attracting young activists disenchanted with the Democratic Party’s drift and seeking ways to galvanize the ailing party coalition. DSOC also drew to its banner a number of well-know public figures, such as Machinists’ Union leader William Winpisinger, feminist Gloria Steinem, gay rights activist Harry Britt, actor Ed Asner, and California Congressman Ron Dellums, the first avowed socialist in Congress since World War Two. The New American Movement (NAM) emerged at about the same time, more from the new left than from the old, though it counted in its number some former Communists who had left their party after 1956. NAM, true to these new left origins, was more

62 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. skeptical about the long-term future of the New Deal coalition, and accordingly devoted its energies more than did DSOC to the new movements of the 1960s, especially feminism, gay and lesbian liberation, and local community organizing. But neither NAM nor DSOC saw their heritages and organizing areas as mutually exclusive, and by the early 1980s -especially considering the weakness of the American left, came to see themselves as complementary, completing a formal merger in 1983. The merged organization, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for the first time since the First World War brought together the various splinters of left opinion in America: former Socialists and Communists, former old leftists and new leftists, and many who had never been leftists at all. As the old Cold war polarities break down, DSA has the opportunity to demonstrate that the history of the American left had reached a turning-point, not an end.’ The above history of the DSA clearly shows how the socialist have taken over the Democratic Party. The Democratic party originally favored limited federal government and state and local rights, but this policy was completely reversed under President Roosevelt, when it became the party of federal intervention and “big government.” President Roosevelt who used to refer to Stalin as ‘Uncle Joe’, was a hard line socialist who actually believed that the only way for this country to come out of the big depression that it was in, was for the Federal Government to take complete control of the economy. The DSA claims no loyalty to the Democratic Party. They claim that the peculiar nature of the American constitution renders third party politics difficult at the national and state level. To make a point they refer to the Peace and Freedom Party (1968) and the Citizens Party (1980) which ‘arose at moments of greater left-wing strength’ and these socialist parties did not significantly alter the

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 63 national election. They also claim to be a modest organization whose members have greatest influence in community-level electoral politics and to be a democratic socialist political organization which aims to bring Socialism into the mainstream of American politics. DSA strives to be a crucial socialist leaven within a mass movement and will endeavor to elect progressives to Congress and to the state legislature. As stated in their “Election Statement 2000”, the DSA recognizes that some socialists representing labor, environmentalists, gays and lesbians, and communities of color may choose to run under Democratic auspices, as in the 1988 Jesse Jackson campaign, or operate as Democrats like Senator Paul Wellstone, and the Democratic members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, one-half of whom are Black and Latino and all of whom possess strong labor backing and operative social democratic politics. The Social Democrats in Congress (they call themselves Progressives or Liberals, or whatever) control the agenda for the Democratic Party and espouse the DSA social goals. The Democratic House members elected a new leader a few years back, and her name is Representative Nancy Pelosi, CA-08 who is a member of the Progressive Caucus. . Future generations will discuss the 20th century as the time that the American dream began to crumble. It began when President Roosevelt sold the American public on the idea that government entitlements were the public’s right and that the founding concept of individualism was a fraud and a failure. There was nothing in the Constitution that gave the Federal government the power to Entitle anything, yet Roosevelt claimed this power to establish a means for imposing a Socialistic government on the unsuspecting public. “How else could this great country have fallen into the great depression, except for individual greed.” This was the rallying cry of the socialist and President Roosevelt bought it hook, line and sinker. How did this distruction occur and why did Congress and the Supreme Court

64 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. allow it? Think of it: since Roosevelt, the government has evolved into a money-wasting machine that steals over 40% of what every taxpayer makes, funding a myriad of bungling bureaucracies. Also, the 1990s showed that the cultural decline was almost complete when the people and the American Congress permitted its President to break laws, sell its sovereignty for campaign dollars, and molest women all in the name of economic prosperity. When any country, especially a Republic like the United States, is willing to swap core principles for dollars, the decline is complete. Roosevelt took office in 1933 and prevailed upon a Democraticled Congress to pass many laws completely alien to our form of government and our free-enterprise economic system. They were supposed to end the depression. In fact they were sold to the populace on that basis by a group of left-wing philosophers who surrounded the President. But they didn’t end the depression. If anything they prolonged it, because they were designed not to restore health to our traditional system but to confuse it, undermine it, and eventually destroy it. The “socialists”, who began calling themselves “liberals” or “progressives” or “caring and compassionates”, are fond of declaring that no matter what else may be said of Roosevelt, he did “end the depression.” After the manner of Adolf Hitler’s Big Lie, they have repeated this over and over again so often, even imbedding it in the majority of textbooks taught to our children in schools, that today million upon millions of people believe it. Yet, when World War II broke out in Europe, seven years after Roosevelt’s first election, there were as many unemployed people in America as on the day he took office. It was by entering the War in Europe and the Pacific that raised this country out of the depression. There were jobs for everyone who could work, jobs created by the war effort, not Roosevelts New Deal schemes and laws. The following lists are the yearly unemployment figures furnished by the Department of Labor. The labor force status of the noninstitutional population 14 years and over, annual averages:

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YEAR

% Of Labor Force Unemployed

1931..................................................... 15,9% 1932..................................................... 23.6% 1933..................................................... 24.9% 1934..................................................... 21.7% 1935..................................................... 20.1% 1936..................................................... 16.9% 1937..................................................... 14.3% 1938..................................................... 19.0% 1939..................................................... 17.2% 1940..................................................... 14.6% As one can see, eight years of Roosevelt’s Socialization did little for the unemployed ranks. After the 1932 election, most of the Socialists in the United States found a home in the Democratic Party. It was very apparent that President Roosevelt was a sympathetic follower of the socialist philosophy , so the Socialists flocked to his banner. Norman Thomas was asked by a reporter after the 1948 election, if he and the socialist Party were going to run again in 1952. Norman Thomas replied that the socialist Party had no need to run any more because the Democratic Party had adopted all their programs, leaving the party with nothing to run on.

66 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

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CHAPTER 3 BUILDING THE TROJAN HORSE FROM WITHIN The fight for specific economic system domination in the world results in a form of war that most people do not recognize. Too often one hears—especially from the so called third-world countries—that the United States consumes two-thirds of the world production. Therefore, it follows that the American’s are greedy—depriving these same third-worlders their due share of the world economic output. This idea is another socialist propaganda line to cover up the failures of Socialism. Since most third-world governments are socialistic in one form or another, they must depreciate the citizens of the United States because of their high standard of living. Think of it. In the United States the poverty level is set at about $10,000. In many countries throughout the world, a person earning $500 a year is making a fairly decent wage. This difference in earnings is the one thing that Socialists hate most. They cannot explain to their subjects why their wages are so low and those in the United States are so high. They must resort to all kinds of lies—one of which is that the Americans are all greedy. Their propaganda line is that “the United States citizens consumes two-thirds of the world output because they are greedy” when in fact they should be telling the truth “that the United States citizens consumes two-thirds of the world output because they can afford it!” In the United States, overcoming adversity is one of our great desires and one of our great sources of pride. But it is something that our anointed deep thinkers (Social Democrats) strive to eliminate from our lives, through everything from grade inflation in schools

68 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. to the welfare state. The Socialists want to eliminate stress, challenge, striving and competition. They want the necessities of life to be supplied as “rights”, which is to say, at the taxpayers expense, without anyone being forced to work for those necessities, except of course the taxpayers. Nothing is to be earned. “Self-esteem” is to be dispensed to the children as largess from the teachers: Adults are to have their medical care and other necessities dispensed as largess from the government. People are to be mixed and matched by race and sex and whatever else the Socialists want to take into account in order to present whatever kind of picture they think should be presented. This is a vision of human beings as livestock to be fed by the government and herded and tended by the socialist leaders. All the things that make us human beings are to be removed from our lives and we are to live as denatured creatures controlled and directed by our betters. The Socialists have done this over the years, slowly but surely, by infiltrating our school systems as teachers or instructors be it at the kindergarten level or the University level. They subtly teach Socialism as the only true course for this country to go. They rewrite history to degrade the United States whenever they can. They want the younger generation to hate their country of birth and they parade ‘Political Correct’ lies to further their goals. Today there are no Americans—there are only native-Americans, Asian-Americans, Afro-Americans, etc. All things that are wrong in the world is caused by the white-American who is just a greedy egotist. Those things that help human beings be independent and selfreliant, whether automobiles, guns, the free market or vouchers, provoke instant hostility from the anointed. Automobiles enable you to come and go as you wish, without so much as a “by your leave” to your betters. The very idea that other people will go where they want, how they want, and send their children to whatever schools

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 69 they choose, is galling to the Socialists, for it denies their very existence that is at the heart of their picture of themselves. Guns are completely inappropriate for the kind of sheep-like people the Socialists envision or the orderly, prepackaged world in which they are to live. When you are in mortal danger, you are supposed to dial 911, so that the police can arrive on the scene some time later, identify your body and file reports in triplicate. The free market is a daily assault on the vision of the Socialists. Just think of all those millions and millions of people out there buying whatever they want, whenever they want, whether the Socialists think it is good for them or not. Think of those people earning whatever increases they happen to get from producing goods or services for other people, at prices resulting from supply and demand, with the socialist cut out of the loop entirely and standing on the sidelines in helpless rage, unable to impose their particular vision of ‘social justice.’ The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elite. One of the most dangerous things about the welfare state is that it breaks the connection between what people have produced and what they consume, at least in many people’s minds. For the society as a whole, that connection remains as fixed as ever, but the welfare state makes it possible for individuals to think of money or goods as just arbitrary dispensations. Thus those who have less can feel a grievance against “society” and are less inhibited about stealing and vandalizing. And the very concept of gratitude or obligation disappears, even the obligation of common decency out of respect for other people. Our schools produce students whose brains are filled with psycho-babble but no knowledge. School administrator require that the level of teaching can only be at the level of the lowest learner. The smart children are left with nothing. Is it any wonder that the SAT scores are so low.

70 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Schools are no longer institutes of knowledge, they are only there for socialization. The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the Socialists.” It is not difficult to understand Socialists and their thinking. Most are idealists who think they have the solution that will bring to men “heaven on earth.” Once in power, they are vicious and will tolerate no deviation from their plan. They have a previous socialist that led the way on how to eliminate your opposition. Lenin came to power in 1917 and the Bolsheviks practiced terror from the first day of the regime. They boarded-up the Constituent Assembly and murdered leaders of rival parties such as the Kadets and the Left socialist Revolutionaries. Yet, as early as January of 1918, Lenin complained that his secret police, orginally known as the Cheka, were inordinately soft. To set an example, in September 1918, Lenin order the authorities in Nizhni Novgorod to ‘introduce at once mass terror, execute and deport hundreds of prostitutes, drunken soldiers, ex-officers, etc.’ Trotsky, for his part, warned that if soldiers drafted into the Red Army defied their officers ‘nothing will remain of them but a wet spot.’ Thus began the Red Terror, which helped win the civil war for the Bosheviks and defined the nature of Communist power. At a meeting of Communists, Grigori Zinoviev, one of Lenin’s lieutenants, declared that the Party had to carry with it 90 million of the country’s 100 million people: ‘As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.’ This edict, the historian Richard Pipes has pointed out, was, in effect, ‘a death sentence on 10 million.’ Most socialistic countries have tried during their first years in

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 71 control of a country to eliminate their opposition by one means or another. This elimination of opponents greases the way for future victories. In the United States, this destruction of the anti-socialist element started with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. With Roosevelt’s election the Democrats overwhelmingly took control of Congress. (For example: the 73rd Congress—1933 thru 1935— consisted of a Senate made up of 59 Democrats, 36 Republicans, 1 other. In the House of Representatives there were 313 Democrats, 117 Republicans, and 5 others.) Although there has been a number of Republican Presidents since 1932, the Democrats, between the years 1932 thru 2002 has controlled Congress for 60 of those seventy years. In reality the Democrats has controlled Congress for the entire 70 years if you count the nearly 10 moderate Republicans in the Senate. These so called moderate Republicans are closet socialists that vote with the Democrats most of the time. The Republican Party is really not a party. They are a group of politicians that are on their own and just trying to get reelected regardless of the issues. Whenever the Democrats attack a Republican, seldom if ever does one see other Republicans rally around the person being attacked. A good example of how the Social Democrats work is the case of Judge Robert Bork. During Judge Bork’s confirmation hearings in a Democrat dominated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where he was crucified by the Democrats, only a few whimpers were heard from the Republicans on the Committee. Why did the Democrats trash the character of Judge Bork? It was because he was one of the best Constitutional Scholar in the United States and socialist cannot tolerate anyone that believes in the Constitution as written by our forefathers. Socialism cannot exist under the true meaning of the Bill of Rights. Slowly but surely these so called activist judges that are being seated by the Democrats to destroy the Constitution and the first ten Amendments (Bill of Rights) are doing just that. As one judge stated ‘there is no such thing as the Bill of Rights. Those ten Amendments are mere thoughts of some old men.’ Where are these activist justices coming from? One can only wonder. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, addressing the Southern Center for

72 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. International Studies in Atlanta, Georgia stated, “I suspect that over time we will rely increasingly or take notice at least increasingly, on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues.” In other words, socialist who now control foreign courts are going to control the courts here in the United States.—not our Constitution! (The sentiments of Justice O’Connor has been echoed by Justice Ruth Ginsburg on many occasions.) DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. Although concepts of Socialism had been sketched by philosophers as far back as Plato, these had never been more than figments of the imagination. Like Oz or Lilliput, Plato’s Republic and Thomas Moore’s Utopia (which means “Nowhere”) were dreamed up in order to make a point about life and existing society. The French Revolution, however, made things that had once been taken fanciful suddenly seem possible. The most important of these new possiblities was Socialism, although this was not apparent when the Revolution began. The leaders of the French freedom movement had not aimed at a socialistic system, nor did the players in any of the other increasingly radical movements during the next five years. On the contrary, from Mirabeau to Robespierre, the revolutionists, it has been noted, were mostly of the bourgeoisie, and their key pronunciamentos affirmed the right of property. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens (French) followed closely the U.S. Declaration of Independence in proclaiming that the reason for government was to secure men’s rights. And its designation of those rights, “liberty, property, security”, resembled the American concept of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” However, as the Revolution unfolded and new constitutions were written, the French added a fourth substantive right: “equality.” To be sure, the Americans proclaimed that men

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 73 were “created equal,” but this was not a statement of policy; it was a stipulation about the nature of man and his relation to God. The French innovation was to include “equality” among the essential purposes of government. As the break with the old monarchy accelerated into an avalanche, the right of porperty remained sacrosanct. The Constitution of 1793, the formal expression of the most extreme phase of the Revolution, reaffirmed it in the strongest terms: “No one may be deprived of the least portion of his property without his consent, unless a legally established public necessity requires it, and upon condition of a just and previous indemnity.” It was only in the last days of the Revolution that someone came forward to argue that there was a contradiction within the revolutionary agenda, that fulfilling the promise of equality would require not merely the abolition of feudal titles and privileges, but the intitution of a new way of economic life, in which individual ownership would be abolished and each citizen would be furnished with an identical portion of nature’s bounty. The man who put this forth was named Francois-Noel Bafeuf, and he called himself Gracchus. At the trial following the abortive insurrection he was to lead in 1796, Babeuf claimed that his socialist beliefs were not original. He based his defense by quoting at length from Rousseau and Mably. His ideas, he stated, were borrowed from them. He concluded: “In condemning me, gentlemen of the jury... you place these great thinkers...in the dock.” Many things occurred just prior to the insurrection which has guided social thought ever since. A quick review of the past is necessary to understand how Socialism has evolved. The outbreak of the Revolution found Babeuf in Paris. At first, he was more an onlooker than a participant. Watching the mob parade the head of a Bastille defender on a pike, he was disgusted.

74 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Over time his misgivings about violence were replaced by the logic of evolutionary necessity. Babeuf ’s own part in the Revolution began as he returned from Paris to his native Picardy, which by 1790 had become one of the most active centers of agitation against the old regime’s taxes on salt and beverages. Long resented, these taxes became a prime target once the populace began to voice grievances. The official abolition of feudalism left unsettled many claims between lords and peasants, Babuef made himself a spokesman for the latter, both as an advocate in legal proceedings and also before the court of public opionion through a newssheet and various petitions. He called himself “the Marat of the Somme.” For more than two years, this mini-Marat built his reputation within the region as a revolutionary personage. Babeuf ’s gifts, however, were not those of a reconciler. He was better suited to follow the dictates that came down to his municipality, after the abolition of the monarchy, to conduct a ritual purging of “the signs of ancient servitude.” As one writer wrote about Babeut: “Anything burnable was to be handed over for a public bonfire at the foot of the Tree of Liberty, in the market square, after proper provision had been made for “fuel for the poor.” ...Babeuf, acting alone, and amidst the jeers and menaces of a hostile crowd...carried out his auto-da-fe. To the fleur-de-lis tapestries from the tribunal and the town hall he added “twelve superb portaits of kings,” garnered from the same places and from the district offices. The demonstration had been staged with the intention of celebrating the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January. But all it seemed to show was that the majority of the inhabitants of at least one Picard town were still royalists at heart.” Babeuf rallied behind first one and then another of the leading lights of the Revolution, finally settling on Robespierre on the grounds of his caring for the lower classes and advocacy of limitations on property rights. Attuned for the moment to the prevailing political tide, Babeuf found employment within the revolutionary

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 75 adminsitration. However, the charge of forgery remained against him, and the law caught up with him in November 1793. Spending the next eight months in prison, he was isolated from the most frenzied phase of the Terror and the ensuing downfall of Robespierre and the Jacobians. Released on bond, Babeuf found his way back to Paris in July 1794 and threw his lot in with the newly ascendant crowd of “Thermidorians,” the moderates who had overthrown Robespierre. Within three months, Babeuf turned against the Thermidorians on the grounds of their repressiveness. Soon the police were after him again. In February 1795 they caught up with him and he spent another eight months behind bars. During this incarceration he drew around him a few other political prisoners to form the Conspiracy of Equals. Throughout that year, the ruling Thermidorians alternately put down risings by the sansculottes on their Left and by royalists on their Right. In October, to strengthen itself for a showdown with the Right, the regime released a number of radicals from custody, among them Babeuf. Later, the Convention was dissolved and the Directory took over power. The Directory proclaimed that its mission was “to consolidate the republic... to regenrate morals, to revive commerce and industry ... to restore social order.” Part of its strategy was to placate the Left and take over their leadership.. Some publishers of radical sheets quietly accepted pecuniary aid from agents of the Directory, but Babeuf, who resumed his publishing of his newssheet, immediately after regaining his freedom, was irreconcilable. Within two months his vitriolic diatribes against the Directory and exhortations to class war had the police at his door again. Unfortunately, the government sent but a single officer to arrest Babeuf, who resisted and fled his lodgings. Babeuf continued to publish, and two months later, in February 1796, the frustrated police took his wife, the devoted Marie-Anne, into custody. The pretense

76 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. for the arrest was her part in distributing Babeuf ’s newssheet, but it was widely assumed that the real motive was to bring pressure on Babeuf himself. That, and reports that Marie-Anne was held without food for the first days, arouse indignation not only from Babeuf ’s circle but throughout the Left. The various factions that made up the Left, Babeuf ’s circle, veterans of the Jacobin regime, followers of the more radical sans-cullote leaders, Jacques-Rene Hebert and Anaxagoras Chaumette, who had been guillotined by the Jacobians, all participated in something called Pantheon Club. This was a discussion and agitation society, said to number some two to three thousand, which took its name from its meeting place in a convent near the Pantheon. A military contingent commanded by General Napoleon Bonaparte was dispatched to close it down, and the general himself is said to have padlock the doors. Thereafter, the Conspiracy of Equals emerged as the chief source of radical agitation. At the center of the Conspiracy was the self-proclaimed Insurrectionary Committee of Public Safety, made up of seven members. In addition to Babeuf, the Inssurectionary Committee included Augustin-Alexandre-Joseph Darthe, a law student who had taken part in storming the Bastille and then made his mark as a public accuser for the regions of Arras and Cambrai during the Reign of Terror. Another Jacovin veteran on the committe was Filippo Michele Buonarroti, and expatriate Italian of noble birth, descended of the family of Michelangel. The most important member of the inner circle of Conspirators was Sylvain Marechal, who composed the “Manifesto of the Equals,” one of the principal definition of the goals and philosophy of the Conspiracy. Marechal was known above all as a militant atheist. The Equals aimed to redeem the promise of the Revolution. They wanted “to add to the revolution in power and rank that incomparably more just and necessary one of property and intelligence, whose final result should be and impartial distribution of riches and knowledge amongst all the citizens.” The overriding goal was “Equality~! the first wish of nature, the first need of man.”

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 77 The motive for egalitarianism was both spiritual and material. The Equals wanted a “truly fraternal union of all Frenchmen” in which each member viewed his own well-being as entirely entwined with that of every other. “If there is a single man on earth who is richer and more powerful than his fellows,” said Merechal’s “Manifesto of the Equals,” ;...than the equilibrium is broken: crime and misfortune are on earth.” Therefore, it was imperative to “remove from every individual the hope of ever becoming richer, or more powerful, or more distinguished by his intelligence.” This would lead to “the disappearance of boundary-marks, hedges, walls, door-locks, disputes, trials, thefts, murders, all crimes,courts, prisons, gallows, penalties...envy, jealousy, insatiability, pride, deception, duplicity, in short all vices.” In addition to these estimable spiritual benefits, an egalitarian society would also, the Equals believed, serve to eliminate want. In the image of the economic world projected in the writings of Babeuf and his fellows, nature provided a relatively fixed bounty. Therefore, a person could “only succeed in having too much by arranging for others to have not enough.” This alone would justify equal distribution, but in addition, Babeuf speculated that an egalitarian society would turn scarcity into abundance. “A few hours occupation per day would secure to every individual the means of living agreeably,” he wrote. The way to create a sysem of equality would be to “organize a communal regime which will suppress private property, set each to work at the skill job he understands, require each to deposit the fruits of his labor in kind at the common store, and establish an agency for the distribution of basic necessities. This agency will maintain a complete list of people and of supplies, will distribute the latter with scrupuloous fairness, and will deliver them to the home of each worker.” Money would be abolished, the circulation of gold or silver forbidden. Thus provisioned, “no member of the community may possess anything other than what the law makes available through the agency of the governors.” Each would be supplied alike with

78 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. furniture and clothing, Buonarroti explained, “It is essential... that the citizen should habitually find in all his fellow countrymen equals, brothers, and that he should nowhere meet with the least sign of even apparent superiority.” Citizens would be divided into occupational groups and would be attached to their location of residency. They could “receive the common ration only in the district where they live, except in the case of movements authorized by the administration.” The authorities not only would have to approve any moves, but could command them: “the movements of workers from one locale to another may be ordered by the supreme administration in the light of the resources and needs of the community.” Babeuf foresaw “the extinction of those receptacles of every vice, large cities; and covering France with villages.” The goal was not just to change the system but to change people. Said Babeuf: “Society must be made to operate in such a way that it eradicates once and for all the desire of a man to become richer, or wiser, or more powerful than others.” In designing their new society, the Equals devoted a great deal of attention to planning the upbringing of the young and also to the ongoing instructions of the adult population. As Buonarroti recalled: In the social order concieved by the Committee, the country takes possession of every individual at birth, and never quits him till death. It watches over his first moments, secures him the nourishment and cares of his mother, keeps out of his reach every thing that might impair his health or enervate his consttution, guarantees him against the dangers of a false tenderness, where he is to acquire the virtues and intelligence necessary to make him a good citizen.

The “national seminary” alluded to here would comprise samesex boarding schools where all children would be raised. The goal of their education would be “to make the citizens love equality, liberty and their country, and place them in a condition to serve

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 79 and defend it. After a number of years in the “boarding schools, “so that as soon as the children would have acquired strength, they would be indoctrinated to military works. It is necessary to preclude the introduction of young people into social life until inured to discipline, and to the privations of the camp, inflamed with love of country, and burning to serve it.” Thus would the young people pass several years encamped on France’s frontiers, securng the national boundaries while being hardened in final preparation for “the rights of citizenship.” (This philosophy was adopted by President Kennedy in his speech where he stated: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but, what you can do for your country.”) Marx and Engels made a second passing reference to Babeuf in the Communist Manifesto, distinguishing him from the derided “utopians,” as an early voice of proletarian struggle. They might have been more generous in their acknowledgement since fifty years before the Manifesto, Babeuf ’s Defense (written in his prison cell just before he was guillotined) had anticipated its main theme. “Class war,” it said, arises when “the masses can no longer find a way to go on living; they see that they possess nothing and that they suffer under the harsh and flinty oppression of a greedy ruling class. The hour strikes for great and memorable revolutionary events....when a general overthrow of the system of private property is inevitable, when the revolt of the poor against the rich becomes a necessity that can no longer be postponed.” All socialist movement that followed Babeuf have adopted his socialist world concepts. Most also believe the this ‘road plan’ must be followed for success to be gauranteed. If one follows the socialist movements since Babeuf, you find that Socialism is like a yard stick as follows: _LEFT_____________________________________RIGHT_ Communism Social Democrats Fascism |

80 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

Yet Communism, Social Democrats, Fascism and all the other variations of Socialism have one thing in common. It means slavery to the people of the world. In a socialist world, you will do what the Committee tells you to do. You will work where you’re told, you will live where you’re told, you will be told what to think, etc. You will not be paid for your labors and all that you produce will be turned into the community store, to be doled out by the Committee. So much for the Distribution of Wealth! Every thing will be owned by the socialist Leaders, who will decide who gets what! THE UGLY AMERICAN Too often one hears disparaging remarks about the United States and its citizens. More often than not it is other Americans that make these snide remarks and they are applauded by their peers. One can easily pick out the person that makes these unseemly remarks because they are always Democratic Socialists. For example: Senator Kerry, who aspired to be the Democratic president, stated at the beginning ot the Iraqi conflict that the United States should do nothing until we receive approval from the U.N. A question that should have been asked of Senator Kerry but was not is: “Who should be responsible for U.S. foreign policy, the United States or the United Nations? I am sure he would have said that world opinion dictates that we should follow others in our foreign policy strategy. What stupidity! The concept of allowing those socialist countries who hate us to tell our Government what it can and cannot do is ludicrous to say the least. For example: In the weeks following that fateful September 11 attack on the this country, there was an outpouring of sympathy for the United States and the 3,000 dead as a result of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the sympathy, though welcome, was short-lived and paled before denunciations of America,

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 81 which grew increasingly loud and very quickly crossed the line into outbursts of anti-Americanism so rabid they defied all reason. In Brazil, for example, ex-Roman Catholic cleric Leonado Boff, an exponent of liberation theology writing in a popular newspaper, declared that his only regret was that only one plane had crashed into the Pentagon. It would have been much better, according to Boff, if there had been 25 planes crashing into the building. Anti-Americanism as an obsession and a phobia overwhelming everything the anti-American thinks and does. It is based largely on misinformation and downright ignorance of what the United States is really like and what it stands for. This isn’t strange because people often are ill-informed or too lazy to do serious reading and thinking about subjects on which they’re nonetheless willing to speak with certainty. Why the deep contempt for the U.S.A.? America’s success is one reason. Look back over the past two centuries and one sees American society has enjoyed a continuous upward change in their standard of living than have European societies. But anti-Americanism isn’t just dislike for the rich, most powerful nation on the planet. It’s much more. For one thing, it’s warmed-over, old fashioned, left-wing hatred of capitalism and liberalism expressed as hate for the world’s great model of capitalist success, the United States, with its free-trade policies, its free institutions and fee-speech traditions. America is the object of their loathing because, for more than a half-century the U.S. has been the most prosperous and creative capitalist society on Earth,. When anti-globalization demonstrators march in places such as Seattle and Washington, they carry posters that not only disparage the United States but also declare the traditional leftist message: “PRIVATIATION KILLS” and “CAPITALISM KILLS.” But anti-American passions run deeper than political ideology,

82 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. and that makes them even more insidious than Socialistic hypocrisy. It is this profound psychological need to see the United States bested and denounced that makes anti-Americanism the Hydra-headed monster that it is and accounts for its particular viciousness. The need to denounce America is so deep, for example, that otherwise intelligent people are blind to the contradictions that lie at the very heart of their arguments. Thus the United States is denounced as a land where individualism is rampant and people are pitted against one another in gladiator type competition. At the same time, the United States is said to be a place where conformity is the rule and Americans a people incapable of thinking for themselves. The greatest danger of anti-Americanism is that it blinds many people to the world as it is. Thus anti-American prejudice led European leaders to denounce as stupid and misguided Ronald Reagan’s 1987 demand to Mikhail Gorbachev that he tear down the Berlin Wall. But today, it is obvious – especially of the former ‘satellites’ of Eastern Europe – that President Reagan’s policies precipitated the disintegration of the Communist regime based in Moscow. Similarly, anti-Americans denounced President George W. Bush’s naming of North Korea, Iraq and Iran as “an axis of evil.” His numerous anti-American critics said that Bush’s words were stupid, the comments of a cowboy, even though it has been proved that the three countries he named had bought, manufactured, sold or given away weapons of mass destructions, arguably enabling terrorists to obtain them. Far from being a rash or stupid statements, Bush’s “axis of evil” speech “was well thought out . The Islamist hatred of the West is complete and it is based on religion. Doing away with poverty won’t bring that hatred to an end. The Islamic radicals reproach Western civilization for contravening the teachings of the Qur’an in its very existence. There is no compromise that can be reached. Therefore, President Bush’s war on terrorism is correct. Ben Lauden had more attacks planned on the United States and the Western Hemisphere. Just look at the

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 83 terrorist cell uncovered recently in Canada. Take over the Canadian Parliament and cut off the head of the Prime Minister! The terrorist will not go away by themselves. They must be removed wherever they are found. To return to the original question of why do so many countries hate the U.S, one only has to look at socialist views of Capitalism. The U.S. is the only capitalist system that gives its citizens the freedom to earn what he can, to buy what he wants, and to live free as man should. The rest of the world is either socialist or controlled by dictators. These are the countries that Senator Kerry and other socialist senators (along with Justice Ginsberg of the Supreme Court) say should guide our laws and courts. For example, the number of world member in the U.N. number roughtly 191 (or there abouts). One cannot really find the total number, because countries apply and are accepted or rejected by an unknown criteria. For example, Sudan was once considered one nation. Today, it is questionable because Sudan is really two entities. The North is run by a hard core fundamentalist Islamic regime, and the South, who have been fighting the North, is made up of a Christian coalition that reject the Islam dictatorship. However, according to the latest list issued by the U.N. the following list indicates the true extent of Socialism (as of 1985). (1985 is the year during which the largest number of countries was governed by socialists. For some Third World countries with dictatorial governments, state-run economies and close ties to the Soviet bloc, it becomes a fine judgement whether to count them as ‘Communist’ or ‘Third World socialist’):

Communism Afghanistan Albania Bugaria Cambodia China Cuba Czechoslovakia Hungary Laos Mongolia Nicaragua North Korea ` Poland Romania U.S.S.R. Vietnam Yugoslavia

84 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

Social Democracy Australia Austria Finland France Greece Germany Israel Italy New Zealand Portugal Spain Sweden Third World socialist Countries (Africa) Angola Benin Burkina Faso Burundi Cape Verde Congo Democratic Republic of Congo Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Kenya Madagascar Mali Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Rwanda Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe Third World socialist Countries (Middle East) Algeria Iraq Egypt Sudan Syria PDR Yemen

Third World socialist Countries (Asia) Bangladesh Burma (Myanmar) Cambodia India Indonesia Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Third World socialist Countries (Latin America & Caribbean)

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 85

Argentina Aruba Bolivia Chile Curacao Deminican Republic Grenada Guatemala Jamaica Peru Venezuela

Barbados Costa Rica El Salvador Guyana Suriname

The above list fluctuates but it remains realitively the same throughout time. Why any member of Congress would suggest that we allow the above countries to control America’s foreign policy is beyond comprehension. The dislike for this country and its citizens is not because we are not generous, but because of jealousy. Socialism is being sold to the people as “we will redistribute the wealth” and “ we will bring heaven on earth to all, therefore religion is nothing but an opiate to the people and they will no longer require this opiate.” I recommend that everyone should read the previous description of Merechal’s “Manifesto of the Equals.” If anyone still believes that Socialism is the road to ‘heaven on earth’ God help us.!

86 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 87

Chapter 4 The International Conspiracy There is so much going on behind the scenes that most Americans are unaware of the destructive forces that are at work to destroy this Country and its Constitution. The main thrust over the years has been the destruction of the Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments to the Constitution). These Amendments were given to the people of this Country so that a run-away Federal Government would never rule the people like a king or dictator. From the International Socialists point of view, this is unacceptable. The people must do as we say or “we will treat them like chattel.” Today, being a political entity, is a politicians career. If they lose an election or leave office for any reason, they find a position somewhere to look as if they are fruitful, but in reality they are working behinds the scenes to get back into power—whether through election or appointment. They do not go quietly or fade away (as former General McArthur recommended for old soldiers.} If one group is effectively in control of national governments and multinational corporations; promotes world government through control of media, foundation grants, and education; and controls and guides the issues of the day; then they control most options available. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the financial powers behind it, have done all these things, and promote the “New World Order”, as they have for over seventy years. The CFR is the promotional arm of the Ruling Elite in the United States of America. Most influential politicians, academics and media personalities are members, and it uses its influence to infiltrate the New World Order into American life. Its’ ‘experts’

88 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. write scholarly pieces to be used in decision making, the academics expound on the wisdom of a united world, and the media members disseminate the message. Most people do not see the danger to our country and to the entire world. The leaders behind this conspiracy have absolute control of all of our mass-communications media, especially television, the radio, the press, and Hollywood. To understand how the most influential people in America came to be members of an organization working purposefully for the overthrow of the Constitution and American sovereignty, we have to go back and review the history of the Illuminati, the name chosen by the conspirators. That a ruling power elite does indeed control the U.S. government behind the scenes has been attested to by many Americans in a position to know. Felix Frankfurter, Justice of the Supreme Court (1939-1962), said: “The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.” In a letter to an associate dated November 21, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote, “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” February 23, 1954, Senator William Jenner warned in a speech: “Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government, a bureaucratic elite which believes our Constitution is outmoded.” Baron M.A. Rothschild wrote, “Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.” The One World enslavement conspiracy was started over two centuries ago by Adam Weishaupt, an apostate Catholic Priest who was financed by The House of Rothschild. Weishaupt created what he called ‘The Illuminati’. Documentary evidence describes how this Illuminati became the instrument of the House of Rothschild to achieve a “One World Government” and how every War during the past two centuries was started by this Illuminati. Documentation shows how one Jacob H. Schiff was sent to the United States by the Rothschilds to further the Illuminati scheme and how Schiff

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 89 plotted to get control of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. The documentation shows how Schiff took over our Congress and our Presidents to achieve control of our entire Money-System and created the Income Tax and how Schiff and his co-conspirators created the Council on Foreign Relations to control our elected officials to drive the U.S. into becoming an enslaved unit of a “United Nations” One World Government. A historical summary of how this occurred follows: In order to present a very clear picture of how this enslavement began, we must go back to the 18th century and name the individuals who initiated this conspiracy and progress to the present of intervening actions that occurred. In 1760’s when it first came into existence under the name Illuminati. Adam Weishaupt, who was born jewish, converted to Catholicism and became a Catholic priest, and then at the urging of the newly-organized House of Rothschilds, defected and organized the Illuminati. The Rothschilds financed that operation and every war since then; beginning with the French Revolution. Most strife in the world has been promoted by the Illuminati under various names. In the United States immediately after World War I, they created what they called the “Council on Foreign Relations.” The leaders of the original Illuminati conspirators were foreigners but to conceal that fact, most of them changed their original family names to American sounding names. For example, the true name of the Dillons, Clarence and Douglas Dillon is Laposky. One of the Dillons was Secretary of the Treasury Department. There is a similar establishment of the Illuminati in England operating under the name of the “British Institute of International Affairs (actually , “The Royal Institute of International Affairs). There are similar secret Illuminati organizations in France, Germany, and other nations operating under different names and all of these organizations, including the CFR, continuously set up numerous subsidiary fronts that are infiltrated into every phase of the various nation’s affairs. But at all times, the operation of these organizations are controlled by the International Bankers. One of the prime

90 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. agents in this control is through the international BAR Association and its splinter groups such as the American Bar Association. It is important to remember that there are BAR Associations in nearly every nation of the world. It was in 1770 that the professional money-lenders, organized by the House of Rothschild, hired Adam Weishaupt to revise and modernize the age-old protocols of Zionism which was designed to give the “Synagogue of Satan” (so named by Jesus) ultimate worlddomination so they could rule what would be left of the human race after the final social-cataclysm. On May 1, 1776, Weishaupt completed his plan and officially organized the Illuminati to put the plan into execution. That is why 1 May is the great day with all communist nations to this very day. Also, 1 May is named “Law Day” as declared by the American BAR Association. The plan that Weishaupt constructed called for the destruction of all existing governments and religions. That objective was to be reached by dividing the masses of people whom Weishaupt termed “goyim” (nations) or human cattle into opposing camps on political, social, and economic, and other issues. The opposing sides were then to be armed and incidents provided which would cause them to fight and weaken themselves and gradually destroy national governments and religious institutions. The main features of the Weishaupt plan of operation required his Illuminati to do the following things to accomplish their purpose: Use monetary and sex bribery to obtain control of men already in high places of the various levels of all governments and other fields of endeavor. Once influential persons had fallen for the lies, deceits, and temptations of the Illuminati they were to be held in bondage by application of political and other forms of blackmail, threats of financial ruin, public exposure and fiscal harm, even death to themselves and members of their family. Illuminati and the faculties of colleges and universities were to cultivate students possessing exceptional mental ability belonging to well-bred families with international leanings and recom-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 91 mend them for special training in internationalism. Such training was to be provided by granting scholarships to those selected by the Illuminati. (That gives you an idea what a “Rhodes Scholarship” means. It means indoctrination into accepting the idea that only a oneworld government can put an end to recurring wars and strife.) That’s how the United Nations was sold to the American people. All influential people trapped into coming under the control of the Illuminati, plus the students who had been specially educated and trained, were to be used as agents and placed behind the scenes of all governments as experts and specialists so they would advise the top executives to adopt policies which would in the long run serve the secret plans of the Illuminati one-world conspiracy and bring about the destruction of the government and religions they were elected or appointed to serve. Perhaps the most vital directive in Weishaupt’s plan was to obtain absolute control of the press, at that time the only masscommunications media, to distribute information to the public so that all news and information could be slanted so that the masses could be convinced that a one-world government is the only solution to our many and varied problems.

Practically all the movie lots in Hollywood are owned by the Lehmans; Kuhn, Loeb, and Company; Goldman-Sachs; and other international bankers. All the national radio and TV channels in the nation are owned and controlled by those same international bankers. The same is true of every chain of metropoliltan newspapers and magazines, also of the press wire services such as the Associated Press, United Press, International, etc.. The supposed heads of these media are merely the fronts for the international bankers, who in turn compose the hierarchy of the CFR, today’s Illuminati in America. In 1785, the Bavarian government outlawed the Illuminati and closed the Lodges. In 1786, they published all the details of the conspiracy. The English title of that publication is: “The Original

92 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Writings of the Order and the Sect of the Illuminati.” Copies of the entire conspiracy were sent to all the heads of church and state in Europe. But the power of the Illuminati, which was actually the power of the Rothschilds, was so great that this warning was ignored. There will be many who will read in disbelief that Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton became students of Weishaupt. Jefferson was one of Weishaupt strongest defenders when he was outlawed by his government and it was Jefferson who infiltrated the Illuminati into the then newly organized lodges of the “Scottish Rite” in New England. The proof: “In 1789, John Robison warned all Masonic leaders in America that the Illuminati had infiltrated into their lodges and on July 19, 1789, David Papen, President of Harvard University, issued the same warning to the graduating class and lectured them on how the influence of the Illuminism was acquiring on American politics and religion. In addition John Quincy Adams, who had organized the New England Masonic Lodges issued his warnings. He wrote three letters to Colonel William L. Stone, a top Mason, in which he exposed how Jefferson was using Masonic lodges for subversive Illuministic purposes. Those three letters are at this time in Whittenburg Square Library in Philadelphia. In short, Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party, was a member of the Illuminati which at least partly accounts for the condition of the party at this time and through infiltration of the Republican Party. The concept of the American way is a myth. The one-world conspirators are in every branch of American government. In 1828, a Captain William Morgan decided it was his duty to inform all Masons and the general public what the full proof was regarding the Illuminati, their secret plans, intended objectives and to reveal the identities of the masterminds of the conspiracy. The Illuminati promptly tried Morgan in absentia and convicted him of treason. They ordered Richard Howard, and English Illuminist, to carry out their sentence of execution as a traitor. Morgan tried to escape to Canada, but Howard caught up with him near the border, near the Niagara Gorge, where he murdered him. This was verified

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 93 in a sworn statement made in New York by one Avery Allen to the effect that he heard Howard render his report of the execution to a meeting of “Knights Templars”, in St. John’s Hall in New York. He also told how arrangements had been made to ship Howard back to England. That affidavit is on record in New York City Archives. In the early 1850’s, the Illuminati held a secret meeting in New York which was addressed by a British Illuminist named Wright. Those in attendance were told that the Illuminati was organizing the radical and atheistic groups with all other subversive groups into an international group to be known as Communists. That was when the word ‘Communist’ came into being. This plan, ‘Communist’, was to be used to enable the Illuminati to incite future wars and revolutions. Clinton Roosevelt, a direct ancestor of Franklin Roosevelt, Horace Greeley, and Charles Dana, foremost newspaper publishers of the time, were appointed to head a committee to raise funds for the new venture. Most of the funds were provided by the Rothschilds and this fund was used to finance Karl Marx and Engels when they wrote “Das Kapital” and the “Communist Manifesto in Soho, England. Weishaup died in 1830, but prior to his death, he prepared a revised version of the age-old conspiracy, the Illuminati, which under various aliases was to organize, finance, direct, and control the international organizations and groups by working their agents into executive positions at the top. In the United States we have Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy, Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, Fulbright, George Bush, etc. as prime examples. In addition, while Karl Marx was writing the “Communist Manifesto” under the direction of one group of Illumnatis, Professor Karl Ritter of Frankfurt University was writing the antithesis under the direction of another group. The concept was that those who directed the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies to enable them to divide larger and larger numbers of the human race into opposing camps, so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other. And in

94 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. particular to destroy all political and religious institutes. The work Ritter started was continued after his death and completed by the German philosopher Freidrich Wilhelm Nietzsche who founded Nietzescheanism. The Nietzescheanism was later developed into Fascism and then into Nazism and was used to foment World War I and World War II. During World War II, international communism was to be built up until it equaled in strength that of united Christendom. When it reached that point, it was to be contained and kept in check until required for the final social cataclysm. This was the policy that was put into effect after WW II by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. That policy was followed by Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and George Bush. The Plan for WW III was to foment trouble by agents of the Illuminati between political Zionists and the Muslim world. That war is to be directed in such a manner that all of Islam and political Zionists (Israelis) will destroy each other while at the same time, the remaining nations, once more divided on this issue, will be forced to fight themselves into a state of complete exhaustion; physically, mentally, spiritually, and economically. Any one with any sense of responsibility can see that this is what is going on in the Middle and Far East today. Going back a little in history, in 1834, the Italian revolutionary leader, Guiseppe Mazzini, was selected by the Illuminati to direct their revolutionary program throughout the world. He served in that capacity until he died in 1872, but some years before he died, Mazzini had enticed an American General named Albert Pike into the Illuminati. Pike was fascinated by the idea of a one-world government and ultimately became the head of this conspiracy. Between 1859 and 1871, Pike worked out a military blueprint for three world wars and various revolutions throughout the world which he considered would forward the conspiracy to its final stage in the 20th century. Pike foretold all this in a statement he made to Mazzini in

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 95 August 15, 1871. Pike stated that after World War III is ended, those who will aspire to undisputed world-domination will provoke the greatest social cataclysm the world has ever known. Quoting his own word taken from the letter he wrote to Mazzinni and which letter is now catalogued in the British Museum in London, he said: We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social-cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute-atheism, the origin of savagery and of most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the people will be forced to defend themselves against the worldminority of the world-revolutionarys and will exterminate those destroyers of civilization and the multitudes disillusioned with Christianity whose spirits will be from that moment without direction and leadership and anxious for any deal, but without knowledge where to send its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal-manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer brought finally out into public view. A manifestation which will result from a general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time.

Those who today comprise the conspiracy (The CFR in the United States and the RIIA in Britain), direct our governments whom they hold in usury through such methods as the Federal Reserve System in America to fight wars, such as Vietnam (created by the United Nations), so as to further Pike’s Illuminati plans to bring the world to that stage of the conspiracy when atheistic-communism and the whole of Christianity can be forced into an all-out war within the remaining nations as well as on an international basis scale. A List of “Initial List of Council on Foreign Relations Member” can be found on the Internet (as of 12/15/07). It may not be there for long. It could end up like the list of Congressional member of the Democratic Socialists of America which was listed back in the 1990s on the Internet. When people found out who they were really voting for, the list suddenly disappeared.

96 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Over the years, members of the CFR has penetrated the highest levels of our government to do their part in establishing a one-world government at the expense of the Constitution and the American Public. Always bear in mind that the CFR is an off=shoot of the Round Table and what they stand for—control of the world governments through finances and a one-world government. A listing of CFR members and their government aspirations or goals (members of Special Groups and Secret Teams in Government): PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES Bill Clinton Reuben Askew Alan Cranston John Glenn Walter Mondale John Anderson Howard Baker George Bush Jimmy Carter Dwight Eisenhower Adlai Stevenson DEPT OF STATE MEMBERS (1995) Secretary Warren Christopher Dep. Secretary Cliff R. Wharton Jr. Under Sec.Pol. Afr Pete Tarnoff Under Secretary Maj. Gen. t Dick Moose Under Secretary Global Afrs Tim Wirth Ass. Secretary E. Asian Pacific Affairs Winston Lord (Pres. and a Rep), Ass. Secretary Europe Canadian Affairs Stephen Oxman Ass. Secretary Intel Res. Tobi Gati Ass. Secretary Intr.-American Affairs Alex F. Watson

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 97 CIA DIRECTORS, MEMBERS Richard Helms (66-73 Johnson), James R. Schlesinger (73 Nixon), William E. Colby (73-76 Nixon), George Bush (76-77 Ford), Adm Stansfield Turner (77-81 Carter), William J. Casey (81-87 Reagan) William H. Webster (87-91 Reagan), Robert M. Gates (91-93 Bush) R. James Woolsey (93- Clinton). John Deutch, chosen to replace Woolsey as CIA Director DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (Past and Present Partial Listing) Donald Regan John Helmann CD. Lord William Simon Michael Blumenthal C. Fred Bergsten Anthony M. Solomon Arnold Nachmanoff Helen B. Junz Richard Fisher Roger Altman George Pratt Shultz UNION PRESIDENTS I.W. Abel (United Steelworkers) Sol Chick Chaikin (Pres. Ladies Garment Workers) Tom R. Donahue (Sec/Tres AFL/CIO) Murray H. finley (Pres. Amal. Clothing Textile Workers) Victor Gautbaum

98 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. (Amer Fed. State County Muni Employees) Lane Kirkland (Pres. AFL/CIO) H. D. Samuel (Pres Ind. Union Dept. AFL/CIO) M. J. Ward (Pres. U. Ass. Plumbing Pipe) Glenn E. Watts (Pres Comm. Workers of Amer) Len Woodcock (Pres UAW) Jerry Wurf (Pres. Amer F. County. and Muni. Emp.) PRESIDENTS COMMISSION EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE David Rockefeller Willard Butcher (Pres. Chase Manhattan Bank) Thorton Bradshaw (Pres. Atlantic Richfield) John McKinley, (Pres. Texico) Ruben Mettler (Pres. TRW) John Whitehead (Goldman Sachs) Marina N. Whitman (GM Corp) CFR Secret Team Members in the Military (Partial List) ALLIED SUPREME COMMAND 49-52 Eisenhower 52-53 Ridgeway 53-56 Gruenther 56-63 Norstad 63-69 Lemnitzer 69-74 Goodpaster 80-Rogers SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE 57-59 McElroy 59-61 Gates 61-68 McNamara 69-73 Laird 73 Richardson 77-77 Rumsfield 77-Brown

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 99 80 Weinberger 87-89 Frank C. Carlucci 93-95 Les Aspin DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Frank Carlucci John Deutch UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Fred Ikel Gen. Stillwell Frank Wisner ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MILITARY FELLOWS Army Maj. Gen. T. Ayers Air Force Col. K Baker Army Lt. Gen. S. Berry, Jr. Army Capt. Dewienter Army Col. A. Dewey Navy Capt. H Fiske Air Force Col. E. Foote Army Lt. Gen. R. Gard Air Force Maj. Gen. R. Ginsburgh Army Brig. Gen. M. Green Air Force Col. R. Head Air Force Brig. Gen. T. Julian ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MILITARY FELLOWS (Cont) Navy Capt. W. Kerr Air Force Col. I. Klette Navy Capt. R. Kurth Air Force LT. Col. J. Levy

100 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Army Col. G. Loeftke Air Force Lt. Gen. G. Loving Air Force Col. M. McPeak Navy Capt. R. Miale Air Force Lt. Gen. J. Pfautz Air Force Col. L. Pfeiffer Navy Capt. S. Ring Air Force Col. M. Sanders Army Col. J. Sewall Navy Rear Adm. C. Tesh Air Force Col. F. Thayer Army Maj. Gen. J. Thompson Air Force Maj. Gen. W. Usher Army Gen. S.Walker Navy Rad. R. Welander Air Force Col. J. Wolcott ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MILITARY FELLOWS (Cont) Navy Capt. Gentry Air Force Col. T. Eggers SUPERINTENDENTS US MIL WEST POINT 60-63 Westmoreland 63-66 Lampert 66-68 Bennett 70-74 Knowlton 74-77 Berry, Jr. 77-Goodpaster PRESIDENT, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIY Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, Jr. SECRETARY OF NAVY John Lehman, Jr.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 101 CHIEF OF STAFF ARMY Gen. J. Wickham JOINT STAFF Gen. David Jones Vice Adm. Thor Hanson Lt. Gen. Paul Gorman JOINT STAFF (Cont) Maj. Gen. R.C. Bowman Brig. Gen. F, Brown LT. Col. W. Clark Capt. Raplh Crosby Adm. Wm. Crowe Col. P. Dawkins Vice Adm. Thor Hanson Col. W. Hauser Col. B. Hosmer Maj. R.Kimmitt Capt. F. Klotz Gen. W. Knowlton Vice Adm. J. Lee Capt. T. Lupter Col. D. Mead Maj. Gen. Jack Merritt Gen. E. Meyer Col. Wm E. Odom Col. L. Olvey Col. Geo. K. Osborn JOINT STAFF (Cont) Maj. Gen. . J. Pustuay Capt. P.A. Putignano Lt. Gen. E. L. Rowny Capt. Gary Sick Maj. Gen. J. Siegal

102 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Maj. Gen. Dewitt Smith Brig. Gen. Perry Smith Col. W. Taylor Maj. Gen. J. N. Thompson Rear Adm. C.A.H. Trost Adm. S. Turner Maj. Gen. J. Welch CFR Secret Team Members in the Media (Partial List, Past & Present) CBS C.C. Collingwood Lawrence LeSuer Dan Rather Harry Reasoner Richard Hottelet CBS (C0nt) Frank Stanton Bill Moyers NBC/RCA Jane Pfeiffer Lester Crystal R. W. Sonnenfeldt T.F. Bradshaw John Petty David Brinkley John Chancellor Marvin Kalb Irvine Levine P.G. Peterson John Sawhill ABC Ray Adam Frank Cary

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 103 T.M. Macioce Ted Koppel John Scali Barbara Walters CABLE NEWS NETWORK Daniel Schorr PUBLIC BROADCAST SERVICE Hartford Gunn Robert McNeil Jim Lehrer C. Hunter-Gault Hodding Carter III ASSOCIATED PRESS Keith Fuller Stanley Swinton Louis Boccardi Harold Anderson U.P.I. H.L. Stevenson REUTERS Michael Posner BOSTON GLOBE David Rogers L.A. TIMES SDICATE Tom Johnson Joseph Kraft L.A. TIMES MIRROR Richard W. Murphy Charles A. Kupchan Michael Clough Zygmunt Nagorski

104 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Nancy Bodurtha L.A. TIMES MIRROR (Cont) Richard T. Childress Carl W. Ford Jr.. Nomsa Daniels Alton Frye Gregory F. Treverton NEWSDAY Jessica Mathew Michael Mandelbaum Richard N. Haass Richard W. Murphy John L. Hirsch Alexander J. Motyl Nicholas X. Rizopoulos. Alan D. Romberg C.V. Starr Gidion Gottlieb Charles A. Kupchan BALTIMORE SUN Henry Trewhitt CHICAGO SUN TIMES James Hoge MINNEAPOLIS STARR/TRIBUNE John Cowles Jr. HOUSTON POST William P. Hobby NY TIMES CO. Richard Gelb James Reston William Scranton A.M. Rosenthal

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 105 Seymour Topping James Greenfield Max Frankel Jack Rosenthal Harding Bancroft Amory Bradford Orvil Dryfoos David Halberstram Walter Lippmann L.E. Markel H.L. Matthews John Oakes Harrison Salisbury A. Hays Sulzberger A. Ochs Sulzberger C.L. Sulzberger H.L. Smith Charles A. Kupchan BALTIMORE SUN Henry Trewhitt CHICAGO SUN TIMES James Hoge MINNEAPOLIS STARR/TRIBUNE John Cowles Jr. HOUSTON POST William P. Hobby NY TIMES CO. Richard Gelb James Reston William Scranton A.M. Rosenthal Seymour Topping James Greenfield

106 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Max Frankel Jack Rosenthal Harding Bancroft Amory Bradford Orvil Dryfoos David Halberstram Walter Lippmann L.E. Markel H.L. Matthews John Oakes Harrison Salisbury A. Hays Sulzberger NY TIMES CO. (C0nt) A. Ochs Sulzberger C.L. Sulzberger H.L. Smith Steven Rattner TIME INC. Richard Burt Ralph Davidson Donald M. Wilson Louis Banks Henry Grunwald Alexander Herard Sol Lionwitz Rawleigh Warner Jr. Thomas Watson Jr. NEWSWEEK/WASH POST Katherine Graham Philip Graham Arjay Miller TC N. deB. Katzenbach Frederick Beebe

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 107 Robert Christopher A. De Borchgrave Osborne Elliot NEWSWEEK/WASH POST (Cont) Phillipo Geyelin Kermit Lausner Murry Marder Eugene Meyer Malcolm Muir Maynard Parker George Will Robert Kaiser Meg Greenfield Walter Pincus Murray Gart Peter Osnos Don Oberdorfer DOW JONES CO. (Wall Street Journal) William Agee J. Paul Austin TC Charles Meyer Robert Potter Richard Wood Robert Bartley Karen House

NATIONAL REVIEW Wm. F. Buckley Jr. Richard Brookhiser With all the CFR members plus other CFR moles within all of

108 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the Departments of government, is it any wonder why the U.S. is not already under control of the United Nations?

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 109

CHAPTER 5 THE HIDDEN AGENDA THE DESTRUCTION FROM WITHIN. Socialism has been a mass movement in America without much organization. Its control of the Democratic platform has been through single-issue organizations and the recruitment of millions of single-issue Americans. In taking over the Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists of America has installed its platform which is clearly stated in its paper on “Where We Stand.” The paper states: “In the United States, we must fight for a humane public policies that will provide quality health care, education, and job training and that redirect public investment from the military to much-neglected urban housing and infrastructure. Such policies require the support of a majoritarian coalition of trade unionists, people of color, feminists, gays and lesbians and all other peoples committed to democratic change. Our greatest contribution as American socialists to global social justice is to build that coalition, which is key to transforming the power relations of global capitalism.” The paper further states: “ A democratic socialist politics for the 21st century must promote an international solidarity dedicated to raising living standards across the globe, rather than “leveling down” in the name of maximizing profits and economic efficiency. Equality, solidarity, and democracy can only be achieved through international political and social cooperation aimed at ensuring the economic institutions benefit all people. (100% Illuminati propaganda).Democratic socialists are dedicated to building truly international social movements, of unionists, environmentalists, feminists, and people of color, that together can elevate global justice over brutilizing global competition.” Once they establish full control they will accomplish Social redistribution. Social redistribution (another name for redistributing

110 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the money) will be accomplished by: “1. massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs, income maintenance and infrastructure rehab ilitation, and 2. a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian use.”

As one can detect the real aim of the DSA is to transform this country into a puppet state for the socialist International which is the headquarters of a worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labour parties. According to its brochure, it currently brings together 141 political parties and organications from all continents. In their listing of organizations, the DSA is listed as a ‘Full Member Party.” In their brochure the socialist International have in a sense corrupted the term “democratic.” For example their discussion of shaping the Twenty-first century they state: “59. Democratic Socialism today is based on the same values on which it was founded. But they must be formulated critically, both assimulating past experience and looking ahead to the future. For instances, experience has shown that while nationalization in some circumstances may be necessary, it is not by itself a sovereign remedy for social ills. Likewise, economic growth can often be destructive and divisive, especially where private interests evade their social and ecological responsibility. Neither private nor State ownership by themselves guarantee either economic efficency or social justice. 60. The democratic socialist movement continues to advocate both socialization and public property within the framework of a mixed economy. It is clear that the inter-nationalisation of the economy and the global technological revolution make democratic

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 111 control more important than ever. But social control of the economy is a goal that can be achieved through a wide range of economic means according to time and place,,,, 64. A democratic society must compensate for the defects of even the most responsible market systems. Government must not function simply as the repair shop for the damage brought about by market inadequacies or the uncontrolled application of new technolorgies. Rather the State must regulate the market in the interest of the people and obtain all workers the benefits of technology, both in work experience and through the growth of leisure time and meaningful possibilities for individual development.” If one reads carefully the above objectives the term democratic is nothing but propoganda. The point being that they are trying to sugar coat the term Socialism which, after all of its failures over the last two centuries. has left a bad taste in millions and millions of peoples’ mouths. There are a number of writers today that warn of Democratic Party’s socialist agenda is indistinghishable today from the European socialist model. They base their claims on such events that occurred in the middle of June 2003. More than 1000 progressives, representing labor unions, feminists, environmentalists, etc, convened in Washington, D.C. according to Campaign for America’s Future, the socialist advocacy group that organized the event. The conference was called to motivate those forces necessary for the 2004 election. After three days of speeches and strategy sessions, they left the event determined to steer the Democratic Party even further to the left. The list of speakers was a roster of the liberal wing, including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, AFL President John Sweeney, PBS commentator Bill Moyers, Ralph Neas of People For the Ameri-

112 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. can Way, and nearly a dozen liberal College professors. Most speeches were of the typical liberal tirade on anti-Capitalism, anti-Business, anti-Profits, and anti-Military. “We believe in the politics where people come ahead of profits,” said an AFL-CIO official. Socialist of the world have always regarded the United States as their mortal enemy for the simple reason that every time they tried to take over the world America’s commitment to freedom stood in their way. Knowing that freedom and Socialism were mutually exclusive, most Americans looked upon Socialism with disdain. World socialists have had over two hundred years of failure to know how to infiltrate and then destroy. For example, the fierce patriotism of Americans were undermined during the Vietnam War. The socialists took to the streets, burning the American flag, denegrating those in the military, and causing anarchy in many cities throughout the United States. Today they still attack those who are patriotic. The new socialists in America no longer refer to themselves as socialists. They know that most older American have learned that being a socialist means an anti-freedom, pro-slavery agenda. Today, with the help of the socialist press, they proudly refer to themselves as being left or liberals. The connotation being that Left is OK therefore being Right is bad. It is strange how these two terms came into being when originally both terms referred to Socialism. (See socialist yardstick presented earlier.) If one gets on the internet and visits the Democratic socialist of America web site (www.dsausa.org) and call up the Progressive Caucus site one finds that site lists itself as the Democratic Left. The Progressive Caucus consists of 59 members of the House of Representatives, all Democrats. At one time in the past, they were not ashamed to list their names as being members of the Progressive

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 113 Caucus. Today they no longer will list their names. These congressmen/congresswomen are backed by the DSA which does not back all Democrats, only the die-hard socialist. (For example, the DSA did not support Al Gore for the 2000 presidential election because he represented “a centrist, neo-liberal politics which does not advocate the radical structural reforms, such as progressive taxation, major defense cuts, and real universal health and child care, necessary to move national politics in a genuinely democratic (Socialistic) direction. LIES AND MORE LIES. Dick Gephardt, one of the Democratic hopefuls for nomination to run for the Presidency in 2004, routinely warns against “repeating the mistkes of the 1980s.” In a recent TV interview, he proclaimed that it took the nation “15 years to dig out of the hole that Reagan put us in.” The interviewer did not question him concerning this absurd statement. The current news commentators that conduct interviews with Social Democrats never question their veracity. Mr. Gephardt was merely repeating the lie that was published in the “2000 Democratic Party Platform” adopted by the 2000 Democratic Convention on August 15, 2000. One recalls that at this convention the Democrats booed a group of Boy Scouts that were presented on the stage for part of the program. Imagine booing eight and nine year old boys because they believe in God. In the Platform, the Democrats claim under the heading of ‘Fiscal Discipline’ that: “For the 12 years before Bill Clinton and Al Gore took office, Republicans talked about fiscal discipline while they quadrupled the national debt. They ºran up monstous deficits and nearly ran the American economy into the ground.”

The facts during the Reagan years are well documented and for all who want the truth they should investigate these fact before listening to a group of Boy Scout haters.

114 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

The truth is that the nation was in quite a deep morass and near economic collapse when Reagan was elected. The country was in the midst of the worst economic depression in 1980-1981 than at any time since the great Depression of the 1930s. A Newsweek article described the economy that Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter as: “Ronald Reagan ...next week, will inherit the most dangerous economic crisis since President Roosevelt took office over 40 years ago.” That was no exageration. The contrast between Carter’s economic performance and then after Reagan’s tax cuts was astounding. In 1980, the U.S. inflation rate was at a record high of 13.5%. Interest rates on home mortages moved over 20%, creating the death knoll to the housing industry. America was deindustrializing because intrest rates made borrowing money unthinkable. Unemployment had reached its highest level in 40 years. We were entering a depression the size of the 1930s depression. Reagan’s tax-rate-cuts, combined with his emphasis on sound money, deregulation, and free trade, created an economic expansion in the 1980s that was described by a Wall Street Journal writer as “the seven fat years.” The expansion carried through the 1990s as well, creating America’s greatest sustained wave of prosperity ever. The economy grew by more than one-third in size. Growth was so high that many Social Democrats were forced to ridicule the Reagan years as the “decade of greed.” Over this period of time, the net wealth of the nation grew exponentially. In 1982, the Dow Jones hit a low point of 792. When Reagan left office, the market had more than tripled in value. Then it tripled again over the next ten years. In other words, after the Reagan tax cuts, the stock market soared from a low of around 800 to over 10,000. This expansion of the Stock Market amounted to an increase of $15 trillion dollars to American wealth. This wealth did not end up in the pockets of the rich as the Democrats would have

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 115 you believe. After Reagan’s tax cuts, real median family incomes, which had fallen sharply during the stagflationary period 1977-1982, rose by nearly 10 percent. From 1981 to 1989, every income, from the richest to the poorest, gained income according to the Census Bureau economic data. The Democrats have always blamed the hugh deficits during the Reagan years on the tax cuts that the President pushed through Congress. But on closer survellance one finds that between 1980 and 1990 the federal tax collections doubled from $500 billion to $1 trillion. Tax rates went down but tax payments increased. This is just as President Reagan had predicted. So what happened to cause the deficit to increase? Congress is what happened! The Constitution clearly defines the responsibilities of each branch of Government. Under Article 1 of the Constitution: Section 1: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. Section 7: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. Section 8: The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States, but all Duties, Imposts, and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that the President has the power to enact laws or Bills for raising Revenue. A little review of the 1970 era is necessary to explain the financial mess that developed.

116 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. During the 1970s, Congress was forced on a number of occasions to enact what was referred to as a “Concurrent Resolution.” Since Congress could not agree on a Budget for the upcoming fiscal year, they passed a Resolution that allowed all government Departments to spend the same amount of money that they spent the previous year. If a Department wanted more money they could go to Congress who would then appropriate the additional funds for that Department. As these Resolutitons seem to become the norm as opposed to a real Budget, many newspapers began writing nasty things about Congress and their Budget-making ability. Being ever resourceful, Congress passed the National Budget Act of 1974 that took the Congressional Office of Management and Budget and placed it under the Executive branch with directions of how the Budget process would work in the future. Since the Democrats controlled Congress and the President embroiled in Watergate, this Budget Act was easily enacted. During a hearing on Reforming the Congressional Budget Porcess before the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives, testimony by the Director of Fiscal Policy Studies with the Cato Institute stated that ‘a fundamental imbalance exists in the current rules (Budget rules). For more than twenty years, forces that favor spending have consistently prevailed over forces that favor fiscal restraint.’ This testemony was given July 13, 1995. In addition, the Director from the Cato Institute stated: ‘A top priority for this Congress should be the enactment of a new budget act. The 1974 Buget Reform and Impoundment Control Act is a failure. One of the purposes of the 1974 Budge Act was to eliminate deficit spending. But here is the actual legacy of that legislation: in the twenty years prior to the Budget Act, the budget deficit averaged just 1 percent of GDP and $30 billion in 1994 dollars. In the twenty years since the enactment of the 1974 Act, the average budget deficit has been $170 billion per year, and 3.5 percent of GDP. We

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 117 have accumulated more than $4 trillion of debt since 1976. By any objective standard, the budget process has not worked better under the 1974 act, it has worked much worse... The 1974 Budget Act cannot be fixed....Congress ought to repeal the act before it does more damage to our national economy....The centerpiece of any budget reform quite clearly is an amendment to the Constitution outlawing deficit spending.... Deficit spending is an unconscionable form of fiscal child abuse.’ The House Policy Committee listed on their internet site a recommendation by Christopher Cox, Chairman of the Committee. He stated: “For almost a quarter...century, as federal spending has increased 606%, the budget process has grown commensurately convoluted to shield this growing spending from public control. Our current system for determining how much the government spends is of labyrinthine complexity, unparalleled either in our own history or in the practice of other Western countries. Over time, it has grown so far out of control that even efforts at reform have simply accumulated over the original 1974 Budget Act in alluvial fashion, making budget decisions even more impenetrable....The way Washington now confects the almost $2 trillion annual budget of the federal government represents the worst of all possible worlds. Ostensibly it is controlled by transparent procedures set out in 54 pages of statutory small print. Actually spending is accomplished with no know rules in chaotic, secretive, unaccountable conclaves whose composition varies not just from year to year but from meeting to meeting. Even the question of which among Washington’s spending brokers will get to decide is never answerable in advance. For example, by the end of this year’s budget negotiations the chairmen of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee were excluded from the meeting where the parameters of the Fiscal Year 1998 tax bill were determined.” Mr. Cox further stated under the section titled ‘The Problem’, that: “Indeed, virtually every requirement of the current budget process is malleable: In the 103rd Congress, two out of every three

118 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. rules adopted by the House simply waived the Budget Act in its entirety. Small wonder that since 1980, Congess has overspent its own budget by an estimated $300 billion....The 1974 Budget Act was written by the most liberal Congress in our history and forced upon an executive branch gravely weakened by Watergate. It is not just because the Watergate Congress was committed to higher levels of spending that more that 90% of our $17 plus trillion debt has been incurred since 1974. Their revolutionary budge process guaranteed runaway spending by embracing and expanding the now-familiar system of autopilot budgeting known as ‘manditory’ spending, one, time legislation that expands federal spending in perpetuity, without any further action or review by Congress. By the latest count there are now 260 such programs, accounting for two-thirds of all government spending.” Under the above arrangement, it is no longer Congress’s Budget, it is the President’s Budget. Therefore, Congress is no longer responsible for anything that goes wrong. But the Democrats in Congress forgot one thing. Although they call the Budget the ‘President’s Budget’, it means nothing because that is never the Budget that is enacted for the next fiscal year. For example, in 1981-1982, the Budget that was sent to Congress from the Presidents OBM never reach Congress. Tip O’Neal, leader of the Democratic House of Representatives proudly announced to the newspapers (for both years 1981 and 1982) that “I threw the President’s Budget into the waste basket.” After Tip O’Neal retired, Jim Wright, Texas Democrat, took over the leadership of the House. His favorite statement to the press during the 1983-1988 years was “That Budget is D.O.A.” (D.O.A. meaning dead on arrival!) So the hugh deficits that occurred during the 1980s couldn’t have been Reagan’s fault. It was Congress that was overspending. What was the make up of Congress during the 1980s? It was as follows:

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 119 SENATE HOUSE 1979/81

Dem Rep 58 41

Other 1

Dem Rep Other 277 158

1981/83

46

53

1

242

192 1

1983/85

47

53



269

166

1985/87

47

53

253

182

1987/89

55

45

260

175

To further indicate how the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Act ties the hands of the Executive branch when it comes to saving tax-payers money, Representative Christopher Cox wrote an editorial in ‘Investo’s Business Daily’ dated May 10, 1995. In the editorial he revealed the following information: “Ninety percent of our entire national debt has been run under the current system, the rickety 1974 Budget Act. That ‘reform’ gutted the president’s power to control spending and made fiscal policy a legislative afterthought. Congress is an organization like any other: individual behavior is influenced by the kinds of performance that are measured. Today’s system measures individual votes on parochial spending bills, but not on macroeconomic decision-making. Even before Congress begins its budget debate, the president is required to submit a hyperdetailed budget that immediately focuses the process on microeconomics. This virtually eliminates the more important debate on overall fiscal policy. The process thus provides rewards and punishments for spending

120 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. or, failing to spend, taxpayers money to help specific constituencies, but no similar rewards and punishments for overall sound management or mismanagement of fiscal affairs. The measure that supposedly encourage fiscal discipline under the 1974 law are dead letters. Phony budget ‘scoring’ hopelessly blurs the line between spending cuts and increases. Billions of dollars in spending are authorized not through regular procedures but in mammoth ‘supplemental’ appropriations bills.

Congress has missed its budget deadlines every year since 1974. And in recent years, as many as half of all spending bills have automatically waived the budget law, end-running its spending restrictions in order to spend willy-nilly! The president’s budgets are routinely declared ‘dead on arrival,’ and his proposals to recind spending are useless. The 1974 Budget Act also extinguished the long-standing presidential power to save taxpayers’ money by not spending money that has been appropriated by Congress. Stripping the president of this ‘impoundment’ authority has added hundreds of billions of dollars to our national debt in the last two decades. In 1960, President Eisenhower decided not to spend 8% of the entire federal budget. Overall, presidents rescinded nearly 6% of all federal spending from 1959 to 1972. In today’s dollars, that’s equivalent to saving about $90 billion each year.” As one can see, the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives every year during the Reagan era. And since the Constitution clearly states the responsibilities of the House (Section 1, Section 7, and Section 8), how can they blame the deficit on Reagan? More importantly, how can the liberal press continue to print these hor-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 121 rendous lies without questioning the statements? LIES AND STILL MORE LIES. The Social Democrats concept of cradle-to-grave responsibility of the bureaucratic government really extended itself to the limit in 1935. In that year, the Democrats under the guidance of President Roosevelt pulled one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on a guillable public. It was called Social Security. It takes money to pay for all the Social schemes that Roosevelt and his liberal friends wanted to establish but the government had little money to spend. To raise direct taxes was unthinkable, even in a Congress that was willing to go along with most of Roosevelts schemes. Finally, in late 1934 a Ponzi scheme was hit upon as a way to increase Treasury revenues without calling it a tax. The scheme was called Economic Security. Notice the nice sounding name given to this biggest scam ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. Here is the way the scheme worked: all workers except those federal workers and other friends of Congress, would be required to pay a certain percentage of their wages into a Social Security program (the term Economic Security on Roosevelts original bill to Congress was renamed in Congress to Social Security) so that in the future when they retired they would be assured some form of a retirement pay. The people who employed the workers that had to pay into Social Security matched the worker’s payment.. Of course the employers received nothing in return. But the Ponzi element of the scheme was that all moneys collected would go into the Treasury and be counted as any other tax, thus allowing the Federal Government to spend it as they pleased. (This Social Security bill was considered to be Constitutional by the Supreme Court because as their decision stated, the Bill was nothing more than a tax and Congress had the right to levy taxes under the Constitution.) An IOU or Treasury Bill would be put into a bin marked “Social Security.” Today, the “Social Security” bin is filled with IOUs and T bills, but it has no money. It is all useless paper. Congress over the last sixty-four years has spent the money. Each year outgoing Social Security payments are part of

122 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the Budget that Congress authorizes for the next fiscal year. In the beginning of the Ponzi scheme, the idea of President Roosevelt and a compliant Congress was that Social Security was a hidden tax that the public need not know about. In fact Social Security was touted as the security net for all workers. Why did Roosevelt and the Congress in 1935 set up the Social Security program the way that they did? That is, all money would go into the Treasury and could be spent, instead of the moneys going into an account marked Social Security and that account could only be drawn upon to pay Social Security debts. One only needs to look at the “Vital Statistics Table: Expectation of Life at Birth” to find the answer. Roosevelt and Congress never expected any one to reach the age of 65 to draw their Social Security. That is why they put the money into the Treasury and spent it. If one checks the “Vital Statistics Table: Expectation of Life at Birth” you will find that the life expectancy of a white male born in 1935 was 61 years. The life expectancy of a white female was 65 years. But the real tragedy was for all other races. Their life expectancy was for the male, 51.3 years; for the female, 55.2 years. Talk about returning to slavery! The whites may have a slim chance to outlive the chart and draw Social Security checks but only for a few years. All other races, the blacks, mexicans, indians, asians, were pouring their hard earned money into a system that they were never suppose to participate in. Who’s to blame for this social blunder? According to a recent ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that threw out a contempt ruling against the Secretary of Interior, saying she cannot be held accountable for her predecessor’s mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar trust fund for American Indians. The Court of Appeals also threw out the Federal judge’s contempt charges against her stating: “She simply cannot be held criminally to account for any delay that occurred prior to her assuming office.” Under this ruling the current Congress cannot be held accountable for the enactment of the Social Security Act. But they can be held accountable for allowing the scam to continue.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 123 There were only eleven votes against the Social Security Act of 1935 in the House of Representatives. At that time (74th Congress, 193537) the House membership by party was: Democrats, 322 Republican, 103 Other, 10 Today, the two parties cannot agree on how to save Social Security. The Republican’s want to wean people away from the government’s Social Security program by allowing people apply part of their Social Security requirements into private accounts. The Democrats insist that the current plan be reinforced with more income, either through increased taxes or require workers to work four or five years longer to receive full Social Security benefits. A Bill has been passed by Congress that requires a person to work until the age of 67 if they want to retire with full Social Security benefits. The Bill has a built in escalator clause that will continue to raise the retirement age up until the age of 70. There is rumbles in Congress that the age limit of 70 is too low. It should be higher they claim. This is just another way that the Social Democrats are using to enslave the working people for the rest of their lives. Remember, Congress has set its own retirement plan to be effective when they reach the age of 50. History has a way of repeating itself. In France today, the socialist retirement fund is going broke. Just like our Social Security, France’s retirement plan has reached the point where there are more people eligible to retire than there are workers to support them. France’s solution to the problem is to require workers to work three years longer before being eligible for retirement. This plan was met by riots in the streets, work stoppages, and transportation walk-outs. People who are scammed can really get angry! One concept that was put forward by the Democrats in Con-

124 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. gress, was to use the annual Social Security surpluses to reduce the national debt. This was another cover-up. Currently, over $2.4 trillions of the National Debt are those Treasury Bills that are in a bin marked Social Security (commonly referred to as the Social Security Trust Fund). The plan to use surplus Social Security payments to reduce the debt owed to Social Security is ingenious. .Congress must think that the people are so ignorant that they can do anything to cover their blunders and the public will forgive. If by chance Congress can buy back all the Treasury Bills in that Social Security Bin by 2037 when the Social Security program is supposed to go broke, then there will be no record of all the surplus Social Security funds that Congress has spent over the years. That will lead to the Congressional demand that taxes be increased to save the elderly from starving. Ingenious! LIES, LIES AND STILL MORE LIES. How to steal elections without even trying. To this day, the 2000 Presidential Election is being touted by Social Democrats as being stolen by George Bush and he should never have been seated as President. They spread this story because like all big lies, the more you tell it, the sooner it will become in the minds of people that it is a fact. Let’s look at some facts (facts that you won’t read in the liberal controlled media) and try to set the record straight. Republicans complained on November 6, 2000 of a number of voting irregularities going on around the country, but one would have to search the real fine print on the back pages of most newspapers to find them, if they were published at all. For example, one irregularity came out of Wisconsin where Al Gore volunteers gave homeless person’s cigarettes in exchange for them voting. WISNTV in Milwaukee reported on November 5 that volunteers for Democratic hopeful Al Gore were escorting homeless men to election offices, where they cast absentee ballots. They were shown on camera handing packs of cigarettes to the men as an incentive to come along and vote for Gore. These homeless, unregistered voters is what the Gore camp referred to as “every vote counts.”

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 125

Another irregularity occurred in Arkansas where Governor Mike Huckabee complained that Democratic county clerks violated state law by opening their offices Sunday for early voting. “We are receiving a lot of complaints for various irregularities,” said a spokesman for the Governor. The Arkansas Democratic-Gazette reported that at least 39 of the 75 county clerk’s offices, largely in Democratic districts, were open special weekend hours despite a state law that says absentee and advanced ballots must be cast during “regular offices hours.” The paper quoted one irate Democratic activist when one clerk refused to open her office over the weekend. “I had 17 AfroAmerican churches lined up to be bussed to the courthouse to vote on Sunday,” the activist said. “Now, I have to cancel the busses,” she added. In the Florida Presidential race, Al Gore and his Democratic followers made an all out effort to disenfranchise overseas members of the military by scrutinizing their absentee ballots for any small infraction of the Florida voting laws. The following were reported by a few communities but were not reported in the liberal press. For example, in Jacksonville, Florida, two Democratic lawyers gleefully congratulated themselves on their success in persuading the local canvassing board to throw out 44 U.S. service personnel oversees absentee ballots because they had not been postmarked. These election officials that threw out the ballots completely ignored an affidavit from an aircraft carrier postal clerk swearing to the fact that mail sent by naval personnel often lacks a postmark. The Brevard County Republican Chairman went home at 11:30 P.M. on Friday (after the election) after seven and one-half hours of inspecting overseas ballots and wrote the following memo: “Gore had five attorneys there. Their sole objective was to disenfranchise the military absentee voters. They challenged each and every vote. Their sole intent was to disqualify each and every absentee voter. They constantly challenged military votes that were clearly legitimate, but they were able to disqualify them on a technicality. I have never been so frustrated in all my life as I was to see these people fight to prevent our active duty military from voting.”

126 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. In Broward County 92 overseas ballots were accepted and 304 ballots were rejected. In Miami-Dade County, 110 out of 113 ballots were rejected. Statewide, 2,203 ballots were accepted and 1,420 were rejected. As a result Bush’s overseas gain was only 630 well short of Gore’s camp magic number of 1000 for an overall Bush Florida lead of 930. That meant that only 930 votes needed to be won by Gore in the laborious hand-counting in heavily Democratic Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties. One lawyer monitoring the recount vote in Palm Beach described a scene of chaos and utter confusion, such as Bush ballots being placed on the Gore pile, followed by protests and much arguments. So much for Al Gore and his lawyers claim that they wanted every vote to count. They did all they could to disenfranchise the military vote from overseas. Yet, the day after George Bush pressed for Gore’s concession, Gore laid out his case on prime-time TV for letting the courts settle the nation’s election. “This is America,” he said. “When votes are cast, we count them. We don’t arbitrarily set them aside because it’s too difficult to count them.” What hypocrisy! . Other accusations by liberal Democrats to nullify the Florida election were printed in huge letters on the front pages of the liberal press. Jesse Jackson and several civil rights. spokesmen charged that a “pattern of voter suppression” by Florida officials and law enforcement authorities had prohibited blacks from entering polling precincts throughout the state, allowing George Bush to “steal” the election from Al Gore. Jackson also accused Florida’s Governor Jeb Bush of being part of the conspiracy to deny access to blacks who showed up at the polls, including stationing police near the precincts to intimidate minority voters. Joining the dispute was Donna Brazile, Mr. Gore’s campaign manager, who said black voters faced “dogs and guns” in trying to get to the polls. In the two specific cases cited as part of the suspected conspiracy, the following occurred: A spokesman for the Florida Attorney

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 127 General said the State Highway Patrol dismissed accusations that a police roadblock, set up near a predominantly black precinct near Tallahassee, was aimed at intimidating blacks. He said an internal investigation determined that the roadblock had been set up in the same spot a month earlier and was routinely designate to conduct inspections. A total of 150 drivers were stopped at the site, located about 2 miles from the polling precinct and 18 warnings were issued, a dozen to white motorists. The officers stopped every fifth vehicle, as is their routing, with no regard to race of the driver. (Mr. Jackson, and others, had said only black drivers were targeted.) In the second incident, a Florida radio station reported that black voters had been denied access by police to a predominately black polling site near Tampa, but it was determined that law enforcement officers had moved into the area as part of an ongoing robbery investigation. A roadblock set up near the site detained only one man. . Where is the Justice Department when it comes to eliminating voter fraud? The final question covering the debacle is should the election have been conducted according to the rules and laws laid out and agreed to in advance of the election by both sides or according to new rules and procedures created by those who lost and used the courts to change the rules Gore and his camp decided on the latter course. They took their case to the Florida Supreme Court. By a 4-3 decision the social democrats on the Court voted in Gore’s favor and overturned the Secretary of States recount which was required by Florida law in close races. The Florida Supreme Court ask Gore’s lawyers if they wanted a state-wide hand count of all votes, the Gore lawyers said they only wanted the hand count in the three Democratic counties listed previously. The 4 activist judges than ruled that the hand count would apply only to the three counties that Gore’s lawyers specified. Since the three counties where the hand recount was to occur were predominately Democratic, the people selected to do the hand

128 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. counting were predominately Democrats. The recount panels appointed a foreman who had the final say on which ballots were valid or invalid. Lawyers for both the Republicans and Democrats were present to supervise the count. From this recount adventure new word was coined. The Gore people called it “undervote.” The Gore lawyers insisted that all ballots that did not show a vote for either George Bush or Al Gore was an undervote. It meant, they said, that the person must have either punched the wrong slot or didn’t punch the card hard enough and since this was predominantly a Democratic County, it follows that they meant to vote for Al Gore. Therefore they insisted that the foremen of the recount panels assign all non-vote ballots to Al Gore. But, ,as the U.S. Supreme Court found, a bunch of partisans poring over ballots with magnifying glasses and then voting two out of three, about whom the voter intended to select, is not “counting.” For his own selfish reason, Gore wanted only the ‘undervote’ in heavily Democratic districts “hand counted” . He presented his plea about undervote in civil rights talk and soon had black Americans convinced that they were being disenfranchised. This cynical use of people for their own gain is despicable even for a politician. The official U.S. Supreme Court vote was 7 to 2 that what the Florida State Supreme Court did was a violation of the Constitution of the United States, because it did, not provide “equal protection of the law” as required by the 14th Amendment. Four justices (Supreme Court USA) apparently thought that this could be corrected, even at the eleventh hour; for five other justices, time had run out and it was too late to go through a hand count for the entire State of Florida. After the 2004 Presidential Election more propaganda shenanigans on vote irregularities. Immediately after the election, John Kerry avoided the tirades of Al Gore, but Mrs. Heinz Kerry’s wife has apparently taken to the pulpit of why her husband lost. Mrs. Kerry, in 2005, dredged up allegations of Republican trickery and voter scare tactics in a speech before the League of Women Voters: “Last year,

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 129 too many people were denied their right to vote who tried to vote were intimidated!’ Kerry activists made much hay about the long lines and shortage of voting machines in swing districts. But their lawsuit in Ohio based on those claims was dismissed. And as Mark Niquette of the Columbus Dispatch told ABC’s ‘Nightline;’ “ if you talk to the election officials here in Franklin County ;they’ll tell you, the main problem was there just weren’t enough machines overall, that even Republican leaning precincts had long lines!’ Not a peep by the way from Mr. Kerry, his wife or the socialist press about the intimidation tactics of Democrats from the drive-by shootings targeting GOP headquarters across the country, to the union mobs who stormed the offices of Bush/Cheney volunteers, to the anti-Bush thugs who burned swastikas onto Republican homeowners’ lawns, to the paid Democratic staffers charged with slashing the tires of 20 Republican get-out-the-vote vans on Election Day. No sir, these type of tactics are alright, it is not the same as blocking access to voting places. Singing from the same hysteria-promoting in Minnesota, Sen. Hillary Clinton further stoked Democratic furor. Sarcastically praising the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mrs. Clinton exclaimed: “I believe that the right to vote and the obligation to count all the votes should be promoted not just in the Middle East, but in the Middle West! And in the Northeast! And in the Southeast! And in every. corner of The. United. States of America!” The crowd went wild. Mrs. Clinton continued: Too many minorities and college students have been “denied an equal Right to vote.”. Her “socialist” solution? An election reform bill that allows illegal aliens to vote! And felons! And people without IDs to vote!) The Democrats now seem to believe that the road to the White House today is paved with madness.

130 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

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CHAPTER 6 AMERICA’S TROJAN HORSE—THE JUDICIARY THE U.S. BILL OF RIGHTS There might have been no workable Constitution, and no all-powerful Court, if the Founding Fathers had not listened to an American who was not present in Philadelphia. He is the missing giant of the Constitution Convention, Thomas Jefferson. He was in Paris as Minister to France, and he heard with alarm that George Mason had failed to impress on the Convention the vital need for a written bill of rights. He unceasingly nagged every influential man he knew until he got it. Looking around him in France, Jefferson was daily witness to the old indignities and assaults on personal liberty that the Constitution failed to prohibit. He wrote home continually that it was not enough to presume the sanctity of those human rights whose violation was all too familiar to the Founding Fathers. You must, he wrote, “specify” those liberties and put them down on paper. The battle to ratify the Constitution did not prove to be an easy one. Across colonial America, citizens took sides on the great debate of the day. Those who championed the new Constitution called themselves “Federalists” and labeled those who opposed the document “Anti-Federalists,” a misnomer, since those opposed to the Constitution were federalists in the literal sense of supporting a confederation of states. The advocates of the Constitution also favored a union of the states. However, they wanted the national government to have more power than the states. The Anti-Federalist cited the omission of a bill of rights as rea-

132 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. son for not ratifying the Constitution. The controversy concerning the “written” or “unwritten” bill of rights can be summed up in the following public opinions: In support of the Constitution without a Bill of Rights: “Sir, it appears from the example of other states, as well as from principle, that a bill of rights is neither essential nor a necessary instrument in framing a system of government, since liberty may exist and be as well secured without it. But it was not only unnecessary, but on this occasion it was found impracticable, for who will be bold enough to undertake the enumeration of all the rights of the people?, and when the attempt to enumerate them is made, it must be remembered that if the enumeration is not complete, everything not expressly mentioned will be presumed to be purposely omitted. So it must be with a bill of rights, and an omission in stating the powers granted to the government, is not so dangerous as an omission in recapitulating the rights reserved by the people.” James Wilson, debate over ratification of the Constitution by Pennsylvania, November 28, 1787

In opposition to the Constitution without a Bill of Rights: “I differ, Sir, from the honorable member from the city (Wilson), as to the impropriety or necessity of a bill of rights. If, indeed, the constitution itself so well defined the powers of the government that no mistake could arise, and we were well assured that our governors would always act right, then we might be satisfied without an explicit reservation of those rights with which the people ought not, and mean not to part. But, Sir, we know that it is the nature of power to seek its own augmentation, and thus the loss of liberty is the necessary consequence of a losse or extravagant delegation of authority. National freedom has been, and will be the sacrifice of ambition and power, and it is our duty to employ the present opportunity in stipulating

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 133 such restrictions as are best calculated to protect us from oppression and slavery.” Robert Whitehall, debate over ratification of the Constitution by Pennsylvania, November 28, 1787

To honor the promises that Federalists had made regarding the protection of individual liberties, a series of amendments to the Constitution became one of the first orders of business in the new Congress. James Madison, who had strenuously opposed including such articles in the drafting of the Constitution, fearing it would limit the rights of the people and the states to those specifically listed, reversed his position and drafted the amendments himself. “If we can make the Constitution better in the opinion of those who are opposed to it without weakening its frame, or abridging its usefulness in the judgement of those who are attached to it,” Madison said, “we act the part of wise and liberal men to make such alterations as shall produce that effect.” Madison drew up twelve amendments listing guaranteed liberties, but only ten of them were ratified. (Rejected were amendments regarding the number of congressmen and their salaries.) Despite Madison’s attempts to protect the states against federal power in the Bill of Rights, in 1793 the Supreme Court handed down a decision that seemed to threaten the states’ rights. In the case of Chisholm v. Georgia, the Court ruled in favor of a South Carolina man in his suit against the state of Georgia. Many protested that if a state could be forced to abide by federal court rulings in cases brought against it by private citizens, then the rights of the states would lose all meaning. In response, in 1798 the states ratified the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution, which forbade the federal courts to deal with any case in which a state was being sued by a citizen of another state or country. Taken together, the Bill of Rights and the Eleventh Amendment seemed to assure protection for the states as well as the rights of the people. It has been shown in polls and surveys, that the American public,

134 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. in general, can list only a few of the original Bill of Right Amendments. Therefore, to show how the socialist judges (revisionists) who are bent on destroying the rights of the people, are redefining the Bill of Rights, I will list the original Bill of Rights as ratified by our Founding Fathers. The Bill of Rights are: Amendment #1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Amendment #2: A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. Amendment #3: No Soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. Amendment #4: The right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Amendment #5: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

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Amendment #6: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Amendment #7: In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Amendment #8: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Amendment #9: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Amendment #10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Amendment #11: The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. NOTE Amendment #11 was included in this treatise because it was mentioned in the previous paragraphs.

136 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

DEATH TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION Socialism can never exist in a free society! This is the key to survival! The Socialists in this country (controlled by the Illuminati) know it, therefore, they must destroy the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights before they can enslave the American people. Our Constitution guarantees all citizens certain inalienable rights which when claimed will deny the socialist Party the power to enslave. Our distruction began some time ago, in the year 1937. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States. He had just been reelected for a second term. During his first term, in a complete reversal of all his campaign promises, he demanded of Congress a set of laws which would change the entire concept and nature of our form of govvernment and our way of doing business. In the intervening decades since Roosevelt’s first election, years of depression, communist infiltration, socialist revolution and war, it has been forgotten that Roosevelt was elected in 1932 on what was essentially a conservative platform. It is one of the ironies of history that the man who denounced Herbert Hover as a “spendthrift’” who made ringing demands for economy in government, who as governor of New York made impassioned pleas for the rights of the sovereign states, would become the architect and first leader of America’s slide into a European-type authoritarian system of government. Over the history of the United States, the the Supreme Court has always commanded great respect from most Americans. Americans were aware that it stood as the final bulwark against any attempts to tamper with the authority of our liberties, the Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States was created to see to it that if Congress or the President or both should ever attempt to impose laws on the people or the sovereign states which did not confrom to the Constitution, the Court would declare them invalid, uncon-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 137 stitutional, and therefore null and void. And so, during President Roosevelt’s first term, as one by one the laws which he had induced Congress to pass came before the Supreme Court, it applied to them that constitutional test, and declared nearly all of them unconstitutional. In the National Recovery Act (NRA), Congress had handed over to the President dictatorial powers by which the central government would have complete control in the management and regulation of every phase of American industry, big and small, from the smallest tailor shop in an American town to the giant steel industry. Although most Americans did not realize it at the time, the NRA was patterned almost exactly after the fascist corporative state which Mussolini had set up in Italy. Under the NRA, the federal government set up code authorities (in Fascist Italy they were called corporatives) which made rules and regulations for the governing of each phase of each and every industry. The purpose was to regulate hours, wages, working conditions, trade practices, prices, and everything else that could be thought up by the fertile mind of a government beauracrat. In the code set up for live-poultry business in and around metropolitan New York, one rule provided that diseased and uninspected poultry could not be sold. The NRA cracked down on a certain poultry dealer, A.L.A. Schechter, for violating its rules and convicted him, with a fine and a jail sentence. This incident was match by many others during those hectic days of the Blue Eagle, the symbol of compliance with NRA directives. One man was arrested, indicted, put in jail for several days, and then required to put up bond for violating a law that didn’t exist. A little tailor gained momentary fame when he was sent to jail for pressing a pair of pants for 35 cents, five cents below the code minimum of 40 cents. But the NRA involved a great deal more than price-cutting pants pressers and egg-bound chickens. It was a clumsy attempt to hand over to the federal bureaucrats limitless power over every

138 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. phase of our economic life. All nine justices of the Supreme Court joined unanimosely in declaring the NRA unconstitutional. Chief Justice Hughes, speaking for the entire Court, declared: “We think the code-making authority this conferred on the President is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power.” And Justice Cardozo added, “This is delegation running riot.” But, President Roosevelt was angry. He began to vilify the Court and its members. He spoke sneeringly of them as a “horse-and-buggy court.” This vilification, personified in the derisive phrase “the nine old men”- was taken up and expanded in the press, in magazines, and on the radio by the New Deal cohorts and the growing advocates in high places of the socialist revolution. Those advocates saw with clarity that America could never be turned into a centrally dominated collectivist society so long as the Constitution stood as the supreme law of the land and the judges of the Supreme Court interpreted it according to its intended meaning. Immediately following President Roosevelt’s second innauguration, one of his first acts was to launch an all-out attack on the Supreme Court. He demanded of Congress a law by which he might be allowed to appoint a new judge to the Court for every judge then sitting who was 70 years of age or more and thus bring the membership of the Court from nine to 15. This would have allowed Roosevelt to appoint six New Deal justices to nullify the votes on the Court of six sitting judges who were 70 years or older. In this way he could get his unconstitutional New Deal schemes declared valid. This was the famous “court packing” plan. The fight against the court-packing proposal was actually led by members of Mr. Roosevelt’s own party The Congressional make up by party was: Senate: Dem = 75; Rep = 17; Other = 4 House: Dem = 333; Rep = 89; Other = 13

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 139 After months of angry debate, the “court packing” scheme was defeated. Why did Roosevelt press for the passage of the court-packing scheme in the face of overwhelming opposition from his own party and at the same time when the Court, especially when Justices Stone, Brandeis, and Cardozo (and on occasion, Chief Justice Hughes and Justice Roberts) voted mainly to uphold New Deal legislation? In the case of Roosevelt, the answer must lie partly in his overweening egotism. He thought he could get away with anything. Some may disagree with this assumption but one must consider that President Roosevelt did believe he was the soul source of wisdom. For example, he once tried to make a deal with Chief Justice Hughes, by which Hughes would talk over with him constitutional issues that were before the Court, in return for which Roosevelt would clear proposed legislation with the Chief Justice. Any law clerk could have pointed out to the President the impropriety of such a proposal. But, to Roosevelt, the Chief Justice’s coolness to the idea was simply evidence of the Court’s “unwillingness to cooperate.” In the eyes of the socialist revolutionaries who surrounded the President, the men of the Court who might sometimes vote in favor of this or that piece of New Deal legislation were of the same stripe as the witnesses who appeared in opposition to the court-packing bill. They were for reform, but reform within the American constitutional system. They could not be trusted to scrap the Constitution and thus open the way for the establishment of a collectivist state in America. And so a willing President was egged on to carry his fight against the Court to the bitter end. The Senate defeat of Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme looked to be a stinging defeat for the President, and it was, but Congress unknowingly put into his hand the power he was seeking. It did pass a law premiting Supreme Court justices to retire at 70 on full pay. Weary and disgusted with the attacks on them personally and on the Court generally, two of the older justices, Van Devanter and

140 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Sutherland retired. Time and death, did the rest. COURT PACKING BEGINS Justice Black. Because of his antipathy to private business, Justice Black became President Roosevelt’s first appointment to the Supreme Court. Justice Black’s own words are the best indication of the contempt in which he held the American system and its Constitution. In 1955, he declared, “The world could not do better than to follow the political and social ideas” of the late Dr. Albert Einstein. Dr. Einstein may have been a great scientist, but his “political and social” ideas were much more akin to those of Soviet Russia than of the American republic. Justice Stanley Reed. Roosevelts second appointee to the Court. As Roosevelt’s Solicitor General he argued, and lost, the NRA and AAA cases before the Supreme Court. Before that, he was chief counsel to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and it was his advice in that post which endeared him to Roosevelt. When a question arose as to the constitutionality of a New Deal measure, the suspension of the gold standard which wiped out contractual obligations calling for payment in gold, Reed advised the Attoney-General that he should take the position that while the act might be unconstitutional, it was all right because it didn’t do anybody any harm. So much for what Justice Reed thought of the Constitution. Justice Felix Frankfurter. Justice Frankfurter was Roosevelt’ s next appointment to the Supreme Court. His philosophy is not an easy one to classify, because he really didn’t have any, except those that suits his views to the exigencies of the moment. That is any man’s right, but the Supreme Court is hardly a forum for opportunistic “thinking.” Justice Frankfurter has been called everything from a communist or socialist to a rank reactionary, not without reason. So slight was his concern with constitutionality and law that he has not only reversed decisions of innumerable preceding courts, but

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 141 has even reversed himself. Apparently, the overpowering motivation in Frankfurter’s life was the desire to pull strings. Justice William O. Douglas Roosevelt’s fourth seclection to the Supreme Court. Justice Douglas was an out-and-out leftist, the darling of the radicals. He was also something of a publicity seeker who had broken all precedents in conduct of Supreme Court justices by engaging in partisan debate outside the court. One of his oddest acts, and one that very nearly resulted in impeachment proceedings against him, was the order staying the execution of the Rosenbergers. It was a fantastic performance, and seemingly a meaningless one. The Supreme Court on four separate occasions had refused to consider any further legal moves by the Rosenberg’s attorneys. Douglas’s action, taken alone while the Court was not in session, accomplished nothing save to give the atom spies a few more days among the living. As soon as Chief Justice Vinson could convene the full Court, it acted immediately to reverse Justice Douglas’s lone-wolf gesture, with Justice Douglas, Frankfurter, and Black dissenting, and the Rosenbergs went to their death. Incidentally, during the trial of the Rosenbergs, many socialists in the U.S. claimed that they were innocent. ‘Another witch hunt by Senator McCarthy and his ilk,” they screamed. Today, through the release of the FBI Venona files, messages from the KGB traffic to Moscow from the Russian Embassy in the United States disclose some of the clandestine activities of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Venona messages show that KGB officer Leonid Kvasnikov, code name ANTON, headed atomic bomb espionage in the U.S., but he, like the Rosenbergs, who came under his control, had many other high-tech espionage targets such as the U.S. jet aircraft program, developments in radar and rockets, etc. President Roosevelt made four more appointments to the Supreme Court before his death in 1945, Justice Frank Murphy, Justice James Byrnes, Justice Robert H. Jackson, and Justice Wiley B. Rutledge. Justice Byrnes only stay on the court for one year than he went on to better things. The remaining three were similar to the other appointments by Roosevelt. Justice Rutledge, for example,

142 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. while on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia approved wholeheartedly with Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme. When the four conservatives on the High Court did not act to Rutledge’s liking, he cynically remarked that the “Four Horsemen do not know that we had an election.” He believed that the Court should decide cases not according to the Constitution, but according to the election returns. By the time America entered the Second World War in 1941, there remained on the Supreme Court only two judges who had not been named by President Roosevelt. They were Justices Stone and Roberts, and Justice Stone owed his appointment as Chief Justice to the President. In the pre-war and war years this packed Court proceeded to perform a major operation on the Constitution of the United States by removing many ot its vital organs. Succeeding justices named by President Truman, and particularly by President Eisenhower, about completed the job, so much so that we might say that the body of the Constitution remains but only as a mere shell, devoid of arteries, veins, heart and lungs. A case in point occurred recently where the ‘one-world’ members of the Supreme Court decided to give citizenship to all terrorists in the World. They did this by stating all prisoners of War being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had their constitutional rights to challenge their captivity in federal court. This decision in effect granted all prisoners of war the rights that were once granted only to American Citizens. The Justices that are out to destroy our Constitution are: Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens. Remember, Justice Ginsburg has stated on numerous occasions that she no longer looks to the Constitution for guidance in cases, but she is guided by the European Courts. In dissent, Justice Scalia called the court’s decision a “self-invited …. Incursion into military affairs,’ Adding further Justice Scalia wrote that the decision “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed” But, on the other hand, it appears that the one-world members of the Supreme Court care less about

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 143 American lives than they care about non-Americans. Even stronger dissent against this decision was written by Chief Justice John Robert and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. There is only one legal way in which the Constitution can be changed, by amendment initiated by the soverign states or by the Congress and concurred in by three fourths of the states. These nine judges simply usurped and tore to pieces the charter of freedom of the American people. In farming and agriculture, the Court made possible that myriad of bureaus and bureaucrats which had nearly returned the once free and independent American farmer to European serfdom. The Court has made possible for the central government to take billions upon billions of dollars from the American taxpayers to pay to farmers in order to keep prices of farm products high to those same taxpayers. The government accomplished this by giving bureaucrats the power to fine farmers who produce more than the government say they can produce. In industry, with the blessing of the Court, the federal bureaucrats swarm all over what was know as “free enterprise,” telling it whom, when, where, and how to hire and fire and for what it must sell its products. One cannot trust judges on what they say because their actions are usually different. Some judges refer to this change of action as the result of time. Things changes. But this is ridicules. The Constitution does not change (unless it is amended). So how can ‘things’ change. For example: In the late 1930s, when the vast body of federal law was much smaller and less intrusive, Judge Robert Jackson identified the growing threat to liberty: “With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone;’ However, when the Judge became a member of the Supreme Court he took it upon himself to rewrite the Constitution and thought nothing of it. He did it as follows:

144 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. In 1942, the Court used Wickard v. Filburn Case to expand the Interstate Commerce Clause for that very purpose. Roscoe Filburn owned and operated a small dairy farm in Ohio. Every year he would use a section of his land to grow wheat. A portion of the wheat was sold, a portion was fed to livestock (which were also sold), a portion was used to make flour, and the rest was used for seeding the following year. In every respect, Filburn’s sale or use of his wheat occurred within the state of Ohio. In 1941, Filburn was assessed a penalty of $117.11 for exceeding the marketing quota established for his farm. It was part of the federal Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. Filburn challenged the penalty in court and the case reached the Supreme Court. Incredibly, Justice Robert Jackson, writing for a unanimous Court, ruled that Congress could regulate the amount of wheat that a farmer grew on his farm. The Court reasoned that Filburn’s wheat affected interstate commerce-even though none of it ever left the state of Ohio. The Court’s rationale was that: (1) Filburn grew excess wheat on his farm, as determined -by a marketing quota established by the federal Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938; (2) Filburn used that excess wheat to feed his livestock; (3) because of the excess wheat, Filburn would not have to purchase wheat on the open market; (4) by not purchasing wheat on the open market, Filburn was affecting interstate commerce. The Court wrote: It can hardly be denied that a factor of such volume and variability as home-consumed wheat would have a substantial influence on price and market conditions. This may arise because being in marketable condition such wheat overhangs the market and if induced by rising prices tends to flow into the market and check price increases. But if we assume that it is never marketed, it supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Home-grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce. The stimulation of commerce is a use of the regulatory function quite as definitely as prohibitions or restrictions thereon.

As one Professor of law wrote, “that decision cannot pass even the ‘giggle’ test under its logic.

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With the appointment of the new judges by President Roosevelt from 1937 on, the socialist revolutionaries in America had what they needed, a Supreme Court which would ignore the rights of the states and set up the central government in Washington as the all-powerful element in American life. The justices went about their demolition job on the Constitution in the manner characteristic of the past European revolutionaries. They simply changed the meaning of a few words and phrases which had been formerly understood, and interpreted by Supreme Courts for over 150 years. The diabolical cunning involved in this usurpation by the judges of the rights of states and citizens is easily illustrated. The destruction of the rights of the states was the primary objective because in no other way could a collectivist society be imposed on America. In 1942, in the midst of our first year of fighting the Second World War, when nobody was paying much attention to the Supreme Court, Justice Frankfurter struck a major blow for the Constitution wreckers. He did it by twisting out of all recognition one little phrase in the Constitution which gives the federal government power over “interstate commerce.” The Constitution gave Congress the right to regulate trade which crossed state lines. That trade, and that alone, came within the regulatory power of the federal government, and it had been so held by innumerable Supreme Courts. But this did not suit Justice Frankfurter and his revolutionary cohorts on the court. He cooked up a brand-new decision (A.B. Kirschbaum v. Walling), with no precedent in law or fact, by which the federal government might intrude into purely state functions. One of the tenants of a loft building in a New Jersey town was a clothing manufacturer who sold most of his products in other states. He was, clearly, in interstate commerce and thus subject to federal regulation.

146 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. But Justice Frankfurter declared that the building, inside a town, inside the sovereign state of New Jersey, was also engaged in interstate commerce because that one tenant, among many others, was engaged in interstate commerce. And that wasn’t all. By means of his judicial “reasoning,” Justice Frankfurter went further, saying that, because the building was in interstate commerce, so was the elevator man, who ran the elevator up and down in the building, and the women who washed the windows! By this decision, Justice Frankfurter and his co-conspirators, destroyed the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. To this day there are judges on the Supreme Court that will do all in their power to protect this abominable decision. Since Roosevelt, the attacks on the individual Amendments of the Bill of Rights and those amendment that followed, have been unrelenting. The socialist judges sitting on their federal benches know full well they have nothing to fear when they make rulings that change the intent of the Constitution. There are enough socialists in Congress to block any impeachment proceedings against them. So whenever the occassion arises they produce new meanings to a word or phrase in the Constitution to further the socialist agenda. It matters not if the Supreme Court rejects their interpretations. They know that sooner or later, the Democrats in the Senate will pack the Supreme Court with Socialists who will back their interpretations. For example, the first Amendment which grants freedom of press, speech and religion has been warp completely out of original intent. How can you have freedom of the press when Congress limits the number of media outlets a person or group of persons can own? The courts let this law stand because it usurps the first Amendment. The one stipulation in the first Amendment that has been shredded is the one concerning religion. The Founding Fathers were concerned with what happens to a country when one religion is established for a country by its rulers.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 147 History shows it was a turbulent era in England during the Tudors and Stuarts reigns. During the sixteenth century dramatic religious switches, from Roman Catholic to Protestant under Henry VIII to more radically Protestant under Edward VI, back to Catholic under Mary Tudor to Protestant yet again under Elizabeth I, added a new demension that complicated and endangered the internal stability and international position of the country. In 1588 Spain, the greatest European power at the time, sent her Grand Armada to conquer Elizabeth’s island kingdom. But a storm wreck the Armada and England emerged triumphant. Forty years later, however, in the mid-seventeenth century, England was torn by civil war and revolution; in 1660 it experienced a counter revolution. Then in 1685, King Charles’ brother James, an avowed Catholic, came to power. Not only was James intent upon enhancing the position of his co-religionists, but more than any other Stuart monarch, he had the real possibility of making himself absolute. Charles’ death and James succession provoked two rebellions, one by the Scottish Earl of Argyll, the second by Charles II’s illegitimate and popular Protestant son, James, Duke of Manmouth. The revolts enabled James to increase the size of his Army. This move, together with his blunt comment to Parliment that “there is nothing but a good force of well disciplined troop in constant pay that can defend us,” raised fears that he meant to govern by an army. Worse, it looked as if he meant to govern by a Catholic army. James had commissioned nearly 100 Catholic officers, exempting them from the Test Act against their employment. Within two months of his accession he had begun disarming Protestants and discharging them from the militia only to replace them with Catholics. Religious tolerance in the colonies prior to the revolution was nothing to brag about either. History shows that in Pennsylvania, while ahead of the other colonies in tolerance, they had never been alone. Almost from the beginning, religious freedom had been more or less accepted in New Jersey, Delaware, and New York. Outside these so called “Middle Colonies,” though, religious freedoms had been just an idea for most of the colonial period.

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Most of New England had been settled by the Puritans, who left England to avoid religious persecution. But once they arrived, they didn’t seem to worry much about persecuting people who didn’t agree with them. The Quakers were among their favorite victims. Quakers did annoying things like interrupting services and running through churches naked to protest how decadent the Puritans had become. The Puritans compared the Quakers to the plague, unfavorably. In the 1650s, Massachusetts decided the best way to deal with the annoyance was to banish Quakers altogether. If a Quaker dared ignore his banishment and return, he faced the loss of one ear, than the other, then a whipping, and then a hot iron on the tongue. If he came back for more, he went to the gallows. Four Quakers were hanged in Massachusetts before King Charles II of England said enough was enough, and ordered a stop to the practice. By 1776, the more repressive customs had disappeared but the Puritan (Congregational) church was very much the “established” church in New England, meaning you paid taxes to support it whether you wanted to or not. During the middle of the 18th century, there had been a great change in Protestant America, a movement called the Great Awakening. It was an evangelical movement featuring fiery sermons on damnation and redemption from men like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Gilbert Tennent. Religion had become too cold, too traditional, too rational for these men and their followers. It had to become emotional and personal again. The idea of religious freedom was free to spread in the years before independence. It would spread because there were thousands of Americans who cared desperately about their religious beliefs, who felt those beliefs were extremely important and extremely personal. For them, religion was often a one-to-one relationship between each person and God, far too serious to be interfered with by government, or to be entrusted to one established church.

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Their most eloquent spokesman was a Baptist minister from Massachusetts named Isaac Backus. “Nothing can be true religion but a voluntary obedience unto His revealed will, of which each rational soul has an equal right to judge for itself,” he said. “Each person has an inalienable right to act in all religious affairs according to the full persuasion of his own mind, where others are not injured thereby. No government could be strong enough to impose beliefs on people. No government should try.” Yet today, there are Federal judges who are rewriting the Constitution by stating that the word ‘God’ constitutes a religion and therefore must be removed from all government places. In addition, the moral standards which man should live by (the Ten Commandments) constitutes a religion and all mention of these Commandments must also be removed. Since when is the term ‘God’ construed as an established religion? The term ‘God’ is used in many religions. Similarly, the Commandments are a moral code—not a religion. From the Hamarabi Code (written thousands of years before Christianity) to the U.S. Constitution, civilizations prosper only when there is a predictable set of rules around which people organize their lives. Why are these judges trying to destroy the moral fiber of this country? The answer is simple. Its part of the Illuminati plan to destroy civilization and religions of all nature. One Historian has estimated that even after the Awakening, 96 percent of the residents of the colonies were not regular churchgoers, though that estimate seems high. In 1780, the states had a lot of churches, almost 3000 of them for a million people. That figures out to be about one for every 350 people. Regardless of their number, the nonchurchgoers were influential, for among them were men named Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. They called themselves Deists. They believed in God and in the practice of virture, both as a means of worship and to assure a reward after death. It was a calm rational belief, a reaction against the fire and brimstone of the Great Awak-

150 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. ening. For Jefferson and the other Deists, organized religion was a waste. It was not that government could not impose religion. It was that religion was not worth imposing. Beyond the basics, God and virture, it was irrelevant. Ironically, that line of thinking led the Deist to the same conclusion about religious freedom as the Awakening, it was all irrelevant. “When a religion is good,” said Franklin, “I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself and ...is obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad religion.” In Common Sense Paine agreed: “As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of governments to protect conscientious professors thereof, and I know no other business which governement has to do therewith.” Jefferson held his convictions that there must and shall be a complete separation between church and state in America. He had grown up in a Virginia where the Episcopal Church was established, and was himself taught at one point by an Anglican cleric whose bigoted opinions helped to sour Jefferson on organized religion for life. Time and again in his writings he repeated his conviction that religion was “a matter between every man and his Maker.” As for his own religious principles, he once wrote a friend, “I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.” On an occasion late in life he dodged another inquiry regarding his religion by saying, “Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and to myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.” Jefferson’s conviction that there must be no connection between religion and government was so strong that the spirit he burned with as he wrote Virginia’s Statute on Religious Freedom can still be felt in re-reading the words today.

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“...Almighty God hath created the mind free,” he wrote, reiterating the sentiments William Penn had brought to America fully a century before. Jefferson continued saying that “...to compel a man to furnish money for the propagation of opinions that he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical....Even forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of ...liberty...” The new state constitutions guaranteed religious freedom in their bill of rights, but what they had in mind was the freedom to belong to one’s chosen religion, not necessarily the freedom to belong to no church at all. For example, all the newly formed states initially required that their elected officials take a religious oath. Virginia was the first to abolish all such religious requirements. Its legislature adopted a statute written by Thomas Jefferston stating that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship place, or ministry whatsoever.” By 1800 most states had followed Virginia in separating church and state by law. Only Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire maintained a state-supported church into the nineteenth century. Under the Roosevelt and following courts, the first Amendment statement “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,...” has been completely ignored. It is well known that all references to Christianity, God, His Creation, etc., have been purged from public education. The resulting moral regression was spawned by a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions beginning with Everson v. Board of Education, 1947, and Engel v. Vitale, 1962. The court disregarded 150 years of judicial precedents by erecting a wall of separation between church and state and declared that prayer in the public schools was illegal. In 1819, Thomas Jefferson, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote, “The Constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of

152 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” Later he wrote, “The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in ... the federal judiciary. In 1892, the U.S.Supreme Court stated, “The morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines of worship of other religions.” The skeptic will find hundreds of other non-pluralistic statements of religious convictions from the Congress and the Court up until about 1932. Thereafter, under Roosevelt’s padded Court, religious pluralism prevailed for about 30 years. Subsequently, we have re-entered a non-pluralistic era in which secular humanism has dominated and perverted music, art, education, public education and the social engineering agendas of our government. The American humanistic movement, led by John Dewey, has advanced and applied the tenants of relativism (each player makes his own rules as the game proceeds) to public education at all levels. These humanist have found a true friend in the Supreme Court. This judicial oligarchy, dominated by a majority of five non-elected judges has, as Jefferson predicted, sown the seeds for dissolutionment. Currently the socialist judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has banned school children in nine states from saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag because of two words -”under God.” The court claims this is an endorsement of religion and violates the so-called separation of church and state. This was not the intent of the first Amendment as shown by historical records. First, the term “under God” does nothing to establish a religion and the justices know this. Their sole purpose of using the phrase is to destroy all religions, to even use the term “God” is unconstitutional. To a socialist there is only one God and that is Socialism. Karl Marx extolled the virtues of Socialism that was much more appeal to the masses than religion. He promised people that they did not have to go to heaven to reap their due rewards, because he was going to bring “heaven on earth” and religion was only an opiate of the people. And apparently there

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 153 are members of the judiciary who follow this philosophy. These same judicial sorcerers are saying that placing the Ten Commandments in public places is unconstitutional. Since when can the Ten Commandments be construed as a religion. They are moral guidelines that man should live by. But anything that’s moral or ethical is taboo with most judges, just consider some of their decisions. The misinterpretation goes on with the 2nd Amendment. “...the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Again we revisit the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for insanity. In a recent decision of a three judge panel not to rehear a California case, the judges ruled that the word “people” in the Second Amendment does not mean individuals. The panel’s opinion erases the Second Amendment from our Constitution as effectively as it can, by holding that no individual has standing to challenge any law restricting firearm possession or use. This means that an individual cannot even get a case into court to raise the question about bearing arms. Some judges disagree with the three-judge panel’s decree. As one judge wrote: “...”rights” were retained by individuals while “powers” were delegated to governments, so “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” means what it says.” He further wrote in dissent: “The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed, where the government refuses to stand for re-election and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However, improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.” The two decisions by the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals shows how distructive these judges are. The court rules that (in the case of the second Amendment) ‘no individual has standing to challenge any law restricting firearm possession.” This in effect denies individuals the

154 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. right to sue. On the other hand, this same court, claims the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitional because one man states that he does not want his daughter using the term ‘under God’. This man has no legal right to sue because he and his wife are divorced and the child is in the custody of the mother. The mother, who is Christian says that she and her daughter have no problem saying the term ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. How can the court allow status to sue to a person that has no interest in the saying of the Pledge (except that he admits being an atheist) and not allow status to six individuals that have rights under the second Amendment to bear arms. One wonders if any true Americans are really listening. In reference to the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms, was adopted from English Common Law that at one time (early eighteenth century) allowed Englishmen to bear arms so that they could protect themselves and their property against all comers. Today, in England, the socialist government has outlawed ownership of guns, making England easy picking for criminals. (See Chapter 7 for some examples.) In America, the Socialists, like all good Socialists, insist on disarming the citizens and are using their socialist followers in black robes to destroy the 2nd Amendment. The Socialists seem more concerned about the rights of the violators than the rights of the victims. As a reminder to those who are out to destroy the Bill of Rights, our founding fathers insisted that they be included to the Constitution, or they would not approve the Constitution as written. At the constitution convention in Philadelphia, lawyers such as James Madison, James Wilson, and Alexander Hamilton had all studied the writings of Sir William Blackstone, an 18th century English jurist and legal philosopher. Blackstone was their Bible and each of them took his “Commentaries On the Law” with them to the debates for the convention proceedings. In his “Commentary,” Blackstone wrote, “ Self defense is a right that no government can deprive people of since no government can protect the individual in his moment of need....The individual must arm for his self defense.”

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It is not only the first two Amendments that are being destroyed, all of the original eleven Amendments are under attack in one form or another. Today, even the state governments have been usurped by Socialists. In one northeaster state, for example, the State Supreme Court has reintroduced a form of indentured servitude on its citizens. In the case brought before the State Supreme Court, there were certain State citizens that believed technicians (plumbers, auto mechanics, teachers, etc.) were charging too much for their services. They lobbied the State legislature to order the technicians to work for what they wanted to pay. The Legislature ignored their pleas. So when their attempt to get the legislature to act failed, they turned to the State Supreme Court for redress. “Make the government tell those ‘technicians to work for us not at the price that they want but at the price we want to pay.” Isn’t this forced labor, a form of indenture sevitude? The justices, feeling sorry for the folks making this plea, told the state government that it can make a person work for the money those folks want to pay even though their wages are higher. When the Supreme Court of a state can simply order the state government to force people to accept only wages that people want to pay them, we are no longer a free society. Socialism rules. There is no distinction between such a state and a country in which people are rounded up and forced to work whether they want to or not. Its just a matter of details. Another tidbit from the eastern bastion of Socialism, is the state legislature that passed a law denying people the right to eat what they want. The legislature is fearful, they say, of the obesity problem. People are too fat. Therefore, as superior human beings we will tell you what you can eat. One more victory for the Socialists. Soon, and very soon, man will no longer be allowed to think for himself. The Committee will tell you what, when, where and how you may live. From cradle to grave the Socialists will thus bring ‘Heaven on Earth’ to all.

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Since the French Revolution, socialist have been using the term ‘equality’ as the basis of all their equations. During the waning months of the French Revolution, Babeuf (see Chapter 3) brought to the attention of the socialist leaders the problem of private property. If people are to be equal, they cannot own private property! The reason: it is impossible to divide a country into equal shares and give each citizen an equal amount. Populations change, therefore, the country would require division daily. The solution: the country and all its land and property must be owned by the state (which would be controlled by the Central Committee). In the United States this cannot be done because of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Ever since the Roosevelt era, which began in 1932, socialist have been out to destroy the Constitution in any way possible. They have been doing quite well and are still stronger than the hoi polloi. Recently, a case came before the Supreme Court concerning eminent domain. The ruling handed down by the Court completely destroys the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution because they authorized the government (village, town, city, county or state) to confiscate our houses and land so long as the politicians (governing bodies) are doing it “for public use”. That decision means that for whatever reason, politicians will be able to blackmail people into doing what they want under threat of confiscation of their land and personal possessions. This also follows the socialist theory of redistributing the wealth. This horrific judgment was given with the evil intent of opening the door to the federal government to eventually control all property. The five Supreme Court Justices: Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens and David Souter, showed their utter distain for the Constitution and the American way of life. Essentially, all private property is now controlled by a government entity. It is the law. This corrupted judgment was designed to destroy the right of American citizens to own property outright. This was a socialistic agenda to give the government the right to steal all the land in the country. It has raised the specter of tyranny in America to a new level. They have shamed

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 157 the very institution they serve. One recalls that Justice Ginsburg, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, is one of the Supreme Court Justices that has stated openly that the courts must look to the European courts for guidance not to the Constitution. These five justices should be impeached but they will not be, because neither the President nor Congress has the courage to do so. The result of the destruction of the Fourth Amendment is as follows. In the year since the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision (eminent domain), nearly 6,000 properties nationwide have been threatened or taken under that precedent, more than half the number that had been seized over a previous five year period, said a report released June 20, 2006 by the Institute for Justice. “There has been a huge rise in the number of threats to use eminent domain since Kelo. Cities are wielding eminent domain as a club,” said Dana Berliner, a senior counsel with the Institute for Justice and the author of the 100-page report. . .People threatened with eminent domain are vulnerable, she said, because they feel compelled to sell or have their home or business seized for a fire-sale price. At the same time, Ms. Berliner said, residents have become more active in trying to prevent the land grabs and promoting changes to state law: to bar the use of eminent domain. Since the high court’s 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Conn., 5,783 properties nationwide have been either seized or threatened with seizure under eminent domain. That number compares with 10,281 examples over the five year period from 1998 to 2002, said the institute. During that period, threats were made to seize 6,560 properties, and 3,721 condemnation filings or authorizations were recorded. In the past year, 5,429 property seizures have been threatened for economic redevelopment projects, plus 354 condemnation filings or authorizations, the institute said. The institute’s report “Opening the Floodgates” documents 117 projects in the District of Columbia and 27 states, including Maryland, that have involved the use or threatened use of eminent

158 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. domain for private development in the past year. “The vast majority involved the removal of lower-income residents and smaller businesses to attract wealthier people or more prominent businesses, Ms. Berliner wrote. For example, Baltimore and the Baltimore Development Corporation want about 20 properties for the Charles North commercial development project. Last March (2006), . a circuit court judge ruled that city officials have the authority to seize seven properties for the project, including the former Chesapeake Restaurant, via eminent domain. This ruling was made even though the properties had been sold the previous fall to investors who planned to redevelop the land, the supposed purpose of the taking. In April; the city of Baltimore filed suit to seize another property for the project, a historic theater that was already being restored. Politician love money and their vote usually goes to the highest bidder. Is it any wonder why many people feel that activist judges should be impeached? In one stroke five socialist on the Supreme Court destroyed the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Another decision by the five renegades in black occurred in its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld rejecting President Bush’s military commissions for the trial of al-Qaeda terrorists. Justice John Stevens, writing for Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy, evaded Congress’ order that the court not decide any cases arising from the detention of enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, camp. These so called Gods in black’ narrowed Congress’ authorization for the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. These judges overlooked centuries of American history in which presidents from George Washington to FDR used military commissions to try enemy combatants for war crimes. They essentially overruled the central lessons of three Supreme Court decisions from World War II upholding the use of military commissions. In an effort to interfere with the way the elected branches of our

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 159 government have chosen to wage war against al-Qaeda, they interpreted a law recognizing military commissions to require the United States to follow what is known as “Common Article 3” of the Geneva Conventions. While limited only to military trials; Hamdan suggests the possibility that the courts will order the United States to apply Common Article 3 to other operations against jihadists who .do not wear uniforms nor display any distinctive signs, systematically flout the laws of war, and are neither parties nor signatories to the Geneva Conventions. Hamdan has the potential to straight-jacket our armed forces well beyond the narrow issue of war crimes trials. It is important to explain where Common Article 3 really applies and what it actually requires. Under the Geneva Conventions, prisoner of war status is reserved for captured soldiers in the regular armed forces of nations that have signed the treaties. POWs receive the best of treatment: they cannot be placed in cells, they need only provide name, rank and serial number, and they are entitled to a great many privileges and benefits, such as retaining their uniform, unit structure and chain of command. These rules have in mind the conflicts between the large conscript armies of World Wars I and II. It provides protections to those who follow the laws of wars: do not target civilians deliberately and restrict violence to combatants. The major purpose of these provisions is to ensure, through treaty, that reciprocity be afforded to all nations and their armed forces once engaged in combat. Al-Qaeda did not exist at the time of the drafting of the Geneva Conventions, and affording such protections was never in the minds of the signatories, certainly not the United States. Al-Qaeda is not a nation state and could not be, nor will it ever be party to such treaties. It has no intention of following any of the laws of war. In fact, its primary tactics, targeting and killing civilians, taking hostages and executing prisoners, are designed specifically to violate any standards of civilized warfare. The conflict with al-Qaeda cannot trigger the general POW protections of the Geneva Conventions, because al-Qaeda is not a party to the treaties. Common Article 3 applies to certain fighters who

160 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. do not meet the standards for a POW. It sets minimum standards “in the case of armed conflict not of an international character.” Its inclusion in 1949 cured a major gap in the Geneva Conventions. The original conventions did not set rules for internal civil wars between a government and resistance or rebel groups. Common Article 3 .extended minimum protections to detainees who were not fighting on behalf of the armed forces of another nation, but not those due to POWs. It requires, for example, that “persons taking no active part in the hostilities,” including the sick, wounded and captured, “be treated humanely.” They are to be protected against “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture.” The basic purpose of Common Article 3- humane treatment is already the policy of the United States. But Common Article 3 also contains some ambiguous provisions. It prohibits outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment,” which it does not define. It only allows the use of a “regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples,” which it again leaves undefined. . An example from Hamdan itself illustrates how debatable these terms can be. Under the Pentagon’s rules on the procedures for military commissions, a court may exclude the defendant from the courtroom if classified information is to be presented. His defense attorney may be present, but not the defendant. We would not want al-Qaeda operatives directly learning the sources and methods used by American intelligence to track and capture them. . Does preventing an al-Qaeda defendant access to such information constitute a violation of “judicial guarantees that are recognized as indispensable by Civilized peoples?” The Supreme Court seemed to think so, but we believe many would agree that the military commission rule is a reasonable com-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 161 promise that allows for the defendant’s interests to be represented but without harming national security during an ongoing war. The conflict with al-Qaeda does not fit within the general Geneva Convention rules for wars between nation-states. AI-Qaeda terrorists are not legally eligible for the rights granted to POWs. But the war on terrorism does not fall within Common Article 3 either. The United States is not fighting an internal civil war. As Justice Clarence Thomas notes in his vigorous Hamdan dissent, the war against al-Qaeda and its supporters is clearly one of an “international character.” The terrorist activities reaches beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, to New York City, Washington, D.C., London, Bali, and Madrid. The war that-began with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 is certainly nothing like the internal civil wars in the minds of Common Article 3’s drafters in 1949. We are not fighting a liberation movement of Americans who want to overthrow the government. We are fighting something that lay completely outside the experience of those who wrote Geneva after World War II: an international terrorist organization with the power to inflict destruction on a par with the armed forces of a nation. Al-Qaeda and those who hate the Western way of life are using our respect for the laws of war against our armed forces and are trying to open the door to claims of war crimes based on ambiguous terms. It must be noted, that the week after the decision was handed down, al-Qaeda, in Iraq, offered a video on an Islamist Web site of the two U.S. soldiers captured in Iraq, showing them beheaded and their chests cut wide open. Can we ever expect humane treatment and reciprocity from terrorists? Apparently, we have five black-robed justices who are sympathetic to the terrorists. In trying to force Common Article 3 onto a conflict that stretches beyond national borders’- but with an international terrorist organization rather than a nation, the Supreme Court is trying to force a new international law upon the U.S. We can have a legitimate debate on whether to update the Geneva Conventions to ensure

162 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. humane principles are applied in conflicts with terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda. But as it stands now, as a matter of both .law and policy, such application to al-Qaeda only hurts the United States in its efforts to protect the nation against international terror, both now and in the foreseeable future. The five tyrants in black robes, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have made their intent known but given little coverage by the liberal press. Justice Ginsburg has written that “a too strict jurisprudence of the framers’ original intent (of the Constitution) seems to be unworkable.’ She added further, “ that adherence to our eighteenth-century Constitution is dependent on change in society’s practices, constitutional amendment and judicial interpretation.” She later remarked that ‘boldly dynamic interpretation departing radically from the original understanding of the Constitution is sometimes necessary.” In other words, the socialist judges will rewrite the Constitution into what ever form they wish. For someone who took an oath to uphold the Constitution when sworn in as a judge, and then has the audacity to interpret it in any fashion that they wish, is committing treason. There is no other word for it. The Constitution spells out quite clearly how it can be amended (and it has on numerous occasions) yet these judges are above the Constitution and make their own laws. Judicial activism—hogwash! Its treason! For judicial zealots, the First Amendment is the knife most convenient for destroying individual rights. A Michigan judge used the versatile device to end the state’s ban on assisted suicide. Richard C. Kaufman, chief judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court, discovered a “constitutionally protected right” to commit suicide. Citing Roe vs. Wade, Kaufman ruled that if abortion is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” so is suicide. He also noted a decision of Oliver Wendel Holmes that allowed the sterilization of a retarded women. The American people emphatically rejected Clinton’s plan

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 163 to lift the ban on gays in the military, a position echoed by their elected representatives. A stone-deaf panel of the D.C. Circuit Court (composed of Carter appointees, Abner Mikva, Patricia Wald, and Harry Edwards) took it upon themselves to overturn the ban. It is “irrational” to assume that an open homosexual will engage in homosexual acts in the service, Mikva wrote in an opinion ignoring the norms of human behavior. Easily, the most infuriating instance of judicial absolutism nullifying popular sovereignty was the decision of Arkansas State Circuit Judge Chris Piazza invalidating a term-limitation amendment to the state constitution enacted by referendum. He stated that the ballot wording lacked the phrase “be it enacted” and therefore, the voters didn’t know they were amending the constitution, despite eight separate references to the process. Here, one man thwarted the will of 60 percent of Arkansas voters. In the early 1990s, the Colorado Supreme Court, in a 6-1 ruling, let stand the January ruling by Denver District Court Judge Jeff Bayless that has barred an amendment from going into effect. Passed by voters in November, Amendment 2 would prohibit the state or local governments from enforcing gay-rights laws. In upholding the injunction, the state Supreme Court agreed with Judge Bayless that Amendment 2 supposedly affects the fundamental constitutional rights of homosexual citizens. This decision gave special rights to homosexuals. The answer should have been that homosexuality never has been and is not now a basis for granting special protected class status under the U.S. Constitution. It remains a controversial lifestyle which some people uphold as morally neutral and normal, and others oppose it as immoral and destructive, both to individuals and to society. Amendment 2 was not an attempt to make homosexuality illegal or to deprive anyone of their true rights, but to declare that government shall remain neutral in the controversy over the social acceptance of homosexuality. Judge Bayless and the Colorado State Supreme Court, with their decision, destroyed the rights of all citizens—the right to associate with only those you wish.

164 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. It was the courts decision to destroy organizations and entities such as the Boy Scouts of America. Why? The recognition of gay-rights has led to many court battles over the right for gays to marry. Today, in California the California State Supreme Court disenfranchised the citizens of California who passed a ballot Proposition stating that ‘marriage is a rite between a man and a woman.’ This clearly defined the original meaning of marriage and its purpose. The original meaning of marriage was instituted by the church to establish a relationship between a man and a woman to unite and form what was then called ‘family.’ This legalized the bearing of children and the ‘family’ grew. No where in the Federal or States Constitution did the rite of marriage warrant any mention. It was like Slavery. Although, there were States that disliked Slavery, there where States where Slavery thrived. The founding fathers would have never been able to enact the present Constitution had Slavery even been mentioned. The Constitution did state however, that all rights not granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution were left to the States or the people. Since the State Constitution of California had no statement in it giving a right to same sex people to marry how could the State Supreme Court of California arrive at the decision the Proposition defining marriage as a rite between a man and a woman unconstitutional? They came to this decision for one reason only. To destroy the church and family.. The Illuminati will be proud of them! In their decision to disregard the U.S. Constitution, Judges such as Bayless and those on the Colorado Supreme Court completely disregarded the history of the making of the Constitution. “Federalism” is the classic name of the American system of government, in which power is distributed between the separate (or several) states and the national government. The great British histo-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 165 rian Lord Acton thought federalism, not democracy, was America’s distinctive contribution to good government. “Some call this ‘federalism,’ a historical misnomer that is widely used. Actually, the Federalists were the advocates of a strong national government. “The champions of state autonomy in the drafting period were the ‘anti-Federalist.’ The Federalist Papers are written to vindicate a new government at the national level. If state power is what people wanted, they already had that in the Articles of Confederation, which gave any state a defacto veto on many acts of the ‘confederated’ Congress.” The confusion about the word “federalism” began when the champions of the new Constitution, as many historians note, grabbed the name away from their opponents, who had a more plausible claim to it. The “anti-Federalists” favored a more truly federal arrangement than the “Federalists,” some of whom, including Madison and Alexander Hamilton, privately favored a much more centralized government than they were willing to avow publicly. In Federalist No. 45, the most important in the whole series, Madison himself assured his readers that the powers of the federal government would be “few and defined” while the powers of the states would remain “numerous and indefinite.” He pointed out that the federal government’s powers under the Constitution were more an invigoration” of it original powers than an addition to them; that those powers dealt mostly with “external objects”, meaning foreign affairs; and that they would hardly affect the daily life of the people within the states. Here is the point. The Constitution, as it was then understood and applied, was far closer to the Articles of Confederation than to the “living document” of the modern Supreme Court. It was basically a beefed-up version of the Articles. The most obvious evidence is slavery. The Constitution didn’t

166 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. authorize slavery; it simply claimed no power for the federal government to interfere with it within the states. The reason was not that most of the framers approved of slavery, but that the Constitution was a deal among states -some of which countenanced slavery, some of which did not. A uniform rule on the matter, at that time, would have made any union impossible. If you wanted a common government to include both Massachusetts and Georgia, you had to agree to disagree on some very weighty questions, while delegating a few specified powers to the common government. In some clearly defined areas, this common government might be “strong”; in all others, it would be impotent. That’s federalism. It was a brilliant idea, but probably too subtle and delicate for current Judges to understand.. Thus, decisions handed down by Judge Bayless and the Colorado Supreme Court, convey ‘rights’ to a group of people that was never given to them under the original Constitution. Because of their decisions and other judicial decisions of like Judges, an admitted lesbian law-maker in the California House of Representatives, has introduced a bill to require all California Schools to teach children from grade 1 through 12 of the joys and fantasies of being homosexual. Since both State houses are controlled by the Democrats, this bill will be enacted with flying colors. Parents will be denied the opportunity to teach Christian virtues to their children. The premature death of a ballot question proposing to require parental notification when a minor has an abortion points once again to just how much our fundamental freedom to petition government has been restricted. Denver District Judge Connie Peterson disqualified the measure in 1994 after ruling, upon a court challenge, that affidavits must accompany all completed petitions had omitted the ritual statement that the circulator “has read and understands the laws governing the circulation of petitions.” An oversight of a mere formality on a petition drive that had secured more than enough

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 167 signatures to appear on the fall ballot and in all other respects had followed the letter and spirit of the law. On September 16, 1994, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the ruling of Denver District Court in removing the Parental Notification Initiative from the November l994 ballot. Commenting on the ruling, Dr. William Woodley, President of People for Parental Involvement, said: “In keeping the parental notice initiative off the ballot, the Court has once again thwarted the will of the people....” In La Jolla, California a monument was built to honor Korean War veterans in 1954. This monument was named The Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial. The monument consisted of six walls that will accommodate more than 3,200 black granite plaques honoring veterans, living and dead, from all branches of the service. In the center of the walls is a cross—25 feet high on a pedestal. In the early 1980s, an atheist sued to have the cross moved because it was on public land. The case bounced around over the years and finally in 2006, a federal judge ruled that the city would have to remove the cross. In addition if the city did not remove the cross by 1 August 2006, the judge would fine the city $5,000.00 a day until it was removed. This incident shows how the socialist have taken over the judicial branch of government. To repeat the beginning of the first Amendment: ‘Amendment #1: Congress shall make no LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; …..’ I capitalized the word that is important in this Amendment—a word that all social judges ignore. A cross is a symbol not a law. A cross represent death and, if one wishes, resurrection. So how can one judge infer that placing a symbol on public property is passing a law establishing a specific religion? Is this judge using this case to force the federal government to remove all crosses from all federal cemeteries? It appears that way. And a cross is only a symbol that pays respect to the dead. What won’t these social judges think of next? This judicial oligarchy, dominated by a majority of five nonelected judges has, as Jefferson predicted, sown the seeds for dis-

168 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. solution of our republic. This corruption of the Courts can only be controlled by the U.S. Senate, however, the social element in the Senate are deeply embedded and will destroy all nominees who consider the Constitution the guiding principle of this country. This constant assault on Constitutional nominees is unrelenting. There are signs over the offices of a number of Socialistic Senators that read “Only activists need apply.” Activists judges are those judges that believe the Constitution is dead and must be replaced by judicial law. Thus the oligarchy. When it comes to destroying religion in this country (one of the dictates of the Illuminati), the courts are more than willing to go along with the one-world concept.

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CHAPTER 7 AMERICA’S TROJAN HORSE—CONGRESS GENERAL Americans expect all levels of government to competently guard the nation from enemies outside and inside our country. The majority of the citizens want our borders secured. They want our streets safe to walk in again at any time of the day or night, NOT some politicians screaming for gun controls while doing nothing to eliminate the gangs and hoodlums that have taken over our cities. Taking guns out of the hands of citizens so they cannot protect themselves (because the police cannot) is insanity at its peak. This is not a rap at the police efforts in this country but the results of decisions handed down by the Warren Court (Miranda Decision, etc.) which removed the ability of police to be a ‘crime prevention’ organization to the status of investigating crimes after they happen. Just take a close look at European countries that have removed the rights of people to protected themselves and their families. In those countries, crimes are rampant. The crime rates that are reported show a decline but that is because the only crimes that are reported are those that are solved. If a crime is not solved it is not reported because (in their reasoning), it is being investigated and until finished it may not end up a crime. Some noted results of Social justice as dispensed by the socialistic philosophy that a man has no rights when it comes to protecting himself, his family, or his property can be found in numerous European cases that are on the books in Europe—especially, in England. In England, under the socialist Government outlawing guns resulted in a soaring number of muggings, rapes, burglaries and assaults in London. Your chances of being mugged in London are

170 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. six times greater than in New York City. Rates of assaults, robberies and burglaries are far higher in England than in the United States. In England, burglars know that when they break into a home there is no danger that the homeowner might have a gun. To illustrate this point that the socialist in England is out to destroy a citizens right to defend himself, the following is cited: “When an outbreak of burglaries hit one suburban neighborhood outside of London, one homeowner bought a toy gun from a childrens toy store. He than pointed it at two burglars that broke into his house. By use of the plastic pistol, the owner managed to detain the burglars until the police arrived. The homeowner was promptly arrested for using an ‘imitation weapon to threaten or intimidate.’ The homeowner was found guilty as charged and is now appealing his sentence from a jail cell. The burglars were released because they were the victims being intimidated. Another incident in England’s desire to prevent people from protecting themselves: ‘An individual was stopped by police while running on a road one evening. The police found that the person was carrying a length of polished steel, a two foot length of cycle chain, a metal clock weight and a studded glove. He said he had those articles for his protection because he had been threatened by a gang of youths. He was charged with carrying illegal weapons. At his hearing it was determined that on several occasions a group of youths had chased him or threatened him with assault. He had reported these incidents to the police. The justices found that he believed there was an imminent threat against him. This fear proved well-founded because sixteen days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. The prosecutor appealed the case to the Queen’s Bench Divisional Court. This court decided that the defendant did not need to carry all four weapons for protection and that a reasonable excuse to carry a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat of danger at the time they are carried. The regular and routine carrying of weapons was not sanctioned. The judges found no reasonable excuse and sent the case back to the lower court with instructions to convict. As soon as the hospitalized

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 171 victim is released from the hospital, he will be re-tried. So much for Social justice. Americans expect all levels of government to be organized and handle disaster efficiently when they occur. The political patronage system has produced incompetent but lifetime employees and allowed partisan abuse of public resources, including distribution of sensitive information in a partisan fashion, running political errands on public time (such as picking up campaign contributions), and using congressional equipment for political campaign mailings. Implicit in promises of reform was the idea that the opportunities for massive patronage and corruption that this army of aides represented would vanish under nonpartisan administration. The enormous subsidies for congressional mail, which increase the federal budget and tilt federal elections in favor of incumbents, also remained essentially unchanged. Lawmakers should answer constituent queries, but over nine-tenths of franking costs derive from mass mailings initiated by Congressmen, not from responses to constituents. Although previous Congresses have cut franking accounts and required disclosure of Members’ total expenditures, such reforms as limiting the mention of the sender’s name to eight per page and capping his pictures at two per page only raise questions about what prior abuses had occurred. Republicans have pressed repeatedly for further reform of franking, but most committees have refused to hold any meetings on the subject. The political uses of the frank were illustrated during the tumultuous 1992 elections, when three of the four heaviest House users of the frank lost their reelection bids. On average, the four sent out over a million massmailed letters apiece. Although these mailings failed to save them, they demonstrate that those in greatest political peril often use the frank the most. Recent events such as the Katrina Hurricane shows how inefficient our bureaucracies are. The red tape that ties up people from

172 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. doing anything—not so much the red tape, but behind every decision is the possibility of not getting promoted if you make a mistake, therefore pass-the-buck to someone else. In reference to the Katrina affair, FEMA personnel, the Governor of Louisiana, and the Mayor of New Orleans were all to blame for being unprepared. But it ends up political with a lot of finger-pointing instead of rationally figuring out what happened and how can we improve our response for the next one—which certainly will occur. After Katrina, a House Task Force on Improving the National Environment Policy Act was formed. The task force said that energy production, the construction of affordable homes and hurricane protection for New Orleans have been hampered by a 35-year old federal law known as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It took 35 years for an inept Congress to figure out that their ill-advised Environmental Laws were killing this country. But prior to the forming of the task force, Social Democrats, along with the liberal press, smeared President Bush and his Administration as the culprits who were responsible for the results of Katrina. Socialists are very good at blaming others for their failures. Why didn’t Congress over the years amend the 1970 National Environment Policy Act? They knew it was flawed but to appease the Environmental Bloc which donates much funds to members of Congress, they did nothing. They cannot plead ignorance because story after story was printed on how the NEPA was being used by environmentalists to block construction of much needed services to prevent disaster. It became apparent early after the enactment of NEPA that it was unworkable. NEPA requires the U.S. government to evaluate the environmental impact of any significant project undertaken by a federal agency, financed with federal money, or requiring a federal permit. It further mandates that the results of the government assessment be made public and that the public decide whether its benefits outweigh its costs. The task force said NEPA lawsuits, at least twice, had prevented system improvements to protect New Orleans from a ‘hurricane. It said the Sierra Club and

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 173 other environmental groups in 1996 sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and blocked a project to raise and fortify levees around New Orleans. The current task force also cited a Los Angeles Times story that said a Save the Wetlands lawsuit filed in 1977 killed plans approved by Congress to create a “massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans.” The plan was created after Hurricane Betsy in 1965. A federal judge stopped plans for the hurricane barrier after finding that an environmental impact statement drafted by the Army Corps of Engineers was flawed. The corps abandoned the project by the mid-1980s. A member of the congressional NEPA task force, says it is clear that NEPA “plays’ a role in hampering our ability as a nation to develop efficient supply chains capable of providing Americans with affordable energy! “For years, construction projects that could have mitigated adverse impacts to our supply have been needlessly blocked due to endless red tape and a sluggish federal bureaucracy,” the congresswoman added. Yet after all these stories over the intervening years from 1970, an inept Congress and other Social Democrats refused to take action to prevent these disastrous natural events from doing so much damages. Greed and incompetent are the only descriptions that can describe Congress. The horror stories that are coming out slowly in a reluctant socialist Press (who continue to fault the Republican Party and most of all the President) are mind boggling to say the least. Most to the press ignores the truth that the federal government was stymied and hampered by the slow state-level requests and approvals (required by law) to get help quickly where it was needed. They will not write about federal rescue efforts being severely restrained by a level of violence that was unbelievable. Example: it was reliably reported that at the convention center in New Orleans, beatings and even rapes were going on among the approximately 20,000 evacuees at that location and a very angry mob there forced police to beat a

174 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. hasty retreat. Also, in that area, a rushing mob prevented a military helicopter from landing with much needed supplies. Looting and gunfire was all over town. A local Charity Hospital was receiving gunfire as the staff and patients tried to unload supply trucks that had arrived there. With all the looting and gunfire, Government workers and volunteers were in grave danger and had to move slowly and with great caution. And then along comes Jesse Jackson (according to the New York Times News Service and Reuters) who immediately accused President Bush and his administration for dismissing our cities because they were mostly black and being urban blacks did not vote for the President. Others also complained about slow rescue efforts because they were black. Go ahead—make his day. Blame it on the President. Incidentally, a year after the disaster, rioting and looting is still going on. The problem has become so great that the mayor of New Orleans had to request that the Governor send in the National Guard to help the police, who is unable to cope with all the crime. Due to indoctrinations presented in most schools today, most Americans are more like slaves than free citizens in charge of their own affairs. They are led to believe that the government is their salvation. And if big government continues on its current course, all our liberties will be at risk. In America today, liberty is under attack by courts that make, rather than interpret, laws, and by prosecutors who conduct inquisitions instead of trials, willfully destroying the lives and reputations of their victims, despite failure to prove any crime was committed. Like good Socialists, they make all kinds of accusations, and off you go to jail or at best suffer public disgrace. And they care less! To them, they are making a name for themselves so they will fit into the socialist hierarchy. As mention in a previous Chapter, the 5th Amendment to the Constitution has been completely destroyed. By the decision of five dictators in black robes, property is no longer private and can now be taken from us and sold to others when it suits government’s “public purpose.” Religion and religious practices, especially those of

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 175 the Christians faith, are increasingly regulated by government. It is almost impossible to do anything without permission from one or more departments of government and complying with their oftenconflicting dictates. Thoughts, speeches and even opinions are not tolerated in this atmosphere of judicial tyranny and penalties abound for those who try to resist the system. As Saint-Simon said, “They will do as we tell them or we will treat them like chattel”. Corruption is the land grabs, the power grabs, the gun grabs, the bribery, the shady deals, the high crimes and treason. Corruption is the theft of campaign dollars through forced labor union deductions. Corruption is the systematic indoctrination of several generations of our youth with socialist dogma via government school systems. Corruption is the removal of God from public life and substituting in the evil homosexual/feminist agenda and the destruction of moral society. Corruption is lying to the public about global warming and the selling of the Kyoto treaty. Corruption is giving up our national sovereignty to the United Nations. Corruption is the abuses of office, obstruction of justice, lying, perjury and subornation of perjury. Currently, Congress is a cesspool of corruption and self glorification. Mark Twain once said that America is a nation without a distinct criminal class “with the possible exception of Congress” and the Congress of today is even worse than it was in Twain’s time more than a century ago. Currently, a Congressman has to think continually throughout his term of office about raising money for the next campaign. He has to raise at least $3000 every day he’s in office. Current limitations on donations (passed in the early 1970s) strictly limit the size of the donations. This forces the Congressman to follow the money on every vote he makes, every day in office! A few years ago, the National Taxpayers Union did a study of Congressmen’s voting records and campaign contributions. They found linkage showing that 95% of all the votes made in Congress are bought and paid for by someone! Unfortunately, the United States Congress has 535 members,

176 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. most of whom think themselves as fully qualified cabinet members, or great policy makers, or brilliant military tacticians, or highly qualified on a number of subjects which need and deserve his or her own review and modification. And many have presidential ambitions. It is interesting that reportedly within this same august group there are: 29 who have been accused of spousal abuse; 7 have been arrested for fraud; 19 have been accused of writing bad checks; 117 have bankrupted at least two businesses; 3 have been arrested for assault; 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit; 14 have been arrested for shoplifting/drug-related charges; 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits; 84 have been arrested for drunk driving. Add to these figures, at least one was caught plagiarizing in college (Sen. Biden); one was caught cheating on a Spanish exam (Sen. Ted Kennedy) and forced to leave school for a semester; one was involved in a negligent driving accident that resulted in the female passenger drowning (Sen. Ted Kennedy); two were rebuked separately on the House floor for their highly questionable involvement in homosexual related activities (Reps. Studds and Frank); one served prison time for his involvement in a House stamp fraud activity (Rep. Rostenkowski); and one was forced to resign from an intelligence oversight committee for leaking classified information relative to the Iran-Contra hearings (Sen. Frank Leahy). And that’s just what has surfaced publicly. (It is of interest to note that two of the above listed characters, Senator Biden and Senator Kennedy, were two of the Democratic Senators that trashed the character of Judge Bork, and laughed while doing it!) For more than one hundred years, the House Bank had quietly cashed the members’ pay checks out of a little first floor Capitol office. The bank neither paid nor charged interest. It made no loans. Other than members salaries, it took no deposits. Yet to House members, it was another way to steal money from the federal government. In February 1990, the GAO made public its report on the House Bank. This time, instead of referring in footnotes to sums “due from

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 177 members”, the GAO made it clear that members were kiting checks. A number of news stories followed. In September 1991, another GAO audit said members had written 8,331 bad checks in the fiscal year ended June 30, 1990.” The subsequent investigation by the ethics committee found that 269 current and 56 former members of the house had been allowed to routinely overdraw their accounts without paying interest or penalties. Among the then current members (at that time), the biggest abusers were Stephen J. Solarz, a New York Democrat, who had written $594,646 in bad or overdraft checks and was overdrawn for thirty months; Carl C. Perkins, a Kentucky Democrat, who had written $565,651 in bad checks and overdrawn for fourteen months; Harold E. Ford, a Tennessee Democrat, who had overdrawn, his account by a total of $552, 447 and was overdrawn for thirty-one months, and Robert J. Mrazek, a New York Democrat, who had written $351,609 in bad checks and was overdrawn for twenty-three months. Charles Hatcher, a Georgia Democrat, had written 819 bad checks and had been overdrawn a total of thirty-five months. Ronald D. Coleman, a Texas Democrat, had written 673 bad checks and had been overdrawn a total of twenty-three months. Among the abusers from the Republican side was Newt Gingrich, the minority whip, who had written twenty-two bad checks with a face value totaling $26,891.” “The scandal and its initial cover-up was but another example of how members of Congress expect everyone but themselves to play by the rules.” Needless to say, Congress was forced to close the House Bank. Other Washington organizations are continuously revealing more and more about a corrupt Congress. They include current and former members of Congress such as Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla), whose trail of bad debts, lies to Congress and misstatements to the Internal Revenue Service have spawned a number of investigations. There are others like Rep. James Moran (D-Va) whose wife charged him with abuse, who had assaulted other members of Congress on

178 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the floor of the House and is a former stockbroker whose judgment in trades is so bad he is broke from poor investments. The list also includes Joe Waldholtz, a con man and husband of former Rep. Enid Greene Waldholtz (R-UT) who kited more than a million dollars in bad checks and ended up in prison. Others, like former Ohio Senator John Glenn, have driven creditors into bankruptcy because of unpaid debts left over from aborted Presidential campaigns. Even millionaire Senator Ted Kennedy has left a trail of unpaid debts from past campaigns. In recent years, members of Congress have gone to jail for child molestation, fraud and other charges. Research found 117 members of the House and Senate who have run at least two businesses each that went bankrupt, often leaving business partners and creditors holding the bag. Seventy-one of them have credit reports so bad they can’t get an American Express card (but as members of Congress, they get a government-issued Amex card without a credit check). Fifty-three have personal and financial problems so serious they would be denied security clearances by the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy if they had to apply through normal channels (but, again, as members of Congress they get such clearances simply because they fooled enough people to get elected). Twenty-nine members of Congress have been accused of spousal abuse in either criminal or civil proceedings. Twenty-seven have driving while intoxicated arrests on their driving records. Twenty-one are current defendants in various lawsuits, ranging from bad debts, disputes with business partners or other civil matters. Nineteen members of Congress have been accused of writing bad checks, even after the scandal several years ago, which resulted in closure of the informal House Bank that routinely allowed members to overdraw their accounts without penalty. Fourteen members of Congress have drug-related arrests in their background, eight were

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 179 arrested for shoplifting, seven for fraud, four for theft, three for assault and one for criminal trespass. Once elected to Congress, fellow Congressmen will protect and keep you no matter what. The following cases illustrate this corrupt organization. In March of 1998, Congressman Jay Kim admitted to committing the largest amount of campaign violations ever by a member of Congress. More than one-third of the contributions to his 1992 primary campaign, which he won by only 889 votes, were illegal. After pleading guilty to accepting more than $250,000 in illegal corporate and foreign campaign contributions, Kim was sentenced to two months of “house arrest,” restricted to his suburban Virginia home and the halls of Congress. But he kept his job, and all the perks that went with it. The following month, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) appointed Kim to the House-Senate group negotiating the budget-busting highway bill. “He’s a very active member,” said House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster. “His plight has not diminished his effectiveness here in Congress,” said fellow California Republican David Drier. Kim’s estranged wife, June, was less charitable. “It’s really frustrating that our law is not tough enough to get him out right away,” she said. “He’s humiliated us enough.” Despite her wishes, and the demands of others, the law did not require Kim to quit and Congressional leaders, as a rule, usually find a way to accommodate, not punish, fellow members who break the law. Another example of Congressional leaders protecting their members or others of their ilk who have committed crimes but being good Liberals (Socialists) we will just pat them on the back of their hand and say ‘naughty, naughty’. How did the socialist accomplish this protection for themselves? The concept of taking over the Justice Department with socialist in position of all the field Attorney Generals. This was done under President Clinton’s administration by Janet

180 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Reno being appointed Attorney General of the Justice Department. One of her first directives was to demand that all field Attorney Generals submit their resignation immediately or be fired! She then accepted the resignations of those Attorney Generals that were not Liberals and replaced them with Socialists who would destroy anyone not following the Socialists path. Today active special prosecutors from the Justice Department and other State Attorneys are out to destroy Republicans who oppose their views. Most of the time they cannot prove anything, but they convene Grand Juries filled with selected members that will do their bidding and then bring charges against the victim not because of the original investigation but some other trumped up charge like perjury. Now if you’re a good socialist, perjury is not that bad (remember President Clinton) but if you’re a Republican or Conservative it’s a hideous crime and you should go to jail forever! Double standards has been the hallmark of Socialists all over the world. Other House members have kept their seats even while serving in prison: Rep. Thomas Lane (D-Mass.) went to jail from May 7 to Sept. 7, 1956, for tax evasion and Rep. Matthew Lyon (R-Vt.) was imprisoned for violating the Sedition Act in 1798 but returned to Congress after a mob broke him out of jail. Kim announced immediately after his conviction and sentencing that he would run for re-election to a fourth term. “His plan is to win the primary, win the general election and move ahead,” spokesman P.J. O’Neil said at the time. California Republicans rallied to Kim’s defense. Rep. Jerry Lewis, predicted Kim would defy the predictions of his political demise. “Jay, I expect, will be with us for a long time,” Lewis said. He wasn’t. Kim was routed in the California congressional primary just two months later. Gingrich told fellow Republicans he saw no reason to punish Kim or exclude him from Congressional business. “He’s been punished by the court,” Gingrich said. “That’s enough.” Kim “punishment” was two months home detention and a $5,000 fine. He could have

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 181 been sent to prison for three years and fined more than $100,000. His problems came when committees in both the House and Senate were getting ready to probe illegal campaign contributions to the President’s 1996 re-election campaign. When it comes to members who break the law, leaders of both the House and Senate usually rally around those in their own party and call for the heads of those on the other side of the aisle. When punishment is demanded, the motivation is almost always political revenge, not justice. At the time Gingrich showed such leniency to Kim, he was himself making payments on a $300,000 fine by the ethics committee, the worst ever levied against a member of Congress. The fine grew out of charges filed by Michigan Democrat David Bonior, who openly admitted he was getting even with Gingrich for the Georgia Republican’s role in bringing down former Democratic Speaker Jim Wright of Texas. “It’s called payback,” Bonior told reporters. “Our political system doesn’t act out of a sense of justice,” says a former Southern Illinois University political scientist. “What you have is political expediency, driven by revenge and gain. So the reaction of those in power is to protect their own. Members of Congress operate on a different plane where right and wrong don’t exist, only winning and losing.” It’s been that way for years in Congress within both parties. When the Republicans took control of the House and Senate in the 1994 elections, new Speaker of the House Gingrich promised to put an end to such practices. Yet during his four years as Speaker, Gingrich often looked the other way when members of his own party crossed the legal line. As both the House and Senate prepared to investigate illegal foreign contributions to the Democratic National Committee and the 1996 Clinton presidential campaign, a number of Republicans urged Gingrich not to allow Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton of Indiana to chair the inquiry. Burton, they said, was damaged goods. Stories were circulating on the Hill that the fiery Hoosier Republican, a known womanizer, had fathered a child out of wedlock and that it was only a matter of time before it

182 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. surfaced in the media. Gingrich dismissed the allegations as trivial and unimportant. The Speaker was engaged in an illicit affair of his own with a House Agriculture Committee staff member and had little stomach to punish another member of his own party for extra-marital dalliances. But Burton had a more serious problem. He had approved nearly $500,000 in payments and salary to a former model named Claudia Keller, who was also listed as his campaign manager, and who appeared simultaneously on his political and official House payrolls. It is against the law for lawmakers to use their office budgets to subsidize their campaigns, or vice versa. In Burton’s case, the dual payments to Keller, mostly over a nine year span, were often made during the same periods of time, according to federal records. In one year, according to House Finance office documents and FEC records, Keller received almost $22,000 for working at Burton’s Indianapolis and Greenwood district offices an average of two days a week, along with nearly $44,000 for her full-time campaign job. The Burton campaign had also paid Keller $250 a month to rent office space in her Lawrence, Ind., home, which is outside Burton’s district, by declaring it the campaign headquarters. And Keller also received more than $50,000 in campaign-related expenses, FEC records show. Keller was well known in Burton’s district as a longtime girlfriend. Denise Range, a neighbor, said she often saw Keller wearing lingerie when Burton came to visit. Melissa Bickel, another neighbor, said Keller would send her daughter over to their house when Burton came calling, which was three or four times a week. When asked about this at the time, a Burton spokesman said he was not sure what Keller’s duties were, but would “look into it.” Keller later moved to Washington to become the Congressman’s scheduler. Burton eventually went public about his out-of-wedlock child just before the Indianapolis Star was about to break the story. Even reluctant Democrats agreed he handled the issue well, admitting the affair and expressing regret about the damage it inflicted on his marriage.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 183 But he has not dealt as effectively with the Claudia Keller issue. The U.S. Attorney in Indianapolis investigated the Congressman’s possible use of “shadow” employees on the Congressional payroll. The results of this investigation is unknown. When Gingrich’s staff discussed Burton’s problems, the Speaker dismissed it. “Old news,” he said. “No big deal.” Burton was a loyal soldier, a made man. He would be protected. “Newt ran the House like a Godfather,” says a former GOP staffer. “His soldiers were protected at all costs.” Some say Gingrich was reluctant to deal with problem members because he had too many skeletons in his own closet. His affair with the Agriculture Committee Staff Aide was in full bloom. But Gingrich was also having trouble finding enough clean members of his own party to run the investigations not only into campaign fundraising abuse, but the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. “Every time the Speaker looked at a potential candidate to lead the charge, they would have problems,” said one former staff member. “It seemed like everyone had a secret to hide.” A number of Constitutional scholars wonder if the Republicans in both the House and Senate eased off their pursuit of the President Clinton and the Democrats in the DNC fundraising scandal (millions of dollars donated to Clinton and the DNC by the Chinese) because of their own vulnerability. And Congressman Hyde who was having his own problems at the time, gave in on several key points demanded by the Democrats in the impeachment process. The whole truth will probably never be known. However, it is known that Republicans in the Senate did all in their power to put road blocks in the path of House Members in charge of the impeachment. Senator Lott and Senator Warner prevented the House Members from presenting any evidence concerning President Clinton’s perjury during the Monica Lewinsky affair. They said they didn’t want to dirty the Senate floor with such trash. In reality, they were really trying to cover up all the other Senate trash that was already there. Gingrich’s determination to protect his soldiers was not unique

184 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. to his job or his party. Speakers from both sides of the aisle have used their office to protect their own. Former Democratic Speaker Tom Foley ignored calls from Democrats and Republicans alike to remove Illinois Rep. Dan Rostenkowski from his powerful committee posts after the Congressman was caught converting official funds to personal use. Foley did everything he could to protect his friend from Illinois. Both Foley and Rostenkowski lost their bids for re-election in the 1994 elections that swept the Democrats out of power and put the Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. Rostenkowski later went to prison for his crimes, but when he was released he went to Washington as a lobbyist. Their total time in Washington is not to do what is good and right for the country and its citizens, but what is good for me and my party. To get reelected is their only goal—no matter the cost! How and why did Congress become to what it is today. One must go back to President Roosevelt’s 1941 speech where he called for the four Freedoms (so called): Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from want, and Freedom from Fear. The Democratic Congress (Senate make-up: Democrats—66; Republicans —28; Other —1. The House of Representatives: Democrats —267; Republicans—162; Other—6.) took this call as a mandate to go bonkers. They thought they could promote freedom and justice by spending more money and passing more laws to specify in detail exactly what Americans must and must not do. But they were wrong. History and the principles on which the nation was founded all teach us big government is the enemy—not the guardian of liberty. Big government is wasteful, inefficient, not very intelligent and mostly unreliable (remember Katrina). They must stop fighting among themselves or the citizens must remove them and install representatives that love their country more than their own glorification (and wallets). Today, the incumbents in Washington have transformed our government into a pork-laden monstrosity that is their play pen. How can Congress pass an annual budget that is over $2.7 trillion (that is $2,700,000,000,000.00) and

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 185 still say that taxes aren’t high enough or that the rich is not paying enough. Let us look at this bloated cow that Congress has created and pick out some areas of responsibility that Congress refuses to correct. The Kennedy family has run rough-shod over the Congress and the American people for many years and they are still adored by the people of Massachusetts and other New England States where they have settled. Senator Kennedy is a social Democrat that condemns the rich for not paying enough taxes. However, he never states at what income one can be described as rich, therefore it can be assumed that the is referring to anyone making over the poverty level is rich. Take for example his tax approach to the elderly and his concept of redistribution of wealth. When the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, they pushed through so many laws concerning taxes that today the tax codes are buried in volumes of books that most libraries cannot hold. In case of the elderly, when they retire (on Social Security and what ever other retirement income they have for themselves) if their income is over $32,000 a year ($25,000 if widowed or single) a portion of their Social Security income is taxed! It doesn’t matter how many years you have paid into Social Security, you are considered one of those filthy rich and you must pay! If your income is less than the limits set by Congress, you pay no taxes on your Social Security income. Where is the justice? Why does Congress discriminate? The answer is obvious. Congress need all the taxes it can collect so that they can push through earmark appropriations which in turn increases donations to their Campaign Funds or enrich their wallets on boondoggle projects paid for by the taxpayers. In addition, if you are fortunate enough to have an estate worth more than $1 million, DO NOT DIE! The Democrats in congress wants 55% of it (see more on the Estate Tax later in this chapter)! They care less about your family. The Democrats in Congress are appalled at the tax cuts that President Bush and other Republicans have pushed through Congress. “How can they deny the Government revenue at a time of

186 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. budget deficits,” they declaim. Yet, these same Democrats passed the Budget Act of 1974 which requires all Departments to spend their budget in its entirety or lose those funds not spent from next years budget. In other words, if at the end of a fiscal year, a Department has funds left over, their next year funds are reduced to the new low level. Can you imagine the stupidity of such a rule. Nobody in their right mind would want to see their budgets cut, therefore all excess money must be spent—usually uselessly. In 2004, the following report was aired concerning bonuses for DC employees: The District handed out nearly $428,000 in employee bonuses during the first quarter of fiscal 2004, a dramatic increase from the first quarters of prior years, according to the D.C. Office of Personnel. Bonuses, or “incentive awards,” were issued to 445 employees from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, with a minimum bonus of $700. The 10 highest bonus amounts ranged from $3,000 to $6,242.15 and were given to employees who earn from $85,302 to $124,843. In 2005, the vast majority of the bonuses — totaling $297,000 — were given to employees with the D.C. Department of Human Services, which administers social-service programs that primarily benefit low-income residents. However, that agency also spread the bonuses over the largest group of employees, giving 388 awards averaging $765.46. The taxpayer dollars used to pay for the cash awards come from leftover funds in each agency’s personnel budget, usually from unfilled positions. This getting rid of excess money (property, material, etc) goes on in all Departments. In the Air Force during peace time as the new fiscal year approaches, desk-jockeys (pilots who are working in offices and other non-flying positions are required to fly more than normal minimum requirements for the last two or three months before the new fiscal year takes over. The purpose of this extra flying time is to burn up gasoline which was budgeted for the current year. The Air Force cannot stockpile unused gasoline or their budget will be cut.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 187 And Democrats in Congress want to increase taxes even though they demand that over-budgeted Departments spend everything Congress gives them! Talk about buying votes! As you prepare to work on your taxes this year, you may wish to spend some time reflecting on the life of the colonists under British rule — a condition they considered servitude. Naturally, most Americans sympathize with the trials the colonists faced, though in many ways, they may actually have been better off than we are. The Sugar, Stamp, and Tea Acts inflicted by the British placed taxes on molasses, certain stamps, playing cards, legal documents and tea imported into the colonies. These taxes were enough to spark rebellion, though they were inherently far fairer than the tax system we are burdened with today. Unlike us, the colonists had some power. Power to avoid payment of taxes they deemed unfair, by boycotting those products Parliament chose to tax. Such boycotts often proved effective — forcing Britain in several instances to reduce taxes or repeal them, as they did with the Stamp Act in 1766. The taxpayers today, on the other hand, are powerless to escape what might as well be called the tyrannical rule of our legislators. If there is any doubt at all that our government wields more power than Great Britain did over the colonists, consider this: In 1773 if John Q. Public disagreed in principle with the tax on tea, what penalty did he incur by refusing to pay? Nothing. He could simply refuse to purchase it, immediately freeing himself from the obligation of paying a tax he deemed unfair. That’s called liberty. Now fast forward to 2005. If any citizen were to make a similar decision, and conclude that his tax burden was unfair, what would happen if he refused to pay? He would go to jail. That is called slavery. According to Americans for Tax Reform, the average family now pays almost 40% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes — more than they pay for food, clothing and shelter combined. Even if the colonists chose to pay each and every tax levied by King George, it’s doubtful they paid anywhere near the amount that we do. One issue we do have in common with the colonists, however,

188 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. is our subjection to taxation without real representation. While some may take exception to such an assertion, it’s about time the taxpayer acknowledged the truth: Our representation in Congress is nothing more than a sham. According to The Center for Public Integrity, Capitol Hill lawmakers received more than 180 million dollars from Fortune 500 firms from 1987 to 1996. For such generosity, Congress cut their taxes approximately 18%. In that same time period our taxes increased almost 72%. Worse, some companies squeak by without paying any taxes at all. Take Mobil Corporation, for example. In 1994, despite a reported income of $241 million, Mobil paid absolutely nothing in taxes. The following year, McDonnell Douglas Corporation, a huge contributor to House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, actually received a tax rebate of $257 million dollars! Yet in the year of the “surplus,” we don’t even rate a 10% tax refund. Why does Congress continue to reduce the taxes of the super rich corporations, while it increases the burden on private citizens? The answer is simple. Each corporate tax break our “public servants” sneak through Congress is rewarded handsomely...by campaign contributions from those with pockets far deeper than our own. Forbes magazine stated it this way, “Our tax code has become a cookie jar full of good things for everybody but the general public.” Who do our lawmakers represent? Not the taxpayer! And given this abuse, it’s high time the American taxpayer asked themselves if they yet possess any of our patriotic forbears’ zeal for liberty? If George Washington or Thomas Jefferson were to pay us a visit, would they recognize us as Americans? Would they see in this country a small flicker of their passion for independence — a passion which led them to triumph over unjust rulers and incredible odds? Would they find a trace of the courage that prompted them to make a stand and raise the cry, “No taxation without representation?” We honor the sacrifices our founding fathers made for the cause of liberty. We are proud of their achievements and example. But as we obediently and unquestioningly submit to a tax burden that would have caused riots in colonial America, perhaps it’s time we asked ourselves the question: Would they be proud of us?

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 189 On numerous occasions Senator Kennedy has stated that he was willing to give up his Senator’s salary if the country needs it. Very noble and very political! One only has to look at history and realize that the ’king’ of New England double speaks. In the 1920’s Joe Kennedy and other rich Senators decided that they would protect their fortunes from income taxes by enacting a law that today is referred to as the Grandfather’ law. It is no longer on the books and can never be amended or changed. It work in this fashion: Everyone in the United States had one year to establish a trust fund for their great-great-great grand children. These trust funds (and there are quite a few established by the rich) are controlled by trust-fund lawyers and the money that these funds generate through investments are tax free. The only time that taxes will be paid is when the last surviving member of the clan cashes in the fund! If the last surviving member of the clan does not cash in the fund, the Trust lawyers will go on making millions that are tax free. The Grandfather Law was in effect for exactly one year and the law required that after one year it would die and be removed from the records. This prevented future Congress from ever amending it! Ingenuous! The Kennedy Trust Fund is worth (at last estimate) close to $100 million. (No one knows what the Kennedy Trust Fund or other trust funds are worth because they are private and need not be exposed to review.) Senator Kennedy as head of the Kennedy clan controls the fund and its use. For example, the home he lives in Massachusetts, or the furniture in it, the cars and boats all belong to the Trust Fund—they are part of the Kennedy estate. Whenever Senator Kennedy wants a beach house in Florida, he doesn’t buy it but tells the Trust Fund to buy it and it becomes part of the estate. He can use it all he wants but the upkeep and all other expenses are paid by the Trust Fund. The same goes for cars, planes, boats, etc. Its like the King (or Queen) of England who live in Buckingham Palace but they don’t own it. It belongs to future kings. Is it any wonder that the Senator from Massachusetts is willing to give up his Senator’s pay? He doesn’t need it. Not with a tax free multi-million dollar Trust Fund behind him. (Remember, Sen. Kennedy is one of

190 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. those filthy rich that is against dropping the Estate Tax. This tax is to ensure that the Federal Government gets its share of your estate when you die.) Consider that Estate Tax that Senator Kennedy will not let die. One must remember a simple Senate rule, that applies only to the Senate and passed by a Democratic controlled Senate, in which any law can be filibuster and it takes a majority of 60 Senators to stop the filibuster. This rule can be changed by a straight up and down vote of the Senate, but the weak-kneed Republicans won’t change the rules. Thus the Democrats who are in the minority still control the Senate. If and when the Democrats take over the Senate in the future, you can bet your last nickel that they will change the rules when they want to promote their social agenda. In 2006 the Republicans tried to eliminate the Estate Tax (many refer to it as the Death Tax). The Senate rejected the plan to permanently repeal the federal tax on inherited estates. Voting 57-41, the Senate fell three votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to consider a Republican proposal that would have eliminated the estate tax. The levy is currently being phased out and will vanish in 2010, only to spring back to life in 2011. Republican Sens. Lincoln D. Chafee, RI., and George V. Voinovich, Ohio voted against the measure that would have cut off debate. Democrats Max Baucus, Mont:, Blanche Lincoln, Ark., Ben Ne1son, Neb., and Bill Nelson, Fla., , voted to terminate the debate. During the debate, the Republicans argued that the Estate (Death) Taxes were unfair. “We charge people income tax when they earn income. With what is left, they make investments, and then as those investments pay dividends or pay income, we tax that. Then we say, ‘When you die, we want half of that asset; “ Sen. Johnny Isakson, Georgia Republican said. “It is wrong. It is wrong for individuals, it is wrong for family farmers, it is wrong for landowners, and is wrong for America.”

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 191 Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, defended the tax as necessary to keep up with government spending. “The audacity of the Bush administration and their congressional allies truly knows no limit;’ he said. “In spite of all of the urgent problems facing our nation- from the on going war in Iraq, to the devastating hurricane damage along the Gulf Coast that has not yet been repaired, to the outrageously high gasoline prices that are squeezing American families, the top Republican priority is eliminating the estate tax:’ However Senator Kennedy talks is always with a forked tongue. Is it not a fact that the Kennedy Trust fund makes millions of dollars every year and pays no taxes. Isn’t it also a fact that the Kennedy Trust Fund will never pay any Death Taxes? The only way it can be taxed is if the last Kennedy standing cashes it in—but why would the last Kennedy want to do that? The Trust fund is forever—not taxable! Democrats also contended the cost of repeal is more than the country can afford in light of already large federal budget deficits. “This country is bleeding red ink,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid, D-Nev. Ending the estate tax now, he added, “is an absolute farce.” Voinovich, who previously supported the elimination of the estate tax, switched sides yesterday out of concern for the rising deficit. One must note that neither Senator Reid nor Senator Voinovich worry about a runaway government that is growing at three times the inflation rate every year! Although these two senators decry the federal deficit every year, they also vote to uphold the right of Congressmen to spend over $25 billion every year on ‘pork’ projects. According to the staff of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, repealing the estate tax would cost the government $71.6 billion a year by 2015. The Treasury Department estimated the revenue loss at $65.8 billion that year. To pay for a $1.5 trillion budget, the loss of $66 billion in revenue could easily be recovered, if Congress would cut out ‘pork’ appropriations and limit their expenditures (paid by the taxpayers) to half of what they are now, they

192 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. would easily replace $66 billion . But being greedy, they won’t. Recently, the Republicans tried to eliminate the Death Tax altogether. So to appease the socialists in Congress they combined a bill which contained “goodies” for most members. This bill was dubbed ‘Trifecta’ for its three chief elements: the minimum wage increase, the estate tax cut and an extension of several tax breaks for small businesses. The socialists in the Senate defeated the measure because of the estate tax cut. The socialist press was up in arms about cutting the estate tax and one correspondent for a socialist eastern newspaper wrote the following: “The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred yesterday when the Senate moved to take up, a bill that would simultaneously raise minimum wage and slash taxes on inherited wealth. Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase the minimum wage. So the seemingly ingenious Republican leadership which dearly wants deep estate tax cuts, proposed offering nickels and dimes to the working class to secure billions for the rich. The episode was significant because it meant Republicans were acknowledging that they would not hold congressional power without the help of moderates. That is because there is nothing close to a conservative majority in the United States. Yet their way of admitting this was to put on display the central goal of the currently dominant forces of politics: give away as much as possible to the truly wealthy. You wonder what those blue-collar conservatives once known as Reagan Democrats made of all this. “ As one can see, socialists have a way with words! For instance, in the above tirade, using such phrases as ‘most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm’, ‘slashes taxes on inherited wealth’, ‘ingenious

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 193 Republican leadership’, ‘secure billions for the rich.’ This tirade used the English language in such a way that one would believe that the rich are stealing from the government. Take the statement ‘secure billions for the rich’ and ask the simple question of “who’s money is it in the first place?” The socialist’s idea that all earnings belong to the government and only the government can tell one how much he can give to his children is ludicrous. According to the correspondent that wrote the above article, anyone who works honestly all his life and builds up a fortune must, when he dies, give 55% back to the government and cannot leave any more than that to his children. Mathematically, a person who leaves an estate of $10 million to his children, will have no estate in two generations of the family. The government would have stolen it all—except for good socialists like the Kennedy estate. The estate tax’s gradual disappearance and reappearance was mandated as part of Bush’s 2001 tax cut plan. Congress decided to make the repeal temporary as a way to save revenue. After phasing out in 2010, the estate tax will return in 2011 with a $1 million exemption and a levy with a tax rate of as much as 55 percent on estates of larger size. Following behind Senator Kennedy is his son Patrick. Patrick who is a Representative from Rhode Island has had a troubled past. He crashed his auto into a police barrier near the Capitol, last week, and one recalls his father-Sen. Edward Kennedy-driving off the bridge at Chappaquiddick 40 years ago, with Mary Jo Kopechne trapped in the front seat. Like his father, the younger Kennedy denied being drunk-blaming his slurring and disorientation on prescription medication. And, like his father, he avoided jail time. Rather than arrest the congressman, or even give him a sobriety test, the Capitol Police simply drove him home. Two days later, Kennedy claimed he had no memory of the accident, and was heading back to rehab to deal with an addiction to painkillers. Such special treatment for any one just because his last name is Kennedy is outrageous. Any other citizen in the above situations would still be rotting in jail but when

194 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Congressmen get into trouble they rely upon a little known gimmick in the Constitution to immune themselves from all charges. How does this gimmick work? Check out the following: A few years back, Senator Robert C. Byrd, a longtime and powerful Democrat from West Virginia, was following a van too closely on U.S. Route 50 in Fairfax, Virginia, when the van stopped for traffic, Byrd’s 1999 Cadillac slammed into the rear of the van. It took a tow truck more than an hour to pry the vehicles apart. Byrd’s car was not drivable and suffered an estimated $7,000 in damage. The driver of the 1990 Ford van, Chris Lee, 42, a house painter from Fairfax, said he didn’t hear any sounds indicating that Byrd hit the brakes or swerved. “Just boom,” Lee said. The Fairfax County police officer who investigated the accident had started to write the 81-year-old Senator a traffic ticket when Bryd pulled a copy of the U.S. Constitution out of his pocket and pointed to a section that he said prevented the cop from ticketing him for anything because he, as a member of Congress “shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest” both while attending a session and traveling to or from the Capitol.” Byrd spokeswoman Ann Adler says the Senator, an acknowledged Constitutional scholar, “almost always has one (the Constitution) in his pocket.” Byrd was taken to the nearby Fair Oaks police station where the shift commander put in a quick call to Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert F. Horan. Horan told the cop that if the Senator wanted to claim Congressional immunity for the ticket, the cops would have to honor it. With everything else that had happened in Washington in recent months, a traffic accident probably couldn’t be classified as “treason, felony or breach of the peace.” The constitutional provision (Article 1, Section 6) of the Constitution was written in 1781 to protect members of Congress from harassment as they traveled across the country (usually by horseback),

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 195 and to discourage people from trying to prevent the members from casting unpopular votes. Constitutional scholars say that while the law has little use in modern times, it is often used by Washington area police as a way to avoid arresting members of Congress. “It’s a common misconception that it (the law) prevents ticketing,” says a Georgetown University professor. “Police departments in this area are frequently under that misapprehension. I think it’s a way to do a favor for people of influence and stature, but it does smack of unequal treatment under the law.” And such unequal treatment is often invoked. A study of public records with police departments in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia show 217 members of the House and Senate escaped ticketing and arrest last year for a variety of traffic offenses ranging from speeding to driving while intoxicated. In the 1998 Congressional session, 84 Representatives and Senators were stopped for drunken driving and released after they claimed Congressional immunity. “I’ve stopped Senators who were so drunk they couldn’t remember their own name,” says one Fairfax County police officer. “And I was ordered to let them drive home.” During late-night Congressional sessions, Representatives and Senators often spend time between votes in the private Republican and Democratic clubs or any of a dozen other Capitol Hill watering holes. One Capitol Hill police officer says he has had to jump out of the way more than once to avoid being run down by a drunken member of Congress roaring out of a House office garage. “But there’s not a damn thing I can do about it,” he says, “Not if I want to keep my job.” A Sergeant of the D.C. police admits city police do not issue traffic tickets to senators and representatives while Congress is in session. Alexandria and Montgomery County claim members of Congress receive no special treatment for traffic violations, but records show 47 members were released without tickets last year. Arlington and Prince George’s county refuse to reveal their policies, but records show members are routinely released without charge in both counties. Members of Congress feel no compulsion to obey

196 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the law. District of Columbia police issued 2,912 parking tickets to cars owned by members of Congress in 1998. None were paid. The financially strapped District, which actively pursues and “boots” cars belonging to ordinary citizens, does not go after members of Congress. But Representatives and Senators are not the only privileged class in Washington. More than 20,000 foreign nationals living and working in National Capital carry cards issued by the U.S. Department of State that grants them “diplomatic immunity” from arrest and prosecution. “Some may feel immunity from traffic tickets is not a big deal, but it’s significant of a culture that breeds contempt for the rules that other citizens must obey,” says a retired Southern Illinois University political scientist. “A culture that allows tolerance for breaking minor laws breeds indifference to larger violations.” For years, members of Congress exempted themselves from many of the laws they passed for the rest of the country. Most bills carried a statement that said, “Exempted from the provisions of this act shall be the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.” The exemptions allowed, among other things, members to work employees for long hours without overtime or to discriminate on the basis of sex, political affiliation, age or other reasons. The federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) can shut down a private company for safety violations, but OSHA has no jurisdiction over Congressional buildings and inspectors are not even allowed on Capitol Hill. Changes made after Republicans took control of Congress in 1995 were supposed to bring Congress into compliance with the laws that governed the rest of the nation, but those who work on the Hill say little has changed. “Congress is America’s last plantation,” says a former GOP staffer. “Staffers are still used to run personal errands for members, women staffers are hired on the basis of looks and can be fired on a whim,” he says. “There really isn’t much recourse,” the staffer adds. Sometimes, however, recourse comes through hindsight. A week after he claimed Congressional immunity for his traffic accident, West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd’s staff contacted the Fairfax

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 197 County police and told them to reissue the ticket. So the cops again called Commonwealth’s Attorney Horan. “I said, if you can waive your rights under the Fifth and Sixth amendments you certainly can waive your rights under Article One, Section Six,” Horan said “If the senator wants his day in court, he’s entitled to it.” So the Senator got his ticket and appeared in court on July 19, pleading “no contest” on a charge of failing to keep control of his car. The judge levied $30 in court costs, but Bryd was not fined, a sentence that observers said was unusually light for a Fairfax County traffic court that is known to be tough on first-time offender. Even when he tried to act like a normal citizen, a member of Congress still got a break. Recently, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada accepted free ringside tickets from Nevada’s State Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches. Although the cost of the tickets was estimated to be over $1400, Senator Reid defended his decisions to accept the tickets and to take several actions benefiting disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff ’s clients and partners as they donated to him. “I just feel these events are nothing I did wrong,” the Senator stated. One of the events that Senator Reid was talking about was meetings in his Senate Office on June 2003 with two Abramoff tribal clients and Edward Ayoob, a former staffer who went to work lobbying with Abramoff. The meeting occurred over a five-day span in, which Ayoob also threw a fundraiser for Senator Reid, from which he netted thousands of dollars in donations from Abramoff ’s partners, firm and clients. The Senate Ethic manual states, “Senators and Senate staff should be wary of accepting any gift where it appears that the gift is motivated by desire to reward, influence, or elicit favorable official action.’ Yet Senator Reid (with a stiff upper lip) states, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” So much for ethical accountability! The shift from individual members of Congress to Party affiliation has been subtle and effective. Both parties (Democrats and Republicans) no longer espouse character, honesty, and integrity in

198 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. their candidates. They only look for speaking ability and charisma to ensure that their candidates have a chance to win. Is it any wonder that the current polls show that the people of the country holds the members of Congress in such low esteem? As stated previously by Mark Twain, Will Rogers, etc—they are a bunch of self-centered thieves out to make their fortune at the expense of the tax payers. An example of ‘party above all else’ was enacted the in the recent Republican primary in Rhode Island. Sen. Chaffee, who is an avowed socialist in Republican clothing was in a cliff-hanging reelection bid for the Senate and appeared to be losing to a conservative Republican. The president, Sen. Frisk, Republican Leader in the Senate, and many other stanch Republicans went to bat for Sen. Chaffee, who has consistently attacked President Bush and votes most of the time with the Democrats. Why did the Republican support him? It was because they were afraid that if the conservative Republican won the primary, he could not beat the Democratic candidate in the November election. That would lead to the possibility of the Democrats taking over the Senate leadership and the lose of chairmanship positions in Congress. I ask the Republican leadership what is the difference? Sen. Chaffee votes with the Democrats anyway and the rules of the Senate are such that the minority party (as long as they have 41 members) can control the Senate (as the Democratic minority is doing now) so why not rebuild the Republican party into a party that stands for something? Right now, you are losing millions of voter (both Independents and Republicans) because you have become an offshoot of the Democratic Party. Get wise! Earmarks are legislative inserts placed into appropriation bills that benefit the Congressman that inserts it and his friends (usually a lobbyist who donates to his reelection campaign fund}. In 1982, the transportation bill contained 10 earmarks costing $386 million. By 1987, they had grown to 152 earmarks, costing $1.4 billion. In 1991, the number mushroomed to 538, costing $6 billion. Last year’s bill included 1,850 earmarks that fleeced taxpayers of $9 billion. The bill that President Bush signed contained, at last count, more than 6,300 earmark projects that totaled a whopping $24 billion.

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The list is nauseating in its fiscal thievery and greed. Here’s a sampling of some of its worst abuses: $18.75 million to build a bridge that will join Gravina Island, with a population of less than 50 people, to Ketchikan, Alaska, a project that is known on Capitol Hill as the “Bridge to Nowhere.” $2.32 million for aesthetic landscaping along the Ronald Reagan Freeway near the Ronald Reagan Presidential library in Simi Valley, something the late president, who built his political career on fighting wasteful spending, would have opposed. $480,000 to restore a historic warehouse along the Erie Canal in Lyons, N.Y. . $600,000 for High Knob Horse Trails to install riding paths in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. $1.6 million for the Blue Ridge Music Center in Connecticut. $1.2 million for planning, design and engineering of The American Road at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. $1.28 million for the Cultural and Interpretive Center in Richland, Wash. $1 million for a pedestrian waterfront walkway in Oswego, NY. $400,000 for a jogging, bicycle and trolley trail in Columbus, Ga. $3 million for dust control along rural roads in Arkansas. $850,000 for the Red River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Louisiana. Who puts projects like these in the transportation bill? Lawmakers who have a virtual free hand in writing the bill (as if it were their own personal, campaign checkbook) are responsible for a lot of the abuse. People like Congressman Don Young, R-Alaska, who chairs the House Transportation Committee. Alaska is the third-leastpopulated state, but Young made sure it was the fourth-highest in the earmarks it received, $941 million, to be precise, and to promote himself in the process. In addition, Alaska is one of the riches States in the Union. Their oil revenues are huge. So huge that they give most of their citizens $5,000—$7000 refunds when they file their income tax forms. One of the bill’s earmarks: $231 million for a bridge near Anchorage that will be named “Don Young’s Way.” Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., is a top ranking member of the committee; and he got $16

200 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. million in the bill for the Nick J. Rahall II Appalachian Transportation Institute at Marshall University.. What is especially appalling is the brazen way lawmakers are all allowed to stick any kind of spending provision in the bill that is not germane to the legislation. There is, for instance, $2 million for a wood product exhibition at the University of Maine, and $5 million for a study of earthquake hazards at universities in Nevada and Buffalo. Another way that a corrupt Congress lines their individual pockets at taxpayers expense is one that is subtle and according to the law, legal. In 2002, House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and two partners bought 196 acres of land near PIano, Ill., that “was largely landlocked, with no major access road.” Yet Hastert soon began pushing to build a highway nearby; in the summer of 2005, he personally intervened to “earmark” two appropriations that gave $207 million to build a highway and an interchange just five miles away. When the acreage was sold to a developer in December, Hastert reaped a $1.8 million profit. “Hastert’s lawyers insist there is nothing unlawful about this transaction,” and the sad news is, they’re right. Any “nimble public servant” can get rich while serving in Congress, simply by using inside information and taxpayer money to build roads that inflate the value of his properties and other investments. In fact, other congressmen are engaged in similar enterprises. Gary Miller and Ken Calvert, Republicans of California, have both reportedly secured federal highway funding near properties they co-owned; the latter sold his property for roughly twice the cost of the investment. Easy though it is to blame elected officials for such personal enrichment, its their constituents who are equally guilty. Unable to see beyond party affiliations, we re-elect corrupt congressmen instead of throwing them out. “To put it simply, we have become a nation of chumps and we have the highways to prove it”. The entire Congress has gone mad—be it in the Senate or the House. Congress’s track record on managing the federal budget is not good. For too long, federal legislators have relied on disguised

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 201 spending increases, votes to cut spending that actually save no money, and legislative gimmicks that circumvent Congress’s own spending caps. This is what happened in the House Budget Committee when they approved the current budget: Jim Nussel, the Republican candidate for governor of Iowa is also the chairman of the House Budget Committee. In keeping with the concept that campaigning is more important than government business, committee leaders find it convenient to meet as little as possible because there is no longer a semblance of bipartisanship in Congress. That is why the House is on pace to meet even less this year—than it did in 1948 the year that Harry Truman labeled the famous 80th Congress as the “do-nothing Congress.” Just back from a 10-day break for St. Patrick’s Day , Rep Nussle convened his committee at 10:45 Wednesday morning, and by nightfall had put the finishing touches on the $2.7 trillion budget for next year. Those who expected to hear serious debate about the nation’s spending priorities went home disappointed. Nussle called on individual Republican members in turn to give two-minute speeches about the soaring economy and the progress they said had been made on all fronts in the Bush years. Then, he yielded equal time to the Democrats for a similarly insensitive set of orations trashing the same Bush economic record. The outcome had been sealed in advance. The key Democratic amendment was disposed of in less than 20 minutes, with nary a show of emotion on either side. The small group in attendance listened to a monotone style debate between Democrat Dennis Moore of Kansas and Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. Moore and other Democrats were trying to re-impose the budget rule known as “pay-go.” That requirement simply says any spending increase or tax cut be offset by a comparable saving in order to avoid increasing the deficit, unless a super-majority of 60 percent of the lawmakers voted to make an exception. The rule was in effect from 1991 to 2002, and contributed directly to whittling

202 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. away the deficits and moving the budget into surplus. However, to prevent Congress from cutting taxes, the Democrats used the rule to block the tax cuts—demanding monies be cut from areas such as the Defense Department, Home Land Security, etc. No cuts would be tolerated from entitlement programs, size of government., or waste in government—only in those Departments designed to protect this country. The hypocrisy of the socialists in Congress is sickening. For example, one only has to look at the National Debt. There is a bin in that National Debt entitled “Social Security Trust Fund”. It contains over $2.5 trillion in IOUs (Treasury Bills), not money but IOUs. Cutting out all the smoke and mirrors it means that over the years Congress has spent $2.5 trillion of taxpayers (and employers) social security overpayments and somebody will have to pay for it, because it will not be Congress—especially with their fat retirement. The above type of Committee meetings on appropriation bills occur throughout Committees of Congress every day during the appropriations period. A favorite tactic of the congressional leadership is to manipulate the rules by which the House of Representatives conducts its legislative business. While the rules of the House are generally fair, they are routinely ignored and can be waived at any time by a bare majority vote. A special rule for each piece of major legislation is crafted in the Rules Committee and then ratified by the full House. More often than not, these special rules prevent pertinent amendments from being considered, making it possible for legislators to claim they favor popular policies while lamenting the lack of opportunity to vote on them. For the last six years, a majority of special rules have limited amendment opportunities, and the problem continues to grow: the percentage of restrictive rules mushroomed from 15 percent in the 95th Congress (1977-1978) to nearly three-quarters of all legislation in this Congress. (Congressional Record, August 10, 1992, p. H-7330.) An even greater abuse of the legislative process is the leadership’s practice of producing legislation and then forcing votes almost

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 203 immediately, so that legislators do not have a chance to read a bill before voting on it. Although House Rules require that legislation be available to Members three days before a vote, this rule is often waived. Copies of the 3,000-page, $496 billion tax increase that Congress passed in 1993 were available to Members for roughly twelve hours; any Congressman who wanted to read the bill would have had to scan 250 pages per hour, making decisions at the rate of nearly $700 million per minute. In another case, the crime bill’s revised conference report was passed under a rules waiver only a few hours after it was put together, and the text was unavailable to most Members until the day after House passage. Another procedural trick creates opportunities for Congressmen to vote for popular measures without actually advancing them in the legislative process. Under a “king-of-the-hill” rule, Members can vote on a long string of competing legislative proposals, but only the last one to receive a majority vote becomes law. When a balanced budget amendment was considered under a king-of-the-hill rule in the House, many more than the required two-thirds voted for the amendment, but it ultimately failed to pass. The rule permitted Members to divide their votes among four different proposals, ensuring that any Member who wanted to take credit for a balanced budget vote could do so without any risk that the House would pass the measure. Another king-of-the-hill vote on the crime bill permitted Members to vote in favor of narrowing appeal rights for death row inmates and then, moments later, to vote in favor of expanding them. The legislative significance of such contradictory procedures is dwarfed by their electoral importance, as legislators can compile a voting record suitable for nearly any audience. Just as some procedures enable Members to vote without legislative consequences, others allow them to take real action without votes. For example, House Members have rigged the budget process so that they now no longer have to cast a vote on raising the debt limit if the overall federal budget is out of balance. Instead, a procedural vote on the budget is deemed to have legislative significance.

204 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Last year, a similar procedure was used to enact new deficit targets for future years without an actual vote. Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of such choices, the procedure used to make them (or, more precisely, to avoid making them) cheats representative democracy. Hypocrisy at it’s best. To indicate the ineptness of Congress, one only has to look at the problems facing this country and then look at the Congressional agenda. Oil prices are skyrocketing, threatening the economy; we have borders so porous that this country now has over 13- million illegal immigrants in the country; most government Departments are bloated and inefficient (as proven by FEMA); many, many other serious problems—too many to mention and what is Congress doing? They are going to hold hearings to determine what should be done about flag burning! Good Grief! Along came a spider—licking his fangs! PORK, PORK, AND MORE PORK.At issue is the relationship between lawmakers, well positioned, to slip special-interest projects into legislation, and wealthy lobbying groups that raise large sums of campaign funds or provide trips and other benefits to those lawmakers. In the latest example of these backstage dealings, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) told an eastern Newspaper that he helped steer defense funding, totaling $37 million, to a California company, whose officials and lobbyists helped raise at least $85,000 for Doolittle and his leadership political action committee from 2002 to 2005. The link between special interests and members of Congress has grown so tight that nearly a dozen House and Senate members who control federal spending have retained lobbying veterans to raise campaign funds for themselves, and those lobbyists have secured lucrative favors in spending bills. These relationships have coincided with the rapid growth in the volume of home-state pork-barrel projects, commonly called earmarks, that have swelled appropriations bills in recent years, according to congressional experts and watchdog groups. “It’s the currency of corruption,” Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said of appropriations earmarks. Since the Republicans

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 205 took control of Congress in 1994, the number of home-district earmarks jumped from 4,155 valued at about $29 billion in 1994 to 14,211 worth nearly $53 billion 10 years later, according to the Congressional Research Service. The House and Senate Appropriations committees are fueling a lobbying boom in Washington. The hunt for earmarks has become so consuming that lawmakers are neglecting other duties, said Scott Lilly, who recently retired as chief Democratic aide on the House Appropriations Committee. Last year, the committee received 10,000 requests for home-district projects on one spending bill alone — 25.4 projects per lawmaker, said committee spokesman John Scofield. “It has become an obsession of the Congress,” Lilly said. “That’s all they do.” In 1947, Congress had 38 committees and subcommittees; today, there are 266. Over the last two decades alone, committee staffs in the House of Representatives have grown by 158 percent. The growth of committees and their attendant staffs insulates Congressmen from policy choices and hinders the legislative process by ensuring that important legislation, because it will have to pass through more committees, will be subjected to more special-interest group influence. Although committee reform was one of the major announced goals of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, that panel ultimately proposed only minor tinkering with the committee system. The more committees that a congressman is on increases his chances of using his position to influence legislation, and therefore., exposes him to the lobbyists who pour money into his Campaign Fund. Congressmen never miss a chance when it comes to getting more money. Traditionally, Congress has provided large amounts of money to federal, state and local agencies, such as housing authorities and transportation departments, which then funded specific programs based on merit and local need. The Appropriations committees funded specific projects only when they had been investigated and

206 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. approved by authorizing committees, such as the Armed Services Committee. But increasingly, lawmakers have gone around authorizers and agency officials to finance pet projects in their home districts. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) secured $207 million for the “Prairie Parkway” through Kane and Kendall counties in Illinois in a major highway law, although the Illinois Department of Transportation is only two years into a five-year study of the project and has not yet determined whether a highway is needed or whether improvements to existing roads would suffice. The hunt for earmarks on Capitol Hill has opened up new avenues for lobbyists and lawmakers to come together. Seven members of the House Appropriations Committee — Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-Okla.), Kay Granger (R-Tex.), Dennis Rehberg (R-Mont.), John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.), Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) — have political action committees headed by registered lobbyists or former registered lobbyists with business before the committee, according to the Center for Public Integrity and campaign records. In the Senate, Appropriations Committee members Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), Harry M. Reid (DNev.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) have retained PAC treasurers who have served as Appropriations lobbyists. Richard B. Ladd, treasurer of Stevens’s Northern Lights PAC, has lobbied the Appropriations defense subcommittee on the behalf of defense contractors. William C. Oldaker, who heads the PACs of Reid and Dorgan, has lobbied multiple Appropriations subcommittees for the universities, science centers and municipal water districts he has represented, according to Senate lobbying records. “It’s completely out of control, and we are not going to reform a system, as far as lobbying is concerned, if we have a process that lends itself to one influential lobbyist with a relationship with one member,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters. Yet the doublespeak of Sen. John McCain is echoed by many members in Congress

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 207 who quietly set up their own PACs to fill their Campaign Fund accounts with tax-free monies. For example: In theory campaign finance rules exist to prevent influence peddling but Congress did not pass these rules to interfere with their raising a war-chest filled with goodies. The rules essentially are eye-wash for the public. In the case of Sen. John McCain (as reported in another eastern Newspaper): In a small office a few miles from Capitol Hill, a small group of top advisers to McCain ran a quiet campaign. They promoted his crusade against special interest money in politics. They send out news releases promoting his initiatives and they raise money—hundreds of thousands of dollars, assessing some McCain backers for more than $50,000 each. These advisers work for a group called the Reform Institute, founded in 2001 after Sen. McCain’s failed presidential bid. The chairman of the board of the Reform Institute is... John McCain. If you go to look at the press releases at reforminstitute.org, you will see that virtually every release mentions Sen. McCain in the first sentence. Not paragraph, sentence. Who runs the Reform Institute? Well, the president was Richard Davis, who is paid over $110,000 a year. Who is Richard Davis? He was John McCain’s 2000 campaign manager. The counsel to the Reform Institute was Trevor Potter, whose law firm was paid more than $50,000 a year for the work. Who is Trevor Potter? Why, he was legal counsel to McCain 2000! The finance director of the Reform Institute is a woman named Carla Eudy. She was finance director for McCain 2000. The communications director is Crystal Benton; she was McCain’s press secretary. Recently the Reform Institute, which refers to itself as “a thoughtful, moderate voice for reform in the campaign finance and election administration debates,” launched what it calls the Natural Resources Stewardship Project. What does natural resources stewardship have to do with “campaign finance and election administration”? As near as anyone can tell, its only connection to campaign finance and election administration is, as the institute’s site tells us, that “Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have introduced the

208 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Climate Stewardship Act” in Congress. And, of course, John McCain is planning to run for president again, and his signature issue, other than campaign finance regulation, is global warming. To run the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, the institute hired John Raidt, who served 15 years working on “environmental initiatives” for Sen. McCain. And how is the Reform Institute funded? With contributions, in six figures or more, from individuals and corporations, including the cable company Cablevision. Cable companies are constantly before the Senate Commerce Committee, which Sen. McCain chaired at the time of Cablevision’s contribution. In fact, Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute around the same time its officials were testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee. Appearance of corruption, anyone? No, it is because Sen. McCain ’says’ he believes that his lobbying efforts help the environment, his constituents or the American public in general and he is not doing it for the money. Believe it or not! But there are more subtle forms of pay-back that make it difficult to declare out-right corruption. For example, there are no laws preventing, say, BellSouth from hiring the offspring of Sens. John Breaux (D-La.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) — both members of the influential Senate Commerce Committee — as lobbyists. (Breaux is now retired.) No concerns about the “appearance of corruption” prohibited the wife of former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) from working as an aviation lobbyist while her husband was majority leader in the Senate. Family members of high-ranking legislators are also frequently paid to sit on corporate boards and to make highly lucrative speeches. The wife of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), for example, earned $328,000 in speaking fees in 2001, just after her husband raised to national prominence as Al Gore’s running mate. These activities did not violate Senate rules, but it’s a moot question whether campaign contributions amount to far less of an “appearance of corruption” than do personal cash payments to members’ spouses or relatives. And politicians themselves can also easily line their pockets from fat book contracts or shake down corporations for donations to their “family foundations” and trusts. Why should

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 209 personal payments to successful politicians be relatively free from regulation, yet much smaller campaign contributions to not-yetsuccessful politicians be strictly regulated and reported, down to the contributions from parents of the candidates? Yes, it’s true: A parent cannot contribute $2,500 to his or her child’s run for Congress, because it might corrupt that individual. The FEC has fined sons for giving too much to their parents, parents for giving too much to their children, and husbands for giving too much to their wives. However, rules are meant to be bent if not broken. Take, for example, Sen. John Kerry’s run for the Democratic nomination for President in 2004. He desperately needed money to compete with other Democrats in the nomination process. He made arrangement with his wife’s Bank to lone him $5 million using his house in Massachusetts as collateral. Since the value of the house was no where near the value of the loan, Mrs. Kerry of the Heinz fortune variety co-signed the note. Thus, Sen. Kerry skirted the FEC rules concerning contributions from wife to husband. More corruption or why Congressmen end up millionaires can be seen in the following: Amid an explosion of lawmakers’ slipping pet projects into federal spending bills over the past decade, one West Virginia congressman has exploited his powerful seat on the House Appropriations Committee to funnel $250 million into five nonprofit organizations that he set up. Those actions have prompted a complaint to federal prosecutors that questions whether any of that taxpayer money helped fuel a parallel growth in his personal fortune. The most ambitious effort by the congressman, Alan Mollohan, was a glistening glass-and-steel structure with a swimming pool, sauna and spa rising in a former cow pasture in Fairmont, W.Va., thanks to $103 million of taxpayer money he got through special spending allocations known as earmarks. The headquarters building is likely to sit largely empty upon completion, because the Mollohan-created organization that it was built for, the Institute for Scientific Research, is in disarray, its chief executive having resigned under a cloud of criticism over his $500,000 annual compensation, also paid for mostly by earmarked federal funds.

210 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

The five organizations have diverse missions but form a cozy network in the former coal capitals of north-central West Virginia. Mollohan has recruited many of their top employees and board members, including longtime friends or former aides, who in turn provide him with steady campaign contributions and positive publicity in their newsletters. Over the last few years, Mollohan, a Democrat elected in 1982 to a seat long, held by his father, has bought $2. million worth of property on Bald Head Island, N.C., with Laura Kurtz Kuhm a former employee who now runs one of the organizations and is on the boards of two others. The conservative National Legal and Policy Center, Falls Church, Va., filed a 500-page complaint with the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on Feb. 28, 2006 challenging the accuracy of Mollohan’s financial disclosure forms. The forms show a sharp spike in assets and income from rental properties from 2000 to 2004. Mollohan’s 2000 report indicated that he had assets worth between $170,012 to $562,000 and liabilities of $170,000 to $465,000. The disclosure ‘reports allow congressmen to report their finances within broad ranges. Mollohan’s 2004 report showed that he had assets of $6.3 million to $24.9 million and liabilities of $3.66 million to $13.5 million. Any ideas about where your tax money is going? For other “appearance of corruption” examples, we need look no further than the father of campaign finance reform himself, Sen. John McCain. In 2001 the Brennan Center, a group that advocates campaign finance reform, held a large fund-raising dinner whose honored guest and speaker was the “straight-talking” senator from Arizona. Several big corporations — many with interests before the Senate Commerce Committee, of which Sen. McCain was then the ranking minority member — sponsored the event. These sponsors included such companies as Coca-Cola; the investment firm Bear Stearns; many top law firms with lobbying practices in Washington;

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 211 cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris — yes, Big Tobacco; and even Enron The event grossed an impressive $750,000. What does the Brennan Center do? Well, the Brennan Center lobbied extensively to pass the McCain-Feingold bill, an issue that Sen. McCain once declared was of “transcendent importance to me.” (Transcendent, if you look it up in the dictionary, means “beyond human comprehension.”) The Brennan Center also provided legal services, to defend the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold bill in court. (Incidentally, in the legislative record there is considerable evidence that many supporters of McCain-Feingold specifically wanted the law to silence criticism of their own performance in office.) Look at the scenario: The Brennan Center invites Sen. McCain to speak and then approaches a large number of corporations, with suggestions like, “Sen. McCain — the ranking minority member of the Commerce Committee, before which your company has a great deal of business, and a possible future presidential candidate — is coming to speak. Would you care to sponsor a table?” And Enron and Coca-Cola and Philip Morris just suddenly decide that they are very interested in campaign reform and kick in some good old soft money, which the Brennan Center uses to lobby and provide free legal services for an issue of “transcendent importance” to none other than Sen. McCain. Appearance of corruption, anyone? Couldn’t be! Sen. McCain wouldn’t do something so despicable, would he? Recently, Congress investigated the Oil Companies for making unscrupulous profits on gasoline. The Federal Trade Commission, after investigating the sharp rise in gasoline prices, determined that the sharp increase in prices were due to market forces. However, out of one investigation it was discovered that Oil Company’s were making a profit of nine cents on every gallon of gasoline. Too much profit, screamed one socialist on the Committee but NO ONE on the Committee entered the information to the record that the Government (State and Federal) gouge the using public by levying taxes on a gallon of gasoline that averages 46.5 cents (Federal Taxes equal 18.4 cents per gallon, State taxes average 28.1 cents

212 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. per gallon). Apparently when the Government steals it is alright! If any Congressman says that the taxes are for road repairs than have him/her explain why the gasoline taxes go directly into the Treasury where it is spent willy-nilly. Every year, the Budget includes funds for road repairs which then becomes part of the current budget. Now Congressmen can ‘earmark’ current road expenditures to benefit developers in their States and Counties (at taxpayers expense) while roads in the rest of the country go to pot (holes)! In reference to Oil Companies’ profit. For over a couple of centuries, businesses have operated on an economic formula for arriving at the cost per unit of manufacturing. Be it cars, cloth pins, refrigerators, etc., the formula and resulting pricing ensures that the company will make a profit per unit (if all units are sold) that will enable the company to remain in business. The formula is simple—as is the mathematics. An example of how this formula works is as follows: There basically four elements: Cost of Labor (per unit), Cost of material needed to build the unit, Overhead costs (building space (rent or taxes), utilities, storage, transportation costs, etc., and Profit (in percentile) needed to keep the company operating. Example: Labor………………….$10.00 Material……………….$10.00 Overhead………………$10.00 Profit………………….20% ($6.00) (Profit: Cost $30. x .2 = $6.00) (Note: the percentage figure varies with the different industries and is arrived at by considering all aspects of the industry and then deriving the profits needed to ensure that the Company will continue to grow. Without growth a Company will eventually wither and die.) If material in the above example suddenly rose (like oil did) to $70.00 a barrel, the following price would result:

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Example: Labor………………….$10.00 Material……………….$70.00 Overhead…………….. $10.00 Profit…………………..$18.00 ( $90. X .2 = $18.00) As one can see Labor and Overhead did not change, BUT the price of Material (say a barrel of oil) increased by seven times and profits went up three times. If material prices rise so do profit because of the risk taken for higher expenses. If the cost of material reduces, so do profits. Since the Oil Companies in this country have no control over the price of world-wide oil or its distribution, how can the Democrats in Congress blame the President? But they do! Why are gasoline prices so high today? One reason (Congress will not talk about) is the cost of producing a gallon of gasoline. When the demand for a product increases, the cost of the product increases. Under the concepts of “Supply & Demand” this higher price for a product should bring more competition into the market and the prices will fall. But under current laws as established by Congress, it now takes over ten years to build an oil refinery which no one wants in their back yard [see previous discussion of NEPA). The same applies for the building of nuclear power plants. Why should any organization expend billions of dollars to build a productive electrical or oil refinery only to have some judge declare that it cannot be opened because of some environmental impact statement (that was required by Congress) doesn’t meet the judge’s requirement. Example: the government has for years been building an underground storage facility for spent Uranium products which was about to open when a Judge in his judicial wisdom decided that the Environmental Statement did not project its environmental impact far enough into the future. He require that a new study be made to cover the environmental impact of the storage of spent nuclear fuel for 50,000 years into the future. How can anyone see that far into the future. Most geologists will tell you they cannot

214 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. predict the next earthquake! Over the years, report after report has shown that the Budget Act of 1974 is a complete failure, but Congress does nothing to repair the damage. The last statement is not exactly true. Congress has tried to amend the Budget Act of 1974 (amended and modified in 1987, 1990, 1993, and 1997) and the damage gets worse every year because the Budget Act of 1974 was designed to expand Government at an enormous growth rate each following year. One report presented recommendations that Congress adopt a two-year budget process. The evidence presented suggested that biennial budgeting would improve the efficiency of how Congress spends taxpayers’ money and thus contribute to the end goal of balancing the budget. It would also reduce the amount of time Congress spent in session. Shortening the legislative calendar would help foster a change of governmental activism and thus return to the original concept of Congress envisioned by our founding fathers of a part-time citizen legislature where serving in Washington was viewed as a short-term duty of public service, not a full-time career. Of course, this concept never got an inch away from the pier before it sank out of sight. How can a member of Congress make his fortune sitting back in his home district? As further information was brought out it was learned that one of the purposes of the 1974 Budget Act was to eliminate deficit spending. But here is the actual history of that legislation: in the twenty years prior to the Budget Act, the budget deficit averaged just 1 percent of GDP and $30 billion in 1994 dollars. In the twenty years since the enactment of the 1974 Act, the average budget deficit has been $170 billion per year, and 3.5 percent of GDP. We have accumulated more than $7 trillion of debt since 1976. By any way that you look at it, the budget process has not worked better under the 1974 act—it has worked much worse. The 1974 Budget Act cannot be fixed. Tinkering won’t do the job. Congress should kill the current system and start over.

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What should be the key components of a new budget act? (1) A Constitutional Amendment outlawing Deficit Spending because deficit spending is an unconscionable form of fiscal irresponsibility. The destruction of our nation’s once firmly held moral rule against deficit spending requires amendment to our Constitution and command Congress to do what it used to feel honor-bound to do—that is, balance the budget. 2) An Enforceable Legislative Balanced Budget Requirement. The only way to enforce any Congress to balance the budget is to require Congress as a whole (House of Representatives and the Senate) to resign from office immediately if a balance budget isn’t produced. They can be replaced by individual State Governor appointments until the States hold a new elections within sixty days. All former members of Congress who have to resign can never run for Congress again. The above new budget act should (3) Require a Supermajority to Raise Taxes. A three-fifth or a two-third majority in both the House and the Senate would be required to pass a tax increase. This would allow Congress to pass tax increases in case of a National Emergency, but would make it very difficult for the socialist in Congress to steal peoples hard earned money. Congress must be forced to take its case to the people before they can take more dollars out of our paychecks. It is a fact that cutting taxes increases Government revenues. For example: Between 2002 and 2004, tax payments by Americans with adjusted gross incomes in excess of $200,000 a year increased 19.4 percent. The other 97 percent of the population-including the poorfared far better. Their tax payments rose only 9.3 percent. The rich have paid more because President Bush’s growth-oriented tax cuts have supercharged the economy, creating $4 trillion in net wealth. “Higher incomes mean higher tax payments.” Contrary to popular belief, those gains have decreased income inequality between the rich and the poor since the Clinton administration. Plus, tax revenues are on track to jump $500 billion over two years, the largest increase ever recorded. Don’t expect socialists in Congress or the liberal press to ever admit it, but “George Bush’s tax rate cuts have been among

216 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the most successful policies to soak the rich in American history.” In addition (4), ‘Earmark Appropriations’ must be voted on separately and require a two-third vote of the Congress to pass. The ‘earmarks’ must also contain the name of the member of Congress who submits it and it must contain recommendations about which Department of the Government will have its budget reduced to cover the ‘earmark’. If an ‘Appropriation’ is worthy, Congress will pass it; if on the other hand, its just another Congressmen way of enriching himself it will become transparent and if voted in, all members of Congress can be held responsible (whether they voted for or against the ‘earmark’.) Much to do about nothing is the Congressional charade about Campaign Fund reforms. The latest gimmick by Congress was to put so called ‘limits’ on the amount of money one can contribute to a Congressman’s Campaign Fund. This legal limits that was established by the Feinstein-McCain Campaign reform is another scam to insure that incumbents in Congress will always have an advantage over a challenger. In addition, hidden in the dark recesses of the FeinsteinMcCain Bill is another attempt at silencing opposition to current sitting Congressman. In the legislative record there is considerable evidence that many supporters of McCain-Feingold specifically wanted the law to silence criticism of their own performance in office. The act includes a provision that prohibits most citizen groups, such as the National Rifle Association, the Sierra Club, and Planned Parenthood, from making any broadcast advertisements within 60 days of an election that even mention a candidate for federal office. The Chairman of the Federal Election Commission stated, “As I step down as chairman of the Federal Election Commission, I fear that the regulatory machinery set in motion by Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold will be used to further grind down the free expression of individual citizens. “ You can easily find quotes from across the political spectrum explaining why members of Congress find the speech of these citizen

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 217 groups distasteful. But one only has to look at Sen. McCain who speaks for most of them. ‘These groups,” he once said, “often run ads that the candidates themselves disapprove of.” What a horrible thought: citizens running ads that candidates disapprove of. Sen. McCain went on: “Further, these ads are almost always negative attack ads, and do little to further beneficial debate and healthy political dialogue.” Yet in almost the same breath, Sen. McCain called a member on the FEC, Ellen Weintraub, “corrupt” merely because she disagreed with him on the proper interpretation of the law. Apparently, members of Congress can attack other people but they can’t attack Congressman. Further, in his brief to the Supreme Court, Sen. McCain said, “These ads are direct, blatant attacks on the candidates. We don’t think that’s right.” But the question is why should citizens be banned from forming groups, to which they have contributed money, which represent their beliefs, run ads that criticize officeholders, simply because the ads are “negative” or expose things about candidates that the candidates would rather not have exposed. This was just another approach by Congress to deny citizens their right to free speech. Campaign Fund raising is a serious problem but Congress cannot address it fairly because they are biased in their direction. If members of Congress would have their way, they would never have to face any opposition for office. A basic question, which sometimes goes unasked, is why so much money is needed in American campaigns. The one-word answer is television. In Britain, parties may not buy television time and most political advertising goes on relatively cheap billboards. In America, with its television-hungry audience and huge electoral districts, candidates take to the airwaves to broadcast their message. The explosion in costs also comes from the fees of political consultants, now considered essential to campaigns, and from fundraising. What does the money go on? Broadcast time. Thirty-second attack ads must be answered by more thirty-second attack ads, whatever the cost. This suggests that candidates are not so much corrupt,

218 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. as trapped: they dare not be outspent. As a rule, incumbents in the United States enjoy a big money advantage over challengers (receiving four times as much in the 1996 elections as challengers) and, in almost every case, those who spend more win. Once candidates have won, moreover, money often goes on working; favor is repaid for favor. Thus the explosion of ‘earmarks’ in Congress. Its called ‘pay back time.’ Anyone donating to a Congressman’s Campaign Fund, if large enough, can be assured that the Congressman will back the donors Congressional requests. The little man need not apply! There are now nearly 4,000 PACs, and they contribute around one-third of all campaign receipts, twice as much as in 1978. Yet, far from being grass-roots groups, most have become the voice of special interests, representing business, labor, or trial lawyers (big donors to Democrats). Overall, PACs (Political Action Committee) spend only what the law allows ($5,000 per candidate) but they find ways of directing more money into a campaign in round about ways. The real distortions in American campaign spending occur when companies and unions abandon PACs and try a less accountable approach. They exert pressure on the fringes of campaigns, spending independently on, say, a last-minute television blitz, or donating money to parties for “issue-oriented advocacy”, “goodfaith efforts on matters of public policy”, or any one of a number of fuzzy definitions. What can be done to ’level the playing field’ and put the brakes on ’buying an election’? It will be difficult to put limits on contributions because a divided Supreme Court stated that regulating a persons contribution to a candidate was unconstitutional because contributions were only an expression of free speech, therefore under the First Amendment people had a right to donate what they wish to whom they wish. The Congress could limit the amount of money a Candidate could spend on his campaign only if the Candidate received public financing. This is why Candidates are reluctant to receive public funds. The Federal Election Commission as now established is inefficient and ineffective. When a politician breaks

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 219 the rules today, it usually takes the commission two years to do anything and then it usually ends up with a slap on the wrist. Not a very effective way to enforce rules. It will never happen, but the FEC should be disbanded and staffed with non-political figures—persons who will honestly judge the cases before them. Congress also should give the FEC more money so that they can hire a competent staff to accomplish their mission quickly and efficiently. One shouldn’t be disgusted with members of Congress because of their greed because they are really a generous organization—especially, when it comes to themselves. As far as they are concerned— crooks or not — they want their due. Just look at the following on how they take care of themselves. One only has to look at the retirement plan that Congress has given itself to understand their greed and why they go to Congress. To fix the problems in this country? Never! When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die. Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments. For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman Joe Blow and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that’s Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives. This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries. Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives. Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan with those taxes that we pay and which Congress always say is too low. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds. From the average working man’s Social Security Plan, which they pay (or have paid) into,, every payday until they retire (which amount is matched by there employer), they can expect to get an

220 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. average of $1,000 per month after retirement. Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal a Congressman’s benefits! A good example of the greed of Congress which they cover nicely, occurred recently from the floor of the Senate. Senator Hillary Rodman Clinton, from the senate floor, spoke against the high salaries of company CEO’s. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a New York State Senator, now comes under this fancy “Congressional Retirement and Staffing Plan,” which means that even if she never gets reelected, she still receives her Congressional salary until she dies. If Bill outlives her, he then inherits HER salary until he dies. He is already getting his Presidential salary until he dies. If Hillary outlives Bill, she also gets his salary until she dies. Guess who pays for that? The taxpayers. It’s common knowledge that in order for Mrs. Clinton to establish NY residency, they purchased a million dollar-plus house in upscale Chappaqua, New York. They are entitled to Secret Service protection for life. Here is where it becomes interesting. Their mortgage payments hover around $10,000.00 per month. But an extra residence had to be built within the acreage to house the Secret Service personnel. The Clintons charge the Federal government $10,000 monthly rent for the use of that extra residence, which is just about equal to their mortgage payment. This means that the taxpayers, are paying the Clinton’s salary, mortgage, transportation, safety and security, as well as the salaries for their 12 man staff, and this is all perfectly legal! This is your Congress at work. Watch out! Congress will be coming for your gold teeth next. Imagine for a moment a retirement plan so desirable that people would have extra pay deducted so that they could increase their own personal retirement income. This is what Congress has done. Beside

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 221 their basic retirement noted above, they have set up an arrangement where by they can put part of their base salary into the retirement fund so as to increase their monthly benefits when they retire. For every dollar they put in the government puts in $5. Yet when it comes to saving Social Security, Congress is not interested! It doesn’t matter what a lawmaker does before or after leaving office. Former Rep. Randy “Duke’” Cunningham, R-Rancho Santa Fe, who was sentenced to eight years and four months in jail after pleading guilty to bribery charges, remains entitled to an annual pension of about $36,000 for his 15 years in the’ House. That doesn’t include his military pension or 401(k) benefits. Currently, an act of treason is one of the few ways a House member or senator can lose a pension. Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, who resigned after 22 years, will qualify for an initial pension of $56,000 per year. Delay could get pension payments of nearly $2 million over his expected lifetime. Lawmakers also have the peace of mind of knowing their federally backed plan will be there when they retire. , “I don’t think that many people in Congress would be quite so indifferent to the demise of the defined-benefit plan if they didn’t have such a robust plan themselves,” said James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, which represents companies with pension plans. Congress, is now working on pension legislation aimed at shoring up the defined-benefit plans available to 44 million employees and retirees, but there’s no stopping the trend of companies shrinking their plans or not letting new hires join them. Under current rules, lawmakers who serve 30 years will receive a yearly pension of 44 percent of their annual pay, which this year is $165,200. That doesn’t include their Social Security benefits and what they get back from their 401(k) plans.

222 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Like other federal workers in the Thrift Savings Plan, the government’s equivalent of a 401(k), lawmakers may invest up to $15,000 yearly, more if they’re over 50, and receive a contribution from the government equal to 5 percent of their pay. Older lawmakers, who were in office before the rules were changed two decades ago, can receive even higher pensions, though their Social Security is less. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Il!., who is planning to retire soon after three decades in the House, will receive a pension of $119,000 a year. Campaigns that both the Democrats and the Republicans Parties run during an election is frightening. Yet, Congress is only worried about personal attacks by whom so ever—never what the Parties do. But they are vicious in their own propaganda when it comes to denigrating the other party. Although there are many stories about each party, the following account happened back in 1997 and needs repeating so that the public can be aware of the lies that come out of Washington D.C. Lies that are meant to frighten a person into giving all their money to politicians who will save them from the other politician. This story was printed in an Eastern newspaper on 23 Mar 1997 and titled “Unarmed Robbery”: ‘An elderly woman from Connecticut, besieged by Democratic Party mailings warning that Bob Dole would take away her Social Security, went broke writing checks “to protect the American Dream,” writes a Boston Globe columnist. “My mother wrote check after check in response to scare letters she got from all kinds of Democratic committees,” said her son, whose 81-year-old mother, Eva, now lives in a Massachusetts nursing home. “She ended up unable to pay her phone, her utility bills, even her rent because they took advantage of her and she kept sending them money.” The columnist said it is difficult “to assess the damage done to the elderly, many living alone, who threw all the money left in their lives at Democrats simply because a stack of demonic mail frightened them into thinking that Dole would send them to the poor house. The woman’s son said, “There’s something awfully wrong when the elderly can be so easily preyed upon.” ‘ After ten years (when the above article was published) the cli-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 223 mate in Washington has gotten worse, not better. The name of the game for the Democrats is character assassination. The response of the Republicans is to take care of yourself the best way that you can, because we will not help you. Of course it is understandable when one realizes that if you defend someone that the Social Democrats don’t like, then they are coming after you. Take the Sen. Trent Lott incident on how the Democrats attack to silence one. Sen. Strom Thurman retired and was given a party attended on Sen. Lott who rose and extolled Sen. Thurman’s long service and diligent efforts for the Republican Party. Immediately the Social Democrats attacked Sen. Lott as being a bigot, a racist, and many other non-mentionable names for supporting and praising the likes of a man like Sen. Thurman. With the help of the liberal press, the attack was kept up because in his younger days Sen. Thurman was a member of the Separatist Party. Therefore, in praising Sen. Thurman, Sen. Lott was a racist. The heat got so bad that Sen. Lott had to resign his seat as Senate Majority Leader because nothing was being introduced on the Senate floor except vilifications of Sen. Lott. Lo and behold, a few months later a big party was held for Sen. Byrd at which Sen. Dodd (a good Social Democrat) rose and extolled the virtues of Sen. Byrd. Nothing was done to censure Sen. Dodd even though Sen. Byrd in his younger day was a high wizard in the Ku Klux Klan. When this came out, the Democrats defended Sen. Dodd by saying that Sen. Byrd resigned from the KKK years ago and had changed his ways. However, didn’t the Separatist Party die out years ago? Why the double standard? Don’t ask the Democrats or the liberal press because they won’t tell you. It is amazing how the voters in this country express outrage at Oil Executive who receive extreme bonuses for making profits for their Companies or Corporate Executive who line their pockets with ill-gotten gains through stock options , etc. but when it comes to Congress stealing money from the working public for their own greed, the public turns a blind eye. For example,

224 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Recently, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration Bill before its Memorial Day break began. During the process, Sen. Charles Grassley moved the adoption of a new Title III to the measure. It passed easily without anybody mentioning that the amendment raises revenue, which was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that all such measures originate in the House of Representatives. This revenue addition to the immigration Bill will certainly doom the Immigration Bill from ever passing Congress. It presents the final straw that will break the camels back and present a new obstacle to the formidable task of reconciling seemingly irreconcilable Senate and House immigration bills. To surmount the constitutional problem, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in effect, must pass a new bill- either under a procedure requiring unanimous consent or starting over with a bill subject to amendment. Considering the negative comments about the bill that senators heard from constituents, passing a Bill that will satisfy most of the voters will be impossible. Senators have looked at the Immigration Bill politically, or what will get them the most votes, not what is good for the country. The Grassley fixation on taxes may seem distinctive, but it fits the pattern of secrecy in the current Senate. When a senior Senate staffer was asked by a reporter about what was happening to legislation, he replied that he had trouble keeping up himself even though this was his full-time occupation. Although Senate staffers realized the constitutional problem (raising revenues by the Senate) they were betting nobody in the House would notice. That is a common failing in today’s Senate. What occurred when Grassley introduced his Title III amendment (on May 22 , 2006) typifies the sorry state of the Senate. As Grassley’s explained his amendment to his Senate colleagues , he was not easy to follow. He asserted he wanted illegal aliens to “pay all outstanding tax liabilities” and “allow the IRS to devise a system” to tax them. He did not explain exactly how this would work and

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 225 certainly did not reveal that his proposal would raise revenue and, therefore, violate the Constitution. While Grassley was amending the immigration bill, it also became known for the first time that he had quietly enacted, and President Bush had signed, a retroactive tax increase on Americans living abroad. It is just as hard to find many senators who realize that the tax cut bill they had passed and that the president had signed raises taxes on Americans living abroad retroactive to Jan. 1. Actually, that provision was not contained in the versions of the tax reduction bill passed by either the Senate or the House, but was inserted in the dead of night to help “pay for” dividend and interest rate tax cuts. Grassley was able to accomplish what Treasury bureaucrats have attempted to do for many years under both Democratic and Republican administrations and most recently were blocked by a Democrat, former Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana. It is not a modest tax increase but would raise the $3.5 billion in income taxes paid by expatriates in 2001 by $2.1 billion over the next 10 years. However, this act brings out the fact that when Congress passes a bill, like the Ten Commandments, it is written in stone. Congress will never rescind it but they might try to amend it. In the past, all the Senate has done when they amend a bill is make it worse. Hypocrisy thy name is U.S. Senate. One can say with certainty that members of the Senate are a den of thieves. It may not be that they know what is in a Bill when they vote for it, but when underhanded thievery occurs, and they do nothing about it, then they are part of the problem. They should clean their own house before trying to ‘clean out’ the country. Another example of how Congress steals taxpayer’s money, promising one thing, but spending it elsewhere was reported back in 1995. The newspaper article went as follows: ‘Despite $36 billion in strategic defense spending, no U.S. defenses against ballistic missile attack were built in the last 12 years because of bureaucratic and political restrictions, former Rep. Sen. Malcolm Wallop said on

226 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. March 6. “We didn’t build missile defenses because we, collectively, never intended to,” Mr. Wallop, Wyoming Republican told a gathering of government and industry defense specialists at a meeting sponsored by the American Defense Preparedness Association and the Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. “But we didn’t tell the taxpayers that. Instead we took their money and gave them SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] all wrapped in pseudoscientific language, governmentese and managerese,” Mr. Wallop said in a speech. “In plain English, we spent the taxpayers’ money to ‘dumb down’ the American people’s defensive weapons.” ‘ Another newspaper article shows how Congress short-changes the military, and then when things go badly, blame it on the military brass for not being prepared. The news article dated in March 1996 went something like this: ‘The Clinton administration has overruled its top military adviser, Gen. John Shalikashvili, and cut the Pentagon’s weapons-procurement budget to a level the General believes risks combat readiness, internal Joint Chiefs of Staff documents show. Stamped “secret,” the documents show that Gen. Shalikashvili, the Joint Chiefs chairman, asked Defense Secretary Perry to increase arms procurement in fiscal 1997. “I believe we risk future combat readiness of the U.S. military if we fail to adequately fund recapitalization, starting in FY 1997,” the general said in his annual program assessment. “I urge you to set a procurement goal of about $60 billion per year beginning in fiscal year 1998. The reality is that years of declining defense budgets, a smaller force structure, fewer personnel and aging equipment coupled with an increase in the number of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations are stretching U.S. military forces to the breaking point, another spokesman said. The general didn’t get what he wanted. The 1997 defense budget projects a continuing dip in procurement from $42 billion to $39 billion, the least since the early 1950s adjusting for inflation. Republicans, who increased the president’s defense request by $7 billion this year, say the White House’s budget will leave the active force of 1.4 million troops with obsolete weapons next century.’ (This underfunding of the military is taken whenever the Democratic socialist

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 227 are in charge of the purse strings and a Democrat is President. They are out to force the U.S. to look to the U.N. for protection of our sovereignty—the one-worlder’s dream). At this time a struggle over the Immigration Bill is being bandied back and forth, the House has its version and the Senate has its version, rumors indicate that Grassley’s unconstitutional insertion of Title III provisions will result, not in a House/Senate Conference Committee ironing out their differences, but the Senate Bill will be returned to the Senate for rewriting or to be killed. There has been some discussion to skirt this drastic measure (the Senate rewriting their version of the Immigration Bill), but Senator Reid, the minority leader of the Senate, refuses to go along with any fixes. His stand is that the House’s objection to the revenue portion of the Bill is technical, therefore the Senate should ignore the wishes of the House. This fighting between the Senate and the House has been going on for some time. When Congress was controlled by Democrats, the Senate controlled both Houses and ignored members of the House when they complained. Now , that the Republicans are in control, turf wars are more numerous. To recap: Members of Congress lose elections, but they never lose retirement and health benefits that most Americans can only envy. A lawmaker who retires at 60 after just 12 years in office can count on receiving an immediate pension of $25,000 a year and lifetime benefits that could total more than $800,000. That doesn’t include 401(k) benefits. And any member who lasts five years in office also can get taxpayer-subsidized health care until he or she reaches Medicare age. Congressional pensions are far more generous than those given in the private sector. Benefits start earlier and, unlike most private pension plans promising a fixed monthly payment based on years worked and pay—come with annual cost-of-living increases. They also accrue a third faster than the average plan offered by private companies. Any member of Congress with five years of service is eligible for

228 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. full benefits at 62. Those with 20 years in office can get full benefits at 50, younger than most workers. Cost-of-living adjustments, a shield against inflation, hasn’t-been given , since the 1980s, in the private sector. These COLAS which Congress has given itself could add 25 percent to the value of a congressional plan over its lifetime. Although the House of Representatives did pass a few tentative reforms, its efforts barely merit a passing grade, especially since its votes were taken so late that it is nearly certain the Senate will not pass companion measures. Failed to eliminate deceptive voting practices through truthin-voting reforms; and failed even to address congressional term limits. Among the disappointments of the last few years, Congress: Failed to improve its misleading budget procedures; Did not fully apply all relevant federal laws to itself; Failed to eliminate congressional perquisites that are used to influence elections; Advanced campaign finance reform that would give incumbents even more advantages in elections; Failed to rationalize the ineffective committee system; Failed to eliminate party politics from internal congressional administration; Congress refuses to obey many of the laws it imposes on ordinary Americans. Nearly a score of federal laws — including the Civil Rights Act, Americans With Disabilities Act, and Family and Medical Leave Act — either do not cover Congress at all or apply to Congress differently than to the rest of the country. Congress’s habit of exempting itself from laws that burden citizens, businesses, and state and local governments is fundamentally undemocratic and makes legislators careless about the regulatory and financial costs of legislation. Unlike private sector employees, congressional

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 229 employees who allege wrongdoing by their employers face a slow, secretive, internal congressional process fraught with possibilities for political interference. Appeal rights are insufficient and jury trials nearly impossible. Congress has become an “incumbent protection society” as one writer wrote by using taxpayer-supplied public funds for private political purposes. Weekend trips back to the district are funded by one official account, staff who routinely perform campaign-style work (for example, drumming up media coverage) by another. Television and radio studios in congressional office buildings are funded by taxpayers and used by officeholders to compose and broadcast programs aired in their districts. Perhaps most important, the congressional frank — “free mail” sent to constituents — is worth roughly $160,000 per year for each Member of Congress, an amount greater than the average House challenger’s entire campaign budget. Congress works hard to protect its perks, including Members’ salaries — which now exceed $133,000 a year. “Ethics reform” legislation passed in 1989, for instance, provides for yearly cost of living adjustments (COLAs) in congressional pay, which means that each Member of Congress receives an annual pay raise without ever having to vote on the question. Congress’s pension system is one of the most expansive in the country, roughly twice as generous as any in a Fortune 500 corporation. Legislation to repeal the COLA or otherwise reform congressional pay and benefits languishes with little support. Representative John Boehner (R-OH) has brought suit against the COLA procedure, arguing that it violates the 27th Amendment’s stricture against congressional pay raises without an intervening election; so far, his efforts have been unsuccessful. For the most part, other congressional “perks” remained untouched.

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Paradise Lost_____________________________ 231

CHAPTER 8 AMERICA’S TROJAN HORSE— THE BUREAUCRACY There was a joke going around about the Navy thinking about renaming their Vanguard Rocket. They were going to rename it ‘Civil Service’. Couldn’t fire it and couldn’t get it to work! Today, the Civil Service system is still over-bloated and over paid. The reason is not so much the personnel but the system itself. There is, for example, the automatic pay raises that are given not for merit but time on the job. Or bonuses given just because the money has been appropriated for bonuses. Congress, that know-nothing entity in Washington, D.C., passes all types of laws governing the lives of the citizenry and than gives the responsibility of enforcing the laws that they have pass to some Department to enforce. The Department, run by a Presidential appointee, then makes the rules that apply to the law and enforces these rules —to the letter! For example, a few tidbits that raises costs, reduces choices and shows how a foolish know-itall Bureaucracy interferes with our lives. (Remember, most of the Departments of Government are political and use their position to bash their opponents.) In 2000, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights postponed releasing a report critical of New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s police department after the mayor invoked his right under federal law to review it. The action followed media reports that commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry, one of the six Democratic appointees on the eight member panel, made a $250 contribution to the Senate campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Giuliani’s likely opponent. “It’s clear the chairman of the commission is a Mrs. Clinton sup-

232 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. porter,” said Giuliani spokesman. “The timing of the report is suspicious, to put it mildly. We believe it’s clearly politically motivated.” In addition, the media also reported that a Republican member of the commission filed a Freedom of Information Act request on his own agency after it stymied his attempts to obtain transcripts of the hearing on the New York police. This political use of different government Department is rampant throughout the government. In order to override the law (The Civil Rights Act of 1964) government bureaucrats have gone overboard. In shepherding the act through congress, Sen. Hubert Humphrey said, “...contrary to the allegations of some opponents of this title, there is nothing in it that will give any power to the Civil Rights commission or to the court to require hiring, firing or promotion of employees, in order to meet a racial quota or to achieve a certain racial balance,” adding later, “in fact, the title would prohibit preferential treatment for any particular group.” Rep. Emanuel Celler pronounced, “Even....the court could not order that any preference be given to any particular race, religion, color, or other group.” Sens. Clark and Case decreed, “...any deliberate attempt to maintain a racial balance, whatever such a balance may be, would involve a violation of Title VII.” Even with all these assurances of no preferential treatment, reports abound of bureaucrats overstepping their authority and defy the law. In 1994, ABC-TV “20/20” news program that U.S. Forest Service job postings specified that “only unqualified applicants will be considered” and that “only applicants who do not meet standards will be considered. The same thing is happening throughout the government. TV program 20/20 cited on the news a Department of Defense memo that says: “In the future special permission will be required for the promotion of all white men without disabilities.” On Oct. 6,1994, the Department of Energy issued its “Strategic Plan For Diversity.” And Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary says in the introduction that “our commitment must extend far beyond simply reducing or preventing discrimination.” Included in the commitment are quota privileges

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 233 and subsidies for the favored races and gender. Among the achievements to date of the Energy Department diversity commitment: ·a. 65.1 percent of the spaces in the Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program are given to minorities or women. ·b. Set-asides for minority contractors on a noncompetitive basis’. ·c. $128 million in grants during 1994-95 to black colleges. ·d. $200 million in Energy Department funds deposited in minority financial institutions. ·e. A $250,000 grant to the United Negro College Fund. ·f. $25,000 grants to four Washington, D.C., schools to raise Hispanic educational achievement.

The Energy Department has its diversity commitment so out of focus that it was acting like a private charity, giving taxpayers’ money away to causes that have nothing to do with the department’s specific business. A Southern California dry cleaner was fined $250 for not posting the number of employees injured in the previous 12 months. But there was no employee injuries. Thus, the business was fined for simply not posting a blank sheet of paper. The Environmental Protection Agency fined a North Carolina subsidiary of the Marmon Group $5000 for inadvertently writing the company’s name on line 17 rather than line 18 on a form. The EPA imposed $600,000 in fines and legal fees on another subsidiary of the Marmon Group for failing to fill out a federal form, even though the company complied with the identical state law. The Food and Drug Administration passed a new rule requir-

234 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. ing McCurdy Fish Co. of Lubeck, Maine, to gut freshly caught fish before immersing them in brine tanks. Unable to bear the additional cost, John McCurdy shut his plant down, laying off all 22 workers. This was after 20 years in business and not a single case of botulism reported against McCurdy. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fined a Minnesota farmer $45,000 for filling in a one-acre glacial pothole that was making farming difficult on his property. Having fined him, the Corps made him dig the fill out. Maryland couple suffered devastating financial losses when the endangered puritan tiger beetle was found on their property. In order to protect the beetle, the couple was prohibited from taking action to halt soil erosion that was jeopardizing their home. During their fight with federal agents, 22 feet of their property plunged into the Chesapeake Bay. Tuang Ming Lin, a Vietnam refugee, faces a one year imprisonment and a $300,000 fine because federal agents accused him of running over “five suspected Tipton kangaroo rats” while tilling his 719-acre farm in Bakersfield, Calif. Federal agents have already seized his $50,000 tractor. This is just a sampling of government folly compiled by the Washington-based Americans for Tax Reform Foundation. Since we can’t stop bureaucrats from doing stupid things; we must eliminate their capacity to do so. First, we must force Congress to respect the Tenth Amendment and, second, reduce its financial resources by limiting what it can spend. Congress is failing in its oversight functions, not only in enforcing the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against quotas, but also in making certain that the money it appropriates is used for authorized purposes.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 235 Congress’ failure to hold bureaucrats accountable is one of the main reasons that government is out of control. Congress has permitted “diversity” to become an excuse for over-riding the law. In 1995, a report concerning affirmative action, was quickly shoved on the back-burner to appease a bungling Congress. This report stated that the truth about affirmative action is finally out. It’s done far more for middle class white women, for whom it was never intended, than anybody else, and now promises diminishing returns, even for them. Women took advantage of the civil-rights movement and piggybacked on it, benefiting from victim status right up there with minority men and women. Black activists supported white women as worthy of affirmative-action status because the numbers gave them more clout. They still do. Women now hold 45 percent of all managerial positions and 53 percent of all professional jobs, according to the statistics of the Labor Department. In the initial rush of affirmative action, women with college degrees were quickly hired in professional positions to fill ‘diversity” quotas, for which under-educated minorities need not apply. “The diminishing returns of affirmative action are particularly felt by young women entering the work force,” writes Ellen Ladowsky in “The Women’s Quarterly.” “The work force has been saturated by women with degrees, training and qualifications.” Despite mumblings about the “glass ceiling,” women have garnered 10 percent of the top executive jobs, which is a stunning rise from 1.5 percent 20 years ago. The wage gap between men and women is also down dramatically when full-time work is the model for comparison. A woman between 27 and 33 who does not take off time for child rearing earns 98 percent of what a man earns in a comparable position. Many white women, like many black conservatives, resent the implication that they got their job, or qualified for admission to a top-rank university, for any reason other than merit

236 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Over the years, since President Roosevelt, the different federal departments have been corrupted in one fashion or another. The Commerce Department was used to sell seats on foreign trade missions in exchange for campaign cash. The Interior Department cannot account for billions of dollars in Indian trust monies, and top appointees were using their positions to conduct opposition research and smear members of Congress. The Energy Department became the plaything of the Red Chinese, who looted our nation’s nuclear secrets at will. The Environmental Protection Agency planted false evidence in a federal lawsuit for which two employees have now been indicted. The Treasury Department has set up a community-banking program that benefits longtime Clinton friends. Even the White House was used as a presidential fund-raising casino. But nowhere is the corruption more acute than at the Justice Department. The writing was on the wall in the first days of the Clinton administration. In an unprecedented move, the new attorney general, Janet Reno, ordered the firing of all 93 United States attorneys. She dragged her feet in seeking the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the Whitewater scandal, only doing so after the president, remarkably requested the appointment. Throughout the Paula Jones sexual assault litigation, Miss Reno directed Justice Department attorneys to file briefs on behalf of the United States government in defense of Mr. Clinton’s indefensible and unconstitutional immunity claims, which the U.S. Supreme Court rejected unanimously. In replacing all field U.S. Attorneys with socialist who do not believe in the Constitution, but only to explore means of by-passing it or destroying it altogether, one only has to look at what happened to two Border Control guards who because they were doing their duty now face twenty years in jail. The reported story is as follows: The plight of Texas border patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean has angered lawmakers nationwide. The agents were pros-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 237 ecuted and convicted for a variety of offenses linked to their role in attempting to apprehend a Mexican drug smuggler. They went to jail while the drug smuggler received immunity from prosecution for bringing nearly 800 pounds of Marijuana across the border. Texas Congressman Ted Poe spent 22 years as a felony court judge. He says it’s unusual for the government to offer criminals immunity to prosecute federal law enforcement agents who were doing their jobs. Though the lead prosecutor in the case was El Paso assistant U.S. attorney Debra Kanof, Congressman Poe believes the case was initiated by people much higher in the Justice Department as an appeasement to the government of Mexico. Members of the Bush Administration feel that we must appease the Mexican Government for sending to us all their citizens that they cannot employ. A convenient method for sticking the American taxpayers with the bill. According to U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof who successfully prosecuted the Border Agents, the man they were chasing (drug smuggler Aldrete-Davila) didn’t actually have a gun, shooting him in the back violated his civil rights, the agents didn’t know for a fact that he was a drug smuggler, and they broke Border Patrol rules about discharging their weapons and preserving a crime scene. Even more broadly, Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof said, Ramos and Compean had no business chasing someone in the first place. In addition, she said, “It is a violation of Border Patrol regulations to go after someone who is fleeing,” she said. “The Border Patrol pursuit policy prohibits the pursuit of someone.” This statement to the jury was an out and out lie. The Border Patrol’s own edicts state “detouring illegal entries through improved enforcement” and “apprehending and detouring smugglers of humans, drugs and other contraband.” How did Attorney Kanof know that the drug-runner didn’t have a gun? He told her that he didn’t so she took the word of a an illegal alien drug smuggler over the words of the Border Control Agent. Why? Maybe it was because this case is part of the current official policy to not protect the public, but continue to allow ‘illegals’, drug smugglers, and even terrorist to enter the country unhindered.

238 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing border agents, said the Border Patrol’s official pursuit policy handcuffs agents in the field. He also sees the prosecution of Ramos and Compean as part of a larger effort by the federal government to deter the Boarder Patrol from doing its mission. The only other organization that has responded to the Ramoses thus far (besides the El Paso Sheriff ’s Department) is the Chinobased nonprofit group Friends of the Border Patrol, chaired by Andy Ramirez. “This is the greatest miscarriage of justice I have ever seen,” Ramirez said. “This drug smuggler has fully contributed to the destruction of two brave agents and their families and has sent a very loud message to the other Border Patrol agents: If you confront a smuggler, this is what will happen to you.” “The pursuit policy has negatively affected the Border Patrol’s mission as well as public safety. Part of that mission is to stop terrorists and drug smugglers,” Bonner said. “They could be smuggling Osama bin Laden, drugs, illegal aliens, or it could have been just some drunk teenager out on a joyride. You don’t know until you stop them.” But don’t tell that to Attorney Kanof. She still is working under the deluded concept that all Border Control Agents should be psychic and know by observation who is a terrorist, drug runner, illegal immigrant etc. Then they should telepath their information to a Judge somewhere and get a warrant for the culprits arrest. Once the warrant is in hand (maybe two or three days in the future) they can arrest the culprit. If she is a representative of the type of U.S. Attorneys we now have in place, this country is in a lot of trouble. But we all know that anyway. While Miss Reno was Attorney General under President Clinton, she attempted to undermine Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation by siding with Mr. Clinton on special privilege assertions. Every count in which these claims were asserted. she dismissed them. And based on false allegations of payoffs to a key Whitewater

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 239 witness, leveled by Clinton cronies such as former Arkansas Senator David Pryor (who heads Clinton legal defense fund) and writers for the Internet magazine Salon ( which is funded largely by Clinton campaign contributions), Miss Reno ordered an investigation of Mr. Starr’s office and several of the president critics. Of course, no wrongdoing was found. Moreover, Miss Reno has impeded all serious attempts to investigate the Clinton-Gore campaign finance scandal. She rejected the recommendation of FBI Director Louis Freeh, and her former chief of the Campaign Finance Task Force, Charles LaBella, to seek the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the matter. She holds Congress in contempt and is dismissive of its responsibilities. No one has done more to politicize the justice system in this country and to protect a corrupt president and a lawless administration than Janet Reno. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Miss Reno’s actions in the Waco scandal was wholly consistent with her past performance. When Miss Reno ordered the U.S. Marshals to confiscate a videotape of the Waco assault from the FBI, this was nothing more than a typical socialist stunt. She wanted to shift responsibility for this debacle from herself to her subordinate, Mr. Freeh. And she was joined in that effort by many congressional Democrats and other Clinton spin troopers who appreciate her key role in preserving the presidency. Further shenanigans under Reno’s watch was well documented by the special council covering the Cisneros affair. In 2000, a congressional study showed government programs were losing tens of billions of dollars annually to fraud, abuse and mismanagement of federal agencies, prompting House hearings to be initiated. The study, conducted by the House Budget Committee, shows the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program is losing $1 billion a year to fraud. The Medicare program made “massive overpayments” totaling

240 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. $12.6 billion in one year, according to the study. In addition, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wasted $18 billion and let public housing neighborhoods “fester with crime and drugs.” The report and hearings were meant to be an “exercise in shame” to showcase these “large amounts of money flushed down the drain,” That money was suppose to be helping people but it is being wasted or stolen. For example, in Baltimore, the public housing authority bought eight new Chevy Blazers as take-home cars for top managers, hired a security firm that employed 29 convicted felons, and sold more than $25 million worth of contracts for building repairs to their friends and relatives. More corruption including the IRS. During President Clinton’s reign, the IRS was used to audit those organizations and others who criticized the president. The unmistakable evidence was that the supposedly non-political tax agency responds to complaints by prominent politicians. The IRS incriminated itself with a 1,500-page document dump answering four years of freedom-of-information requests by the watchdog organization Judicial Watch. The material shows that the IRS audit of Judicial Watch was preceded by written complaints from the White House and prominent Democratic members of Congress. Furthermore, existence of supposedly secret audits was unsealed thanks to a Justice Department tax litigator who is, implausibly, active in local Democratic politics. According to IRS documents, the Clinton’s crowd complaint was received by the IRS from the White House on Sept. 14, 1998, and dispatched to Commissioner Charles Rossotti’s office. That same day, the file indicates, a telephone call in connection with this matter was made to an unnamed person (name blacked out). Just two weeks later, Judicial Watch received it first notice of an audit. While Judicial Watch received continued audit notices, the IRS was pressured by prominent Democrats. Rep Charles Rangel

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 241 of New York, top Democrat on the tax-writing house Ways and means Committee, on Feb. 2, 1999, wrote questioning whether the watchdog group was entitled to a tax exemption. Mr. Rangel’s letter noted complaints from Rep Martin Frost of Texas, a member of the Democratic leadership who has received a constituent complaint about Judicial Watch solicitations. As audit notices went out, complaints came in from other Democrats, including Sens. Richard Bryan of Nevada and Tom Harkin of Iowa and Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia. Judicial Watch’s fight against a political audit was unsealed by the federal district court in Baltimore, with proceedings sent to the Tax Notes Today publication. A filing in the court indicates the documents were released by lawyers from the Justice Department’s Tax Division. The government’s chief litigator against judicial Watch had been a remarkable Washington bureaucrat named Stuart Gibson. While serving as a civil servant tax lawyer, Mr. Gibson also was a liberal activist in suburban Fairfax County, Va., where he was elected to the school board with Democratic backing. He was the lead litigator in the public disclosure of tax shelters by individual taxpayers, including Bill Simon, the Republican nominee for governor of California. How the socialist infiltrate the different departments of government and promote their inane programs is demonstrated in the following: A scientific code of conduct has been adopted by the Interior Department in response to biologists’ submitting falsified samples during a national study of the threatened Canadian lynx. The scientists falsely labeled the samples as having come from national forests in the Northwest. After their actions were reported, the scientists said they were testing the lab’s ability to positively identify lynx through DNA samples and never meant to contaminate the study. Neither the IG nor the GAO investigations confirmed the

242 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. scientists’ intentions. The revelations also sparked congressional hearings, and lawmakers charged the employees were intentionally trying to skew the survey to restrict recreation and natural resources development on federal land. The scientists who faked the samples worked for the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service and for the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service. These new rules bind only Interior employees. Jim Beers, a retired Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and leading critic of the government’s handling of the lynx issue, dubbed “biofraud,” said the code is meaningless. The Interior Department is instead “masking” its “failure to publicly renounce environmental activism masquerading as Endangered Species mandates,” Mr. Beers said. A few months after the above fiasco, the scientists involved received pay raises. When questioned about pay raises to these scientists, their supervisor stated that since the scientist were not officially charged with anything, he gave them their scheduled pay raise. More incompetence —more waste of tax-payers dollars. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has an important mission to perform. When employers discriminate on the bases of race, color, sex, age, national origin or disability, then the government ought to bring the full weight of the law against them. But the five-member commission ought to understand that the EEOC is in a zero-sum situation. The time and resources its 700 or so investigators devote to questionable or downright frivolous cases mean that meritorious cases receive little attention, and are resolved much more slowly, than they otherwise would. Some frivolous cases:

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 243 a. Zero Corp. An executive with Zero Corp. has been fighting with the San Diego EEOC since June of 1995 about a person who never worked for his Company. What happened was Zero Corp. purchased the machinery and assets of a company that laid off its entire work force, closed its doors and went out of business. Zero eventually hired some of the defunct company’s former employees to work in one of its factories. But one of the former employees of the out-of-business company was not picked up by Zero. So he filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC saying that he had been laid off ‘because he was Mexican.’ And his complaint named not only his former company, but also Zero, with whom he had absolutely no contact whatsoever. So Zero’s human resources director wrote a letter to the EEOC informing the agency of the circumstances. But two years later, the EEOC continues to pursue the complaint. No matter what documents Zero provides, proving that the aggrieved worker was never on the company’s payroll, the EEOC demands further proof. b. Hooter’s Restaurant. The EEOC charged the Atlanta based corporation with sex discrimination a couple of years ago because of its policy of hiring only female waitresses to serve patrons. Most patrons of Hooter’s Restaurants are predominately male and wish to be waited on by buxom young waitresses in short shorts and tank tops. Apparently, it didn’t occur to the EEOC that male waiters would look decidely unattractive in such ensembles. The EEOC actually released an 80-page report which suggested that Hooter’s should be forced to pay millions of dollars in back wages to men who had been denied the opportunity to be Hooter guys. After much public ridicule, the EEOC finally dropped its jihad against the restaurant chain a few years ago. c. Federal Express. It seems that the EEOC filed a claim against Federal Express for a company policy that, according to the agency, violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Apparently, Federal Express refuses to hire drivers who don’t have sight in both eyes. Apparently, the EEOC doesn’t think that good vision should be a

244 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. prerequisite for individuals who drive for a living. More government idiocy: The federal Endangered Species Act has been invoked to the detriment of property rights and freedom in general since its passage, as some environmental groups use the law as a means to stop development rather than save species. But a story reported by Fox News reveals how dangerous the law might be, as well. The network reveled that four Washington state firefighters died, quite possibly because the species law delayed for hours water that would have quenched the fire and saved the firefighters. It’s yet another case where fish came before people, according to those familiar with the case. According to the report, Forest Service officials adamantly denied that the ESA delayed the water. But William La Jeunesse reported: “After initially denying any delay, Fox News uncovered witnesses and corroborating evidence, prompting officials to release this timeline of events: At 5:30 am, helicopter support is requested to extinguish fully contained fire, but they’re unavailable until 10 a.m. and arrive shortly thereafter, but are not permitted to drop water. At 12:08, dispatch refuses to allow water from the Chewuch because of endangered species. “The fire grows. At 1:15 pm, desperate, the crew requests an air tanker, which carries its own water. At 2 pm, rangers approve the helicopter after consulting with a fishery biologist. At 3 o’clock, nine hours after it’s first requested, helicopters make their first water drop. At 3:58, a 30-mile fire explodes....At 5:25. Four firefighters are pronounced dead.” At some point, Americans are going to have to reevaluate their priorities on protecting the environment and will have to acknowledge that there are trade-offs — sometimes profound ones. “When I helped start the environmental group Greenpeace in the 1970s”,

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 245 said Patrick Moore in The Washington Post, “I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust.” That view, which the public came to share after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, has frozen the nuclear industry in place for three decades. I now believe we environmentalists need to take a fresh look at nuclear; energy, which “just may be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.” “Today, the U.S.’s 103 nuclear reactors generate just 20 percent of our electricity. Much of the rest comes from burning oil and coal, creating billions of tons of the greenhouse gases that are now warming the planet. Alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal power, all can contribute, but they simply cannot replace the major baseline plants that keep big metropolitan areas lit and humming. Where does that leave us? With nuclear energy. It’s cheap, and it’s relatively safe. Over 40 years, there’s been only one serious accident in the U.S.-and at Three Mile Island, no one was killed or injured, and its containment dome prevented radiation from escaping into the environment. (The Chernobyl accident, in the Soviet Union, involved a primitive plant with no containment vessel.) Coal, by contrast, kills 5,000 miners throughout the world every year, and causes pollution responsible for tens of thousands of additional deaths. Face it: In a world facing global environmental disaster, going nuclear is our least worse option. In fact, its our only option.” The above words of an active environmentalist should be heeded but will not be. Especially, those environmentalist embedded in the Environment Protection Agency. To them, once you get your enemy on the ground, do not let him up! There are other areas of concern about the powers given to the bureaucracy that is unionized. It is impossible to fire anyone for what ever cause. As mentioned previously, committing fraud will usually result in a promotion or at least a pay raise. But now, with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security personnel

246 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. requirements and security concerns jump to the forefront. The Bush administration has invoked the war against terrorism as a primary reason for upending long-established workplace rules for 650,000 Defense employees to reinforce management’s clout in its fight against terrorism. This upending of workplace rules has brought action from the Union in the form of a federal law suit. The legal battle over the Defense Department’s plan to overhaul its civil service system began recently , and the outcome could reverberate through the government for decades. That argument, however, did not prevail in a similar case involving the Department of Homeland Security. In August 2005, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer blocked a change in work rules at Homeland Security, saying they put unions “on quicksand.” She found that the department’s planned system fell short of guaranteeing bargaining rights because Homeland Security could override any provision in a union contract by issuing a department-wide directive. The judges decision is just another stumbling block placed in the path of efficiency by biased court officials. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed for new work rules, saying the current system slows recruitment of talented employees and sometimes forces the department to hire contractors or assign military personnel to tasks that should be handled by civil service employees. In making the changes that Rumsfeld wanted, Congress gave the department a green light to revise its policies toward unions. The labor relations section of the law creating the National Security Personnel System angered Defense unions. When the Pentagon published its regulation to create the NSPS on Nov. 1, 2005, a union coalition signaled that it would contest the new labor rules in court. In January 2006, the coalition, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, and the Justice Department were scheduled to appear before Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 247 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In court papers, the unions contend that the Defense Department is trying to gut their rights to negotiate binding contracts on behalf of the 350,000 workers they represent. The NSPS regulation “totally eliminates the statutory right to collective bargaining. It allows the secretary to ban bargaining merely by writing a document, called an ‘issuance,’ “ the unions argue. The unions list a dozen reasons why the NSPS regulation has gone beyond the intent of Congress or will be flawed. For example, the unions claim a proposed in-house board to hear labor-management disputes will not be seen as independent. The Justice Department, in its filing, rejected the union claims as “uniformly without merit.” The Pentagon has adhered to the meaning of the NSPS law, which allows the Pentagon “to implement the system without securing the agreement of labor organizations, and mandates that the new system will be binding on employee representatives and supersede all collective bargaining agreements,” Justice said. If the Homeland Security case is any guide, a resolution in the Defense case might take months to reach. Delays and red tape go hand in hand, but if another attack occurs and the Homeland Security does not prevent it, than the Unions and judges can roll their eye and blame Homeland Security for being incompetent. That is the scenario that has been enacted time and again. It’s not our fault, it’s theirs! However, in the case of Homeland Security the accusation of being incompetent may be justified. We do not know all that is going on in the Department of Homeland Security but some things that emerge is disgusting to say the least. For example: The Department of Homeland Security has invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of labor over the past five years on a seemingly simple task: creating a tamperproof identifica-

248 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. tion card far airport, rail and maritime workers. Yet nearly three. years past a planned deadline, production of the Transportation Worker Identification Credential. has yet to begin. Instead, the road to delivering this critical anti-terrorism tool has taken detours to groups often linked to Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., the powerful chairman of the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security Appropriations. It is a route that has benefited Rogers, creating jobs in his home district and profits for companies that are donors to his political causes. Rogers has also taken 11 trips on the tab of the American Association of Airport Executives; a trade association that was to profit from a no bid contract that Rogers helped arrange. (The controversial contract deal was withdrawn after it become public). Work has even been set aside far Senture, a tiny start-up company that employs Rogers’ son. Rogers said that any requirements that he imposed on the TWIC program, as it is called, have been motivated by a desire to end the delays. Rogers began his push even, ‘before the 2001 attacks, when he was elevated in 1995, to the so-called “college of Cardinals,” the elite body of chairmen of the House appropriations subcommittees that help control the federal budget. The Clinton administration needed congressional backing and money to fix problems it was having in printing a new fraud-resistant green card for permanent legal immigrants. To win Rogers’ endorsement, officials offered to set up the new centralized card production plant in Corbin, Kentucky (in Rogers’ home district). The $5.2 million, plant, opened in 1998. The transportation worker identification card, first proposed in 2002, would be a green card with extensive security features. Not only would it be tamper proof, it would eventually allow workers to be identified by a fingerprint in less than half a second.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 249 Within months after the plans for the new card were announced, Rogers started to intervene. He inserted language into appropriations bills that effectively pushed the government to use the same patented green card technology and to produce the new card in Corbin. Language added in 2003, again in a report submitted in Rogers’ name, urged the agency to use “existing government card issuance centers” to make the new card, which Homeland Security officials said clearly referred to Corbin. The law blocked spending until DHS bowed ‘to the mandates.’ Starting in 2004, Rogers’ staff repeatedly pressed the TSA to hire a trade association, the American Association of Airport Executives, to help handle background checks that transportation workers had to undergo to get identification cards. The trade association had no connection to Corbin, but it had long-standing ties to Rogers. Since 2000, it has paid for trips by Rogers and ‘his wife worth more than $75,000. Last year alone, Rogers spent a total of two weeks traveling on the association’s tab. The aviation group also was a long-standing donor, having contributed, through its executives and political action committee, at least $18,000 to Rogers over the last four years. This is how members of Congress use the Administration to fatten their own pockets—even at the expense of Home Land Security and the taxpayers. In America today, liberty is under attack by courts that make, rather than interpret, laws, and by prosecutors who conduct inquisitions instead of trials, willfully destroying the lives and reputations of their victims, despite failure to prove any crime was committed. Like Madame X, they make up all kinds of accusations, and then empowers a Grand Jury of their choosing to listen to their lies and come up with indictments that are full of holes. They force the accused to take the witness stand against himself and after days of grilling they find some error and accuse the witness of perjury and

250 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. off you go to the guillotine of public disgrace. Property is no longer private, not even our homes, which may now be taken from us and sold to others when it suits government’s “public purpose.” Religion and religious practices, especially those of Evangelical Christians, are increasingly either prohibited or regulated by government. It is almost impossible to do anything without permission from one or more organs of government and complying with their often-conflicting dictates. Fines and penalties abound for crimes unimagined by our forebears, often involving thought, speech or opinion more than overt action. The Justice Department is filled with Social Democrats who are not unbiased or fair. Ever since Attorney General Janet Reno, under the Clinton Administration, forced all Attorney in the Department to submit their resignations and kept only the Social Democrats while replacing all others with socialistic minded lawyers, only friends will get lenient treatment. All others—off to the hangman’s scaffold. For example, Martha Stewart goes to jail for lying about selling her stock investments with inside information, and there are many Congressmen who buy and sell stock with inside information that they get from their Stock Brokers or from committee meetings. Another ‘he’s a good old boy’ so we will do nothing about it attitude from the Justice Department. This is a brief story of Sandy Berger, the former National Security Chief under President Clinton. ‘ In Oct. 2, 2003 former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger stayed huddled over papers at the National Archives until 8 p.m. What he did not know as he labored through that long Thursday was that the same Archives employees who were retrieving documents for him were also watching their visitor with a suspicious eye. After Berger’s previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some disappeared, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case. As his attorneys tell it, Berger had no idea in October that docu-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 251 ments were missing from the Archives, or that archivists suspected him in the disappearance. It was not until two days later, on Saturday, Oct. 4, that he was contacted by Archives employees who said that they were concerned about missing files, from his September and October visits. Berger, his attorney Lanny Breuer said, checked his office and realized for the first time that he had walked out — unintentionally, he says — with important papers relating to the Clinton administration’s efforts to combat terrorism. Berger alerted Archives employees that evening to what he had found. The classified documents were sensitive enough that employees arrived on a Sunday morning to pick them up. Several days later, after he had retained Breuer as counsel, Berger volunteered that he had also taken 40 to 50 pages of notes during three visits to the Archives beginning in July, the lawyer said. Berger turned the notes over to the Archives. He has acknowledged through attorneys that he knowingly did not show these papers to Archives officials for review before leaving — a violation of Archives rules, but not one that he perceived as a serious security lapse. By then, however, Archives officials had served notice that there were other documents missing. Despite searching his home and office, Berger could not find them. By January, the FBI had been brought in, and Berger found himself in a criminal investigation . A government official with knowledge of the investigation said Archives employees took action promptly after noticing a missing document in September. This official said an Archives employee called former White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey, who is former president Bill Clinton’s liaison to the National Archives. The Archives employee said documents were missing and would have to be returned. The documents that Berger has acknowledged taking — some of which remain missing — are different drafts of a January 2000 “after-action review” of how the government responded to terrorism plots at the turn of the millennium. The document was written

252 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. by White House anti-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke, at Berger’s direction when he was in government. The government source said the Archives employees were deferential toward Berger, given his prominence, but were worried when he returned to view more documents on Oct. 2. They devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully. They knew he was interested in all the versions of the millennium review, some of which bore handwritten notes from Clinton-era officials who had reviewed them. At one point an Archives employee even handed Berger a coded draft and asked whether he was sure he had seen it. At the end of the day, Archives employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files, this source said. This source and another government official said that archivists gave Berger use of a special room for reviewing the documents. He was examining the documents to recommend to the Bush administration which papers should be released to the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said that employees closely monitor anyone cleared to review classified presidential materials. Berger’s home and office were searched earlier in 2004 by FBI (search) agents armed with warrants after the former Clinton adviser voluntarily returned some sensitive documents to the National Archives (search) and admitted he also removed handwritten notes he had made while reviewing the sensitive documents. However, some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration’s handling of Al Qaeda terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing, officials and lawyers said. Officials said the missing documents also identified America’s terror vulnerabilities at airports to seaports. Berger and his lawyer said he knowingly removed the handwrit-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 253 ten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio. Finally, with all the evidence mounting against him, Berger said, “I deeply regret the actions that I took at the National Archives two years ago, and I accept the judgment of the court,” after his sentencing. The sentences was $50,000, plus court costs. In addition, Berger was placed on two years probation plus performing 100 hours of community service. Here is a man, a former National Security Adviser, who should have known better, steals National secrets and only receives a fine, while a woman who was trying to save her investment (Martha Stewart) goes to prison. Where is the Justice? A government gone mad! When it comes to bureaus that are established by Congress, one can always recognize the ignorance of the law that was established. Usually, Congress when they establish a Department such as FEMA, the law is loosely written, given little money, and no direction. They then place the department under the guidance of the Executive branch of Government (the President’s responsibility) and sit back and wait until something bad happens. That is when Congress can blame anybody and everybody for what went wrong. In the case of Hurricane Katrina that is exactly what happened. After Katrina occurred the Senate leaped to the rescue. And as usual, too little to late. A draft bipartisan Senate report has concluded The Federal Emergency Management Agency was so fundamentally dysfunctional during Hurricane Katrina that Congress should abolish it and create a new disaster response agency from scratch. The new agency, which would still be part of the Department of Homeland Security, should be more powerful, with additional components that would give it a budget twice as big as FEMA’s, the report recommends. That of course means in bureaucratic language that it will be twice as incompetent. The left hand never knowing what the right hand is doing. For example, a year after Katrina occurred FEMA

254 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. sent out eviction notices to people living in government trailers (in Mississippi) to 500 of 3,000 planned evictions. These notices were sent out in late April and early May. Many family complied. But in June the agency was trying to contact the recipients of the letters with instructions to disregard them. The move is the latest in a series of announcements and reversals that have caused confusion and occasionally panic among evacuees. For months, FEMA has repeatedly changed deadlines, sent conflicting letters to applicants and declared people ineligible for housing assistance for the lack of signatures or failures to appear in person for property inspection. The left hand gives while the right hand takes it back. It would assume functions now spread throughout the department, such as preparing for disasters or terrorist attacks, protecting the nation’s infrastructure, and distributing grants to state and local governments. And during major catastrophes like Katrina, the agency’s director would report directly to the president, in the same fashion as the chairman of the Defense Department’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. FEMA has a budget of $4.8 billion, and a staff of about 6,000 employees. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the new agency would be “better equipped with the tools to prepare for and respond to a disaster.” The committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, also endorsed creation of what would be called the National Preparedness and Response Authority. But the full committee has not debated or voted on the draft recommendations. The report also has not yet been shared with the Bush administration. But officials at Homeland Security said that from what they have already heard, they were not impressed. “It is time to stop rearranging organization charts and start focusing on how governments at all levels are preparing for the fast-approaching storm season,” said Russ Knocke, the department press secretary.

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However, with all the showboating going on in the Senate, the Home Land Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has been working on his own alternative to the agency’s structure, which he has described as “retooling” FEMA. That has meant bringing in professional disaster managers to replace former Director Michael Brown and other senior officials, many of whom had little emergency management experience. This should have been done at the outset of FEMA. Hire professionals that know what they are doing, not fill slots with cronies and civil servant personnel that don’t know a disaster if they see one.

256 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

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CHAPTER 9 AMERICA’S TROJAN HORSE— THE EDUCRATS Why is our educational system in such a state that some students cannot read their diploma when they graduate from High School? Why can’t many students in High School tell you where the capitol of the United States is located? Why is it that our school reading programs teach the children how to read, but they cannot tell you what they read about? The system is a failure, but all the Educrats can think about is ‘we need more money’. One only has to look at what has happened to the system since the late 1950s. The biggest problem is that the teaching vocation has failed to produce competent teachers, thereby penalizing the students which are forced into their schoolrooms daily by law. According to the law, students must go to public schools unless excused by the educational bureaucracy. Since private schools cause an extra expense to those who use the private sector to educate their children, not only is the burden too much for some families but the private school sector can only handle so many students in any town or village. The Educrats know this but they care less, because the tax-payers are still paying into their failed system whether they send their children to a private school or to a public school. In other words, the Public Education System cares less about teaching the children because it is the head count that is most important. A principle of a school reports to the State Board of Education the number of students attending his school and the State, in turn, sends that principle the required student allowance per student for him/her to operate his school. In addition, the property owners within a school district pay a mill-levy tax on their property which is arbitrarily established by the School District. The State government usually limits the yearly increase

258 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. that a district may impose, but most districts take that increase annually. And what is require of the schools? Nothing! Just take that head count and get your money. In February 1998, the U.S. Department of Education issued the discouraging results of American high school seniors in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a worldwide competition among twenty-one nations. “U.S. twelfth graders performed below the international average and among the lowest of the 21 TIMSS countries on the assessment of mathematical general knowledge,” they reported. Many of the questions were quite simple, even for 8th graders. One multiple-choice query asked: “Here are the ages of five children: 13, 8, 6, 4, 4. What is the average age of these children?” Even adults, long out of the classroom, would have no trouble with that one. You merely add up the numbers and divide by 5. The answer, an average age of 7, was one of the printed choices. How did the confident American kids do on that question, on which we would expect a near-l00 percent correct response? The result was disgusting. Sixty percent of the American children got it wrong. When the overall test results came in, the Americans were stunned. Their team came in last, while the South Koreans won the contest. The confidence of the American students were high when they entered the contest because this confidence is instilled by the American Education Establishment, those in charge of teaching our children. They (the establishment) are self-confident, even arrogant, about their modern theories and methods of teaching, which they believe are doing an excellent job. But once again, self-esteem, this time of the teaching vocation, belies the results. This was no exaggeration. The American student scored nineteenth out of the twenty-one nations, doing so poorly in math that they only outperformed teenagers from two underdeveloped countries-Cyprus and South Africa”. Unfortunately, their scores

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 259 were 20 percent lower than those of students in the Netherlands, a nation that must live on its brainpower as America might someday be forced to do. But certainly not with the current school system. The information gained from the Third International tests was that the longer one stays in American public schools, the less one achieves academically. This was shown by the sharp drop in performance of the older American students, especially as they headed on to college. The young 4th graders scored 545, ranking twelfth out of twenty six nations, with Singapore winning the prize with a score of 625. In science, these ten-year-olds did even better, coming out third overall, after Korea and Japan, which was a genuine surprise. However, in subjects of chemistry and physics (rather than tests on environment, an American specialty), they ranked considerably lower-in tenth place. Still, it was a victory in a way but the story gets worse as older American students were tested internationally. They performed less well.. By 8th grade, American students were rapidly losing ground. The thirteen-year-olds had to handle more difficult material, and the dearth of good teaching showed. The 8th graders scored below average in math (500 score versus 643 for Singapore), ranking a poor twenty-eighth out of forty-one nations. Then we come to the seventeen-year-old Americans, who heaped shame on themselves or their teachers. All semblance of good international performance disappeared as high school seniors were faced with considerably more difficult subject matter. By the time they were tested in math, they made that embarrassingly poor performance, coming in, as mentioned, nineteenth out of twentyone nations. In the next level up, the American advanced students occupied the academic International cellar. This increasing failure by age proves that as the subject matter becomes more complex, the American school system stumbles and falls. One explanation is that teacher selection and training are

260 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. geared almost entirely to the needs of small children, who make few academic demands on academically deficient teachers. However, even our 4th graders have grave deficiencies, including an inability to read properly. A noted analyst who has dealt with mass test results, explains this phenomenon of waning results as American students move up into higher grades, especially as they approach middle school. Middle school, she states, is “the place where our good news about our kids begins to turn into bad news, the place where American kids who start out so bright and eager and ready, begin turning into the academic laggards we graduate from high school. The decline in student achievement scores over the last two decades begins in the fifth grade. And we know why: because American schools stopped enforcing standards for academic achievement and discipline for older students in the late Sixties. Social issues, according to the Education Establishment, are more important than history, math, science, etc. In some cases, this Social approach is the result of political intervention. Recently, in California, an avowed lesbian legislator pushed through a law requiring all History text book to contain information extolling the virtues of homosexuality. This law was passed by a Democratic legislature and since it must be in a History book, this book will be printed and distributed throughout the school system in the United States. So much for what some legislator call education. Why are American children so unprepared in science and math (besides government intervention such as the above lesbian)? Luther Williams of the National Science Foundation has pointed out that other countries are way ahead of us in the complexity of math that they require their students to study. In the United States, where middle school teachers are not well trained in math, he explains, that ‘basic arithmetic is still the staple of 8th-grade math.” Is it any wonder that our High School graduates have a hard time finding work in a society that was in the fast lane? For example, many students during the summer months try to find work during their

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 261 High School years, but are turned down by stores and fast food establishments, because they cannot count. Imagine going into a fast food establishment and ordering a lunch that comes to $4.55. You pay the cashier with a $10.00 bill. After scratching his/her head the cashier hands you back $6.35. You would certainly eat at that establishment more often. This is not an exaggeration. It has happened and more frequently than one can imagine. Why? A survey “Schools and Staffing Survey” by the National Center for Education Statistics found almost half the secondary school math teachers are not capable of teaching the subject. Among teachers whose major assignment is math, 11 percent had only a minor in math. 34 percent had neither a major or a minor in math. Of those who had math as a second assignment, 71 percent had no training in math at all. The American students’ results in world science competition are often poor, as we have seen. The 1996 NAEP results for science were disappointing, but highlighted the failures of curriculum and under trained teachers. The national average score on a scale of 0 to 300 was 150, but states performed quite individually, either better or worse. For example, in the 8th grade, Maine led the list with a score of 163, followed by North Dakota and Montana, while Louisiana was at the bottom with a score of 132. New York and Texas were a little below average with scores of 145. Catholic schools beat the public schools in the 8th grade by a commanding amount, 162 to 148. The Education Establishment blames the poor showing of Public schools vs Catholic schools on the misguided theory that the Public schools must take all students in their school districts and that many of these students come from economically poor homes while the Catholic schools take only the cream of the crop. This is a lie, of course. The majority of Catholic schools take children from their Parishes first and than all other who come on a first come, first accepted agenda. Apparently the Education Establishment believe that all Catholics are rich, therefore, there are no economically poor homes with children. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Catholic schools charge a

262 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. tuition but only to those families that can afford it. If they cannot pay the tuition, the parishioners pick up the tab. Overall, science achievement in American schools is generally static in the lower grades and moves downward as the curriculum becomes more difficult. In the 4th grade, there has been a small increase in scores since 1970, from 225 to 230, out of a maximum of 500. In the 8th grade, the performance has been level. But in the 12th grade scores have dropped from 305 to 296. In 1996, 55 percent of eight graders scored below the international average on math. And four out of ten third graders can’t read. An example of reading not being reading, take “whole language,” a teaching fad popular in the 1980s and widely used in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain. Basically, the kid was supposed to just “absorb” the meaning of words from looking at them, and divining the sense of it all by “context”. Reading instruction by osmosis. “It’s just been a real mess,” says Mark Seidenberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California who calls whole language “a massive experiment.” Indeed, whole language has caused educational disasters around the English-speaking world. California, where it (along with a whole host of other stupid educational ideas) was born, has just jettisoned whole language from its curriculum. In a recent national education assessment, California tied with Louisiana for dead last in reading. As in mathematics, many public schools science teachers are not well equipped for the job. A federal staffing survey shows that of science teachers in our secondary schools, 40 percent never majored in science. Another 12 percent only minored in the subject, meaning that the majority are not well trained enough for even our present weak curriculum in chemistry and physics. Where a teacher has a second assignment to handle science, the figures are worse. There, 49 percent never majored in science, and another 14 percent only minored in the subject.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 263 Like physics, another disappearing subject of our public school curriculum is geography. In one NAEP geography exam, 57 percent of the students failed, many finding it difficult even to find the United States on a map. For years, geography was heavily taught in elementary school, then as a separate subject in junior high. But geography has long since been replaced by social studies, a discipline that can cover anything the teacher and the school desire, including ecology, community relations, sex and race relations or whatever (and if California has its way the virtues of homosexuality.) Unless there is a radical change in curriculum, teacher selection, and training, America’s place in the international standings of 12th graders-the youngsters who are supposed to be the most accomplished as they go on to college-will remain at or near the international bottom. Only a couple of decades ago some 50 percent of high school graduates went on to college. Today it is over 70 percent, making the inferior high school experience that much more damaging. This is displayed clearly in the number of eighteen-year-olds who need remedial work as college freshmen. A former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education and a knowledgeable critic of the Establishment, points out that in upscale Montgomery County, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), where 86 percent of high school students go on to higher education, the local community college found that 71 percent of incoming students were deficient in math and half failed to meet the English standards. Remedial college courses are the direct result of the academic failure of elementary and high school teaching. When the Dean of a midwestern state University was question as to why the Universities accepted students who were deficient in academic standards, his reply was that the University had no control over the public schools, but if they refused entry to all students who were deficient, they would not have a University. They had to accept what they got from the School System. School psychological teams were rare in the 1950s but today they

264 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. are like horse manure. They are everywhere! They work as counselors, probers, testers, and even as unauthorized, unlicensed therapist and having invaded the school systems are now taken for granted. Are these duties a legitimate function of the School System? Of course not. It is a usurpation of power. It is an invasion of privacy! As instruction in knowledge has diminished, the schools have expanded their power to control the whole child, which in effect gives them the power to control families. This ‘whole child’ concept is similar to their ‘whole language’ concept which is a complete failure. They know it, but like politicians “they never make a mistake.’ The school systems are no longer interested in education per se, but have become interested in the child’s feelings, attitudes, emotions and family life. This form of interest about the child and not education is the desire of the Education System to control the child and wean it away from the family ties. But this should be noted because this form of education is throughout the Socialistic States of Europe. Feed the young brains a lot of bilge and when they grow up, they are more easily controlled by the Central Committee. Remember, this was the type of education envisioned back in the eighteenth century. Robert Owen, a renowned British industrialist and visionary who came to America to undertake an experiment in replacing the existing ‘individual selfish system’ with a ‘united social’ one. Owens and his ‘Utopian’ followers coined the term ’Socialism.’ One of Owens’ tenants was that all children would attend the ’Community School’ from the ages of 1 to 12. But book learning was only for those in the last three grades. All others were taught subjects such as singing, dancing and military drill. This routine is now installed in our Educational System with the addition of Social studies. Studies on group behavior, games (such as sitting on the floor with your shoes off and hold hands forming a circle. It’s called togetherness. It does nothing for your education and you won’t understand the Gettysburg Address or the Bill of Rights but

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 265 that is alright. Neither does the teacher. There is a growing suspicion that schools have adopted an antifamily stance is demonstrated in many ways. The Educational Establishment continuously adopts the attitude that they know better psychologically than do parents. A report in U.S. New & World Report states ’that using students to ‘reeducate’ their parents is standard practice in the schools.’ For example, in one ‘health’ program students are encouraged to confess problems at home by writing secret messages to their teacher. In a “values clarification” class in Oregon, students were asked “How many of you wanted to beat up on your parent?” In California, 9th graders in one school district were told to judge whether their families operated in an ‘open’ and ‘democratic’ way or were ‘closed’ and ‘authoritarian’ This is education? Or would one be correct in seeing these things as indoctrination to destroy the family? School counselors will do ‘short-term’ mental health work or ‘behavioral teaching’ with a student, but they scrupulously avoid the ‘psychotherapy’ word. That’s because school counselors have never been authorized by law, nor are they trained, to do psychological probing, especially not psychotherapy. But that doesn’t stop them from engaging in psychological intervention with students for a month or two on a regular basis. Some counselors advertise with flyers. One headlined “Do You Need Help With Family Problem?” This flyer contained some eye-catching cartoons and four boxes. Three of the boxes were headed as follows: “Do You Feel Your Parents Don’t Understand You?”; “Is There Too Much Pressure From Your Parents?’; and, “Do You Fight With Brothers and Sisters?”. Is this why we send our children to school? Most of us assume that it is to get an education. What fools we mortals be! This story was published in 1997 and needs repeating because it displays vividly the failure of our current Educational System; Tai Kwan Cureton was a student at Philadelphia’s predominately black Simon Gratz High School. An honor student, maintaining a

266 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. 3.8 grade-point average, Cureton ranked 27th in his 305-student graduating class. He was president of both the student government and the student peer mediation service. He did all of this while working more than 30 hours a week at a fast-food restaurant. He was also a member and captain of Simon Gratz’s track team. He was widely sought after by recruiters with scholarships in hand from top-ranking Division I schools such as Penn State, Pittsburgh and Boston College. That was before he received his Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. For a student to be eligible to participate in freshman athletics at Division I colleges, the NCAA rules require a minimum of 700 out of a possible 1600. Since a person gets 400 points on the SAT for simply writing his name, a minimum of 700 means the athlete must earn 300 points out of a possible 1200. Not meeting the NCAA requirements, Cureton said, “After I got my test scores back, they stopped recruiting me. This really hurt. It was as if my hard work, good grades, and other school activities didn’t count for anything.” Trial Lawyers for Public Justice filed a class action suit on his behalf based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and claiming the NCAA requirements to be racially discriminatory. They, along with some education “experts”, allege that standardized tests are written from a white middle-class viewpoint and therefore are unfair to blacks. That allegation is nonsense. Blacks score higher on the verbal than the math portion. It’s difficult to make a case for cultural bias in math. Moreover, Asians are probably the most culturally distinct group in our country. Yet they score higher than blacks and, for that matter, higher than many whites. Low black SAT scores are simply messengers. Instead of advocates for blacks killing the messenger, they should focus their attention on the message: the fraudulent education blacks receive in our primary and secondary schools. They should consider suing the Philadelphia School Board for the issuance of fraudulent grades and diplomas.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 267 The education establishment will tell us there are many education variables beyond their control such as discipline, violence, broken homes and poverty. Yet, none can explain why students back during the Great Depression were far better educated than those students today even though their economic conditions were far worse. But the current Educational System is designed to enhance the status of teachers, therefore, grades and ratings are padded and diplomas are given to the undeserving to protect this image of a broken system. Yet another damning report critical of the state of public education was published in 1997 and remains as current now as then. Nearly 15 years after the wake-up call of the “Nation at Risk” report, the journal Education Week, after conducting an exhaustive study of school-reform efforts undertaken by the 50 states, concludes that public schools are “rife with mediocrity.” Despite years of earnest efforts, the study admits, “states haven’t made much progress.” The report issues six grades for each state. Three of the graded categories are standards and assessments, quality of teaching and school climate (whether “schools are organized and operated in a manner conducive to teaching and learning”). The other three categories concerned adequate funding. The states achieved their highest overall grade (B) in the easiest category: standards and assessment. But setting standards is one thing. Achieving them, of course, is another. Nearly half of the states received A’s for standards. However, not a single state received an A for the quality of teaching, for which the average score was C. Considering that the study found that 40 percent of secondary school teachers lack a degree in the subject they teach and “on-thejob education for teachers is still more of a goal than a reality.” On the very day Education Week issued its study condemning the achievement levels of public school students, a Wisconsin judge declared unconstitutional Gov. Tommy Thompson’s plan to use taxpayer funds to enroll impoverished Milwaukee public-school

268 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. students in parochial schools. How many more years will tax-payers tolerate being gouged to support a failing system that seems utterly incapable of reforming itself? In all the studies that have repeatedly shown the socialistic bias of professors, few have inquired whether this is just a natural or accidental development, or whether it is in many cases a deliberate attempt by socialists determined to keep out competing viewpoints. When someone goes to a Catholic college or university, it is not to become a Protestant or a Moslem. If secular institutions with a particular message openly identified themselves as College of the Left or Maxist U., then there would be a similar open and above-board choice presented. But when they call themselves Harvard or Stanford and pretend to be presenting “diversity”, then it is a deliberate fraud. What “diversity” means in practice are ethnic and sex quotas, usually among people limited to those on the political left. In the last thirty-five years, Educrats (Socialists) have done to the schools what they did to the nation’s major cities: brought them to near ruin. Can you name another area besides education where this country has so consistently followed every single one of the socialists’ creed? Socialists wanted more money spent, and so it was spent. They wanted self-esteem taught, and so it was taught. They wanted multiculturalism, and so it was taught. They wanted sex education, and we have it. They wanted new math, inventive spelling, gender equity, recycling, and here it is. They wanted anti-drug and antiviolence programs, and we have them. They wanted no one to fail, and so we removed all means of measuring success. And what has all this gotten us? Ignorance, failure, illiteracy. They disregard traditional academic standards and are aghast to find failure is their result. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, they disdain traditional academic standards and were startled to find incompetency in their midst. There was no greater indication that something was fundamentally wrong with the U.S. education system than when President Clinton called for a million volunteer tutors to help teach third

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 269 grades to read. He was pleading for the public to take over the duties of the current group of teachers who couldn’t teach third graders to read! Let’s revisit just what the American taxpayer were shelling out at the time that President Clinton requested for volunteers to teach children to read. The U.S. has spends $318 billion a year on elementary and secondary education. That’s 48% more per student in 1997 than they spent 20 years before, in inflation-adjusted dollars. All in all, there were 760 federal education programs of one kind or another spread out over 39 departments and agencies, costing us $121 billion a year. And you will not be surprised to learn that only a fraction of this money actually gets to the classroom. According to the Heritage Foundation report, most of the money goes to bureaucrats, consultants, and administrators. Not to mention per socialistic causes. According to a report in The Chicago Sun-Times, funds from a school poverty program at Chicago’s Roberto Clemente High School was used to support a Puerto Rican independence program and to advocate freeing convicted terrorists. That’s correct: the money was used in a fundraiser for the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War, which was also held at the school. But even when money is allocated for visible projects, few bother to judge whether or not they actually work. Since 1987, for example, more than $5 billion has been appropriated for drug and violence prevention programs under the Education Department’s Safe and Drug-Free schools and communities program. Yet, the study released in December (1996) by Donna Shalala, drug use among teenagers is actually increasing. According to the Department of Health and Human Services study, nearly one in 20 high school seniors surveyed said they smoke marijuana every day. That’s what the Department of Education’s $5 billion has bought us. The Department hasn’t bought us much else of value since Jimmy Carter created it in 1979 as a payoff to the teachers’ unions.

270 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Its yearly budget has gone from $15 billion to over $31 billion, creating over 240 programs. That and other federal education money constitute a huge pot of Washington debt, and very few of the recipients are willing to withdraw from this largesse. One should question the authority that established the Department of Education. Education was always a local responsibility, and as states became larger, most adopted an Education Department—but only for monitoring purposes. Along came the socialists who cannot tolerate anyone controlling the lives of their children. That is the responsibility of the Committee. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution is quite clear. It states that all powers not vested to the Federal Government is reserved for the States and their citizens. What or who interpreted the Constitution as giving power to the Federal Government to control the Education of all the children in the U.S.? Did the Supreme Court ever rule that the Federal Government has the power to control the education of all children? There is nothing in the Constitution that gives this power to the Federal Government so one has to assume that Congress stole it. Are Educrats embarrassed in the face of overwhelming evidence of the failure of their educational ideas and prescriptions? Of course not. Virtually every national attempt to raise standards has been hijacked by the Educational Establishment. Remember Goals 2000? Outcome-based education? Those began with the desire for standards and an improved academic performance... and quickly degenerated into another tool for socialists propaganda. The same thing happened with California’s 1993 drive for more rigorous testing. The result was CLAS, the California Learning Assessment System. CLAS “expert” designers frowned upon regular testing of actual things; instead, they set out to test “critical thinking skills.” Which led to test full of “ideologically tinged” questions. In the ensuing uproar the whole thing died after two years and $26 million, having derailed California’s drive for higher standards. Today, (2006), California is at it again. As mentioned previously, California is getting ready to pass a law that all history books used in Califor-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 271 nia must extol the virtues of homosexuality—not the Gettysburg Address or the Bill of Rights– but the virtues of homosexuality. So much for the taxpayers dollars going for education. Social Study Textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools are mostly a disgrace that, in the name of political correctness and multiculturalism, fail to give students an honest account of American history, say academic historians and education advocates. “Secondary and college students, and indeed most of the rest of us, have only a feeble grasp of politics and a vague awareness of history, especially the political history of the United States and the world,” said an emeritus professor of history at the University of Massachusetts. Most textbooks, produced by a few giant commercial publishers, are exposing generations of children to cultural and history stagnation that threatens the very basis of American free institutions and liberties warn leading historians who are calling for better and more stricter state teaching standards. Just 11 percent of eighth-graders show proficient knowledge of US. History on standardized tests, down from 17 percent in 2001. “Less than half knew the Supreme Court could decide a law’s constitutionality:’ the report showed in the Albert Shanker Institute study titled “Educating Democracy: State Standards to Ensure a Civic Core.” Only a third knew what the progressive Era was and most were not sure whom we fought in World War II.” Publishers acknowledge having adopted (since the early 1980s) to the so called multicultural “bias guidelines” demanded by interest groups and elected state boards of education that require censorship of textbook content to accommodate feminist, homosexual and racial demands. The California State Board of Education was the first to adopt such guidelines in 1982, according to New York University education research professor Diane Ravitch in her latest book, “The Language Police.” The California guidelines instruct textbook publishers and teachers: “Do not cast adverse reflection on

272 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. any gender, race, ethnicity, religion or cultural group:’ The board had informal “social-content standards” going back to the 1970s.. The Democrat controlled Legislature in California is currently passing a law requiring publishers to include a section extolling the wonders of homosexuality in their Social and History books. Publishers not only follow the dictates of State Legislatures and State School Boards but also follow with their own editorial antibias guide lines which banned words, phrases, images and depictions of people deemed unacceptable, such as, “man”, “mankind,” “manpower;’ “men,” which are deemed to be sexist. Also banned are “able-bodied,” “aged,” “babe,” “backward,” “chick,” “fairy,” “geezer,” “imbecile,” “Redskin,” “Sissy,” “suffragette” and “waitress.” As stated before, a handful of commercial publishers produce most elementary and secondary text books used in the United States, which cost the nation’s taxpayers about $250 million per subject. They are G1encoe, a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill; Holt, Rinehart & Winston, owned by Harcourt, Inc., U.S. division of the Dutch publishing conglomerate Reed Elsevier Group; McDougall Littell, owned by Houghton Mifflin;, and Prentice Hall; a subsidiary of British owned Pearson Education Inc., which also owns Scott Foresman, Addison Wesley, etc.. Although, all companies have developed their’ own internal checklists that dictate writing, graphics , photos, and other textbook content, their editing staff either lacks the knowledge or they deliberately allow falsehoods and mistakes to be printed and distributed to the school system. In 2003, a team of 16 academic reviewers in Texas, the second largest state market for textbooks behind California, found 533 factual and interpretive errors in 28 social studies texts submitted for adoption by the state board of education. The. books were for sixth grade world culture, seventh grade Texas state history, eighth-grade and high school American history , US. Government and economics, and high school world history. When brought to their attention (the publishers) said that they acknowledge some of

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 273 the mistakes but that over thirty percent were rejected, because the publishers stated that their text books were correct and the academic reviewers were wrong. Our school books are published by a few elitist publishers that are out to re-write history and social studies into the image of a great one-world society which of course is Socialism. The author of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s recent “Consumer’s Guide to High School History Textbooks, blames statewide textbook-adoption laws for committee-written books that students find boring and barely tolerable. “There’s an incredible sameness about them. At a time when the Harry Potter series captured children’s imagination and loyalty because the books “are exciting and well written resonate with suspense, mystery, intrigue and showdowns between the forces of good and evil,” school history text books had “achieved the heights of banality thanks to political correctness, she wrote. If the story is good enough, children will take it to bed with them and use a portable light after all lights are turned off. Unlike textbook publishers, who must screen everything for political correctness before they print to avoid giving offense! Further evidence of the ‘dumbing-down’ of America was shown in a survey of seniors at 50 top colleges and universities by the American Council of ’ Trustees and Alumni “Its astonishing. More than half didn’t know George Washington was the commanding general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution who accepted Brig. Gen. Charles Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. “Thirty-six percent thought it was Ulysses S. Grant;’ commander of the Union Army during the US. Civil War. “Six percent said it was Douglas MacArthur, U.S. commander during the Korean War. “Thirty-two percent said Washington. Since it was a multiple-choice question., one can assume from the percentages shown that there was a lot of guessing going on. “If- you don’t know what Yorktown was all about, and that Washington was the commander, you don’t know a lot about American history that you ought to know;, one observer of the test scores said. A humanities professor at the Uni-

274 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. versity of ‘Tennessee at Chattanooga, said that when graduates of Harvard and other great universities “are not learning the basics of American history, it is safe to assume that almost no one is, and that there will be almost no one to pass such knowledge on to the next generation. “Historical memory is as much a necessity to the preservation of liberty and American security as is our own armed forces,” he said. Some professors say that states should get rid of statewide textbook-adoption laws and let teachers have freedom to select their own history books and original source materials to teach history. However, others say that this power is too easily compromised by pressure groups and by bureaucratic demands. The states should set their academic standards, align their tests to fit the standards, and leave teachers free to select the books, anthologies, histories, biographies, software and other materials that will help students meet the standards. But one textbook reviewer from Texas with 40 years of experience states that he “absolutely disagrees completely” that local textbook selection is better than statewide selection, because publishers, teachers unions and other organized interests would block out parental interests “Publishers are advantaged by local adoption because they have more personnel” to overwhelm possible criticism. At the state level, where organized parents and pro-family groups marshaled objections against textbook content, “that’s kicked out many a book,” he said. Textbooks written to be “politically correct” do not tell the truth about struggle and conflict through the ages in order to avoid offending minorities, ethnic groups, women and other advocates, he added. “History is a story of ‘Cause and Effect’ and if you’re going to teach just segments of history, women’s issues, these youngsters have almost no sense of ‘Cause and Effect. As the above dissertation reveals, our Education Establishment recognizes a problem, but they are incapable of doing anything. A case of too many Chiefs and not enough warriors. There are a number of school myths floating around about

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 275 teachers and school production. Much of what people believe about education policy is simply not true. For example, many people believe that schools are desperately under-funded. In fact, public K-12 spending is approaching $10,000 per pupil, double what it was three decades ago, adjusting for inflation. Also, many people believe that teachers are horribly underpaid. In fact, the average elementary school teacher makes $30.75 per hour, which is more than architects ($26.64), mechanical engineers ($29.46), and chemists ($30.68). One of the highest wage scales for teachers is in the state of New Jersey. In that state, $52,000 a year is average for teachers salaries. However, are New Jersey schools No. 1 in the national SAT scores? Of course not. “What’s wrong with American Schools?” The national consensus is that the American education system is in a state of collapse. For years, the Democratic socialists have tried to obscure the damage their ideas had inflicted on the nation’s young students. But the results can no longer be hidden or papered over with the usual socialist’s lament that it’s societies’ fault. Or parents fault. Or taxpayers’ fault. Or President Bush’s fault. In reality, its our schools of Education at Colleges and Universities around the country that are at fault. A good example is what occurred in Massachusetts in April 1998. The Massachusetts department of education introduced a new examination for the licensing of would-be teachers, almost all of whom had received a bachelor of education degree shortly before. The test wasn’t designed to challenge the teachers at a high level of competency, but it did expect that they could at least write a lucid sentence. Of the 1,800 test-takers, 59 percent—3 out of every 5—flunked! As one state education chief stated, ‘not only were many teacher graduates unable to write complete sentences containing nouns and verbs, but their spelling was often atrocious. Some of the misspelled words were ‘horibal’, ‘compermise’, and ‘universel’. Is it any wonder why our school children perform poorly when they are taught by incompetent people. Just recently, a group of so-called educators are pushing a new learning system which will revise the spelling of common words. This group claims that the children

276 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. are doing poorly in reading because of much confusion over the pronouncement of certain words. For example, ‘rough’, ‘bough’, ‘cough’, etc., are words that look alike but are pronounced entirely different. Their concept is that words should be spelled like they are pronounced. For example: ‘rough’ should be spelled ‘ruff ’; ‘bough’ should be spelled ‘bow’; etc. But what about the words currently in existence: ‘ruff ’ and ‘bow’? I guess they will redefine ‘ruff ’ as a neck frill or a wrist frill, or something and ‘bow’ as a curtsey. But what about ‘bow’ and arrow? This idiotic concept of spelling has been parodied many times but to show how idiotic it is, one of the latest parodies is placed in evidence for all to see: “The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”. In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “C” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f ”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 277 wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer people vil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”. During ze tifz yer, ze unesesary “0” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz tifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze tifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas. “ This is what some of our social educators want to teach the children. Can anyone imagine a child being taught this type of reading getting a degree in Engineering? Or Medicine? Or whatever? These so-called Educrats were the same group that fostered the concept of OBE and whole language. The OBE (Outcome Based Education) had many parents up in arms. It downgraded content matter in favor of nebulous “outcomes” like “thinking skills,” “group learning,” and associated garbage. The children didn’t learn anything except maybe how to act socially when in a group. What did the man ‘George Washington’ do? Who was he? Whole Language is another experiment that failed and it’s proving that it is one of the reasons why our children can read, but not understand what they are reading. Parents disliked Whole Language because it downgrades accuracy. Children are allowed to approximate meaning and therefore arrive at conclusions not presented. San Diego schools, for instance, found that the percentage of first graders scoring above the medium on reading tests dropped by half after 18 months of Whole Language instructions. And a study of two schools by a University of Georgia professor shows that children at the school using traditional instruction far outperformed those of the Whole Language school. All the evidence shows that direct and systematic phonics instructions

278 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. improve reading skills when added to the program that doesn’t use it. Yet Whole Language methods continue to be use by the Educrats because teachers have an aversion for teaching phonics. It appears that schools are for teachers comforts not to educate the children. To understand the failure of the Education System in the United States, one only has to look at the history of the system itself. Prior to the take over of the U.S. Government by Socialists in the 1930s, the people in the states were responsible for educating their children. This was accomplished by local families hiring teachers who were dedicated to teaching the three Rs (Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic, so to speak). In the 1930s, one could find country schools which had only four classrooms and five teachers (four teachers plus a principle who filled in if one of the teachers became ill.) These small public schools covered eight grades of primary school. Two classes per room with one teacher. For example, the teacher would teach one class for grade one (one half hour), then teach one class for grade two (one half hour). Every hour was devoted to a specific subject required for that grade. While the teacher taught one grade, the other grade students would study. Thus it went through eight grades. High schools were no different. Economics had little to do with the desire for learning. In the early 1930s many families had fathers (or mothers) who were unemployed yet they expected—and got— their children a good education. Students could read, write, do multiplication tables, solve math problems, etc. They were eager to learn more. Then along came the Educrats, that stated learning was boring and that children should have more fun and do more socializing at schools. To the socialist Educrats, children should not have their young minds cluttered up with tables, grammar rules, etc. They should be playing games and enjoying themselves. This started the downward movement of education. Who needs an education in a socialist World? The committee will select who will be trained in what career (and how many). All will eventually be assigned their niche in the community and they will be told what to do. Individual thought is therefore taboo.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 279 The U.S. Educrats have become sheep and follow those who have produced nothing but failure. One of those leaders the U.S. Educrats look to for guidance was Julius Kambarage Nyerere who became Africa’s outstanding theoretician of Socialism. According to Nyerere ‘we should change the things we demand of our schools. We should not determine the type of things children are taught in primary schools by the things a doctor, engineer, teacher, economist, or administrator need to know. Most of our people will never be any of these things. We should determine the type of things taught in the primary schools by the things which a boy and a girl ought to know—that is, the skills he ought to acquire and the values he ought to cherish if he, or she, is to live happily and well in a socialist and predominantly rural society, and contribute to the improvement of life there.’ This theme is now being enacted in the U.S. system. Socialization is more important than education. One teacher experienced the wrath of a school principle because she had the nerve to want to teach. This teacher taught in a Catholic School for years, and when her two children approached their final year in high-school, she and her husband decided that it would be best if she got a job within the public school system, because the pay was better and they would need the extra money to send their children to college. She lasted just four days in the public school system. In her history class there were four unruly boys that kept disrupting her attempts to educate the entire class. She reported them to the principle and request that they be removed so that she could teach the rest of the class. The principle told her to do the best she could, but that he would not remove the hooligans from her class. He further added that her primary job was to take roll not to teach. Absent students means less money for the school. Therefore, education had to take a back seat. A survey in 2008 showed the California State University system poured millions of dollars into outreach efforts aimed at making high school students more prepared for college, and it often must supply them with remedial classes when they aren’t. But the past seven years have produced only modest improvements in math and

280 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. Cal States’s 23 campuses, and there has been no change in English. The survey showed the following: •37% of incoming freshmen in the CSU system not proficient in math. •46% of incoming freshmen in the CSU system not proficient in English. •48% of incoming freshmen at Cal State San Marcos not proficient in math. •53% of incoming freshmen at Cal State San Marcos not proficient in English. •25% of incoming freshmen at SDSU not proficient in math. •32% of incoming freshmen at SDSU not proficient in English.

To understand how and why the socialists needed to ‘dumb down America’ one must follow the European socialist movement as it unfolded in the eighteenth century—especially in the French Revolution. The socialist movement started before the French Revolution, but the name Socialism didn’t arise until that time. Out of the French Revolution came visions of an egalitarian Society which would be built around a format established by a treatise referred to as the Manifesto of the Equals. Their concepts are as follows: The important member of the inner circle of Conspirators was Sylvain Marechal, who composed the “Manifesto of the Equals,” one of the principal codifications of the goals and philosophy of the Conspiracy. Marechal was known above all as a militant atheist. He liked to call himself I’HSD, which stood for I’Homme sans Dieu (“The Man without God” or “The Godless Man”). He had previously published The Atheist’s Dictionary, a famous work at the time, as well as an atheist opera and atheist poems which Babeuf sometimes read to his son. The Equals aimed to redeem the promise of the Revolution. They wanted “to add to the revolution in power and rank that incomparably more just and necessary one of property and intel-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 281 ligence, whose final result should be an impartial distribution of riches’ and knowledge amongst all the citizens.” The overriding goal was “Equality! the first wish of nature, the first need of man.” The motive for egalitarianism was both spiritual and material. The Equals wanted a “truly fraternal union of all Frenchmen” in which each member viewed his own well-being as inextricably entwined with that of every other. “If there is a single man on earth who is richer and more powerful than his fellows,” said Marechal’s “Manifesto of the Equals,” “... then the equilibrium is broken: crime and misfortune are on earth.” Therefore, it was imperative to “remove from every individual the hope of ever becoming richer, or more powerful, or more distinguished by his intelligence.” This would lead to “the disappearance of boundary marks, hedges, walls, doorlocks, disputes, trials, thefts, murders, all crimes.. .courts, prisons, gallows, penalties... envy, jealousy, insatiability, pride, deception, duplicity, in short all vices.” In addition to these estimable spiritual benefits, an egalitarian society would also, the Equals believed, serve to eliminate want. In the image of the economic world projected in the writings of Babeuf and his fellows, nature provided a relatively fixed bounty. Therefore, a person could” only succeed in having too much by arranging for others to have not enough.” That alone would justify equal distribution, but in addition, Babeuf speculated that an egalitarian society would turn scarcity into abundance. “A few hours’ occupation per day would secure to every individual the means of living agreeably,” he wrote. Indeed it was just this image that drew Babeuf to the philosophy of Morelly (a little-known thinker whose book La Code de la Nature had been mistakenly attributed to Diderot). The way to create a system of equality would be to “organize a communal regime which will suppress private property, set each to work at the skill or job he understands, require each to deposit the fruits of his labor in kind at the common store, and establish an agency for the distribution of basic necessities. This agency will maintain a complete list of people and of supplies, will distribute

282 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. the latter with scrupulous fairness, and will deliver them to the home of each worker.” Money would be abolished, the circulation of gold or silver forbidden. Thus provisioned, “no member of the community may possess anything other than what the law makes available through the agency of the governors.” Each would be supplied alike with furniture and clothing. Buonarroti explained, “It is essential... that the citizen should habitually find in all his fellow countrymen equals, brothers; and that he should nowhere meet with the least sign of even apparent superiority.” Citizens would be divided into occupational groups and would be attached to their location of residency. They could “receive the common ration only in the district where they live, except in the case of movements authorized by the administration.” The authorities not only would have to approve any moves, but could command them: “the movement of workers from one [locale] to another may be ordered by the supreme administration in the light of the resources and needs of the community.” Babeuf foresaw “the extinction of those receptacles of every vice, large cities; and covering France with villages.” The goal was not just to change the system but to change people. Said Babeuf: “Society must be made to operate in such a way that it eradicates once and for all the desire of a man to become richer, or wiser, or more powerful than others.” In designing their new society, the Equals devoted a great deal of attention to planning the upbringing of the young and also to the ongoing instruction of the adult population. As Buonarroti recalled: In the social order conceived by the Committee, the country takes possession of every individual at birth, and never quits him till death. It watches over his first moments, secures him the nourishment and cares of his mother, keeps out of his reach every thing that might impair his health or enervate his constitution, guarantees him against the dangers of a false tenderness, and conducts him, by the hand of his parent, to the national seminary, where he is to acquire the virtues and intelligence necessary to make him a good citizen.

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 283 The” national seminary” alluded to here would comprise samesex boarding schools where all children would be raised. The goal of their education would be “to make [the citizens] love equality, liberty, and their country, and place them in a condition to serve and defend it,” said Buonarroti. To accomplish this fully, the educators would strive “to render all affections of family and kindred subordinate to” the “love of country.” After a number of years in the boarding schools, “so soon as the children would have acquired strength, they would have been habituated to military works [It is necessary] to preclude the introduction of young people into social life until inured to discipline, and to the privations of the camp, inflamed with love of country, and burning to serve it.” Thus would the young people pass several years encamped on France’s frontiers, securing the national boundaries while being hardened in final preparation for “the rights of citizenship.” In addition, progressive educators stressed greater freedom, activity, and informality in the classroom. They would not conclude education at that point. Buonarroti reported that: “In the Committee’s opinion, it was of sovereign importance to the cause of equality to keep the citizens incessantly exercised-to attach them to their country, by making them love its ceremonies, its games, its amusements.” The majesty of government would be augmented by intermixing it with religion. Buonarroti foresaw “the establishment of that sublime worship, which, by blending the laws of the country with the precepts of the divinity, doubled, as it were, the force of the legislator, and armed him with the means of extinguishing all superstitions in a short time, and of realizing all the miracles of equality.” In speaking of superstitions,” Buonarroti of course meant traditional religion, toward which the Equals, led by Marechal, were strongly antagonistic.” It was blue-prints like the above that the Educrats gobbled up. Control the mind of the young and instill in them the love of Socialism instead of country. But to do this they had to be very clever to cover their intent. To facilitate their socialization of the country, they

284 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. adopted philosophers and educators that were more interested in Socialism than country. They found one great educator/philosopher in John Dewey and others. Progressive vs Traditional Education. Progressive educators thought that traditional education should be reformed. Famous progressive educators of the 1800’s included Francis Parker and G. Stanley Hall. In the early 1900’s, John Dewey became a well-known spokesman for progressive education. The traditional school stressed specific subjects—reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and grammar. The teacher lectured or dictated a lesson, and the students copied it in their notebooks. The students then learned by heart what was in their notebooks and recited what they learned from their textbooks. The teacher enforced order and quiet except for recitation periods. Students sat at rows of desks fastened to the floor, and they could not move or talk without permission. Progressive educators tried to reform elementary school methods in several ways. They thought teachers should pay more attention to the individual child and not treat all children alike. Progressive educators believed that children learn best when they are genuinely interested in the material, and not when they are forced to memorize facts that seem useless to them. Children should learn by direct contact with things, places, and people, as well as by reading and hearing about them. Thus, elementary schools should include science laboratories, workshops, art studios, kitchens, gymnasiums, and gardens. Progressive educators believed this procedure would develop the child’s physical, social, and emotional nature as well as its mind. They believed that children learn better when they can move about and work at their own pace. They thought children should gather materials from many sources rather than from just one textbook, and should work in groups with other students. Discussion, dramatics, music, and art activities became a larger part of classroom procedures. Progressive education spread more widely through elementary schools than it did in high schools or colleges. Teachers planned individual instruction and centered it around

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 285 projects, units, or activities rather than the usual courses or subjects. They taught students of different abilities in separate groups. Many writers and some educators began increasingly to criticize progressive education during the 1940’s and 1950’s. They charged students did not learn fundamental subjects well enough. Other educators said that students learned as well under progressive education as under traditional methods. But by the early 1960’s, many schools had begun to experiment with different teaching methods. Many experiments used “progressive” principles but did not use the term. The philosophy of John Dewey is firmly embedded in the educational system and it should be removed. It is nothing but one man’s philosophy and it has proven to be wrong more times than not. Dewey’s philosophy (in his own words): “I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child’s instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language. I believe that this educational process has two sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following. Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some

286 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the child’s activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature. I believe that knowledge of social conditions, of the present state of civilization, is necessary in order properly to interpret the child’s powers. The child has his own instincts and tendencies, but we do not know what these mean until we can translate them into their social equivalents. We must be able to carry them back into a social past and see them as the inheritance of previous race activities. We must also be able to project them into the future to see what their outcome and end will be. In the illustration just used, it is the ability to see in the child’s babblings the promise and potency of a future social intercourse and conversation which enables one to deal in the proper way with that instinct. “ John Dewey also included in his treatise in 1897 the following socialist propaganda: “ I believe that the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child’s capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted—we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents—into terms of what they are capable of in the way of social service.” This metaphysical tirade is the current guidepost to educational disaster. Are Democratic socialists embarrassed of this overwhelming

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 287 evidence of the failure of their educational ideas and experiments? Of course not. Virtually every national attempt to raise standards has been hijacked by the socialists. One must remember that an educated, intelligent community is the socialists bane. People who can think for themselves are anti-social. They must be like cattle so that the Central Committee can use them like slaves. The largest and richest American union, with over 2.4 million members and an estimated $600 per member in revenues, the NEA is also consistently the most powerful presence at the Democratic National Convention, with almost one out of eight delegates in 1992. Those delegates are the key. To a largely unrecognized extent, the NEA is a creature of the socialist Democratic agenda-the platform that labor union special interests use to influence state and federal governments at least since 1954. While capitalizing on the American desire for schooling, the NEA is also vitally dependent on extraordinary legal privileges it gain when it was transformed from a century old professional association into a brass-knuckled labor union Like all unions, the NEA is a legally sanctioned attempt to monopolize a particular labor supply. But, unlike private sector unions, the NEA is a monopoly on top of a monopoly The only consumer is the government-dominated kindergarten-to-12th-grade education industry. This relationship gives the NEA privileged access to public policymaking- arguably unconstitutionally- and an indisputable incentive to develop its political muscle. So obvious is this potential for abuse that public sector unionization was long viewed as unthinkable even by labor allies like Franklin D. Roosevelt. But these scruples were abandoned around 1960. In return for union support, the Kennedy Administration allowed federal employee collective bargaining. State governments capitulated about the same time. Coming out of a labor-dominated state, NEA President Keith Geiger, Executive Director Donald Cameron and other members of the tight-knit “Michigan Mafia” were able to convert the NEA from professional association into union-so slickly that press, public and even some

288 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. NEA members still appear unaware of what has happened. The NEA’S interlock with the Democratic Party has developed equally adroitly. It gave its first presidential endorsement only in 1976, to Jimmy Carter, in return for his creating the federal Department of Education, a longstanding union goal. But in the 1994 election cycle, NEA-PAC gave $4.4 million, 98.7% ro Democrats. And this was dwarfed by state-level affiliates’ contributions-FORBES’ 1994 estimate, extrapolating from four representative states: $35 million. For the Democrats, the NEA has emerged as one of the biggest givers-along with the trial lawyers and the Teamsters Union. The teachers’ union has emerged as the major obstacle to school reform, with its California affiliate spending an astounding $12 million to defeat the 1993 Proposition 174 voucher proposal. In its spare time the union fights attempts to limit taxes, to cut government spending and even to curb illegal immigration. Its agenda, in short, is more political than educational. And the NEA backs its agenda with lots of money. NEA operatives moved directly into key spots surrounding the Clinton Administration: Debra DeLee from NEA-PAC to acting head of the Democratic National Committee; Sharon Porter Robinson, director of NEA’s research arm, to head of research at the Department of Education. Accompanied by DeLee, Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address to the NEA Representative Assembly, boosting her Health Care plan. Assembly delegates further demonstrated their noneducational agenda by voting to boycott Florida orange juice unless the state’s Department of Citrus stopped sponsoring Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. The Florida Department promptly obeyed their demands. The move of condemning Limbaugh was part of a wider Democratic campaign linked to President Clinton’s June 24 KMOX-St. Louis radio outburst against Limbaugh and other conservative talk shows. The teacher union at the grass-root level has been taking over

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 289 District School Boards throughout the U.S. It is estimated that all school boards contain more than 70 percent union members, former union member, spouses of union members and defunct Educrats. For example, in Virginia Beach, where it successfully-and typicallysmeared an antiunion candidate for the school board as a member of the “Religious Right.” (The union candidate, who reportedly raised a remarkable $75,000 from 15 NEA state affiliates, subsequently turned out to have a bogus Ph.D. and has been convicted by a jury of campaign violations.) It even intimidated New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman, according to reports, into delaying her voucher plans for Jersey City’s troubled school system. The rise of the modern NEA was exactly coincided with what critics have called the 1963-1980 “Great Decline” or “Dumbing Down” of the American education system. This decline notoriously affects performance as shown by the resulting SAT scores. The proportion of all 17-year olds scoring 700-plus verbal or math SATS fell by almost half after the unions took over the school system. In the 1950s the combined average score (both math and verbal) was 1400. Today the combined average is below 950. Yet, the school system propagandists swear that our school system is improving! The failure of the current education system can be seen in what has happen in one School District in Colorado. A man and his wife became disgusted with the way the poor children in his School District were , as he stated, falling through the cracks. They started up an organization called Parents Challenge. This organizer was a former teacher as was his father. The purpose of the organization was to give scholarship grants to poor students who were stuck in failing (SAT score-wise) schools within the district. These scholarship grants could be used by the students in any public or private school of their choice. The money for these grants were produced from his private estate and other donations. Each year supplied enough money for over 250 scholarship grants. This man was immediately attacked in the OP-ED section of the local newspaper by teachers, former teachers and the NEA-CEA members. They accused him of

290 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. being a ‘money-hungry, power seeking political wanna-be’ He was a person of character and pointed out to his accusers that the locals newspaper had just released a report that showed that more than 90 percent of the black and Hispanic 10th grade students in the local school district were not proficient in math. He further stated, ’that when attacking the high drop-out rates of blacks and Hispanics as well as the abysmal achievement scores, he was not attacking schools or teachers but the system. And as for money, power and politics it was the teachers union and its unyielding, unconscionable defense of a failing status quo. It is the teachers union that continues to deny the ‘disadvantaged and challenged‘ students a chance for a better education.’ It is the NEA which has done everything in its power to prevent establishment of a voucher system that would help students out of those schools that are failing. It couldn’t have be said better than that in laying the responsibility to a failed system. A study released by the Cato Institute in 2004 provides irrefutable facts that lead to the end conclusion that spending more money on education is a no brainer. The study notes that while ‘federal spending on education has ballooned from about $25 billion in 1965 (adjusted for inflation) to more than $I08 billion ‘in 2002, the promise of improved performance in the classroom and’ better grades remains flat. “Math and reading scores have stagnated,” writes the Cato analyst, “graduation rates have not increased, and researchers have shown several billion-dollar federal programs to be failures. More than 26 federal departments and organizations run major education programs according to the Department of Education Statistics. What are they doing with the money if so much of it fails to produce the promised results? Why is a school system that dates as far back as the Massachusetts Colony’s 1647 Old Deluder Satan Act, which established the first compulsory and partially public education (and was intended to ensure that all members of the colony were sufficiently literate to read the Bible, enabling them to fend off the inducements of Satan” turning out so many functional illiterates who so willingly give in “to all sorts ‘of modern temptations?

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Mostly, it is because state and local authorities over education has been gradually usurped by the federal government, which has no constitutional authority to run or dictate to local schools. But as Washington has gradually claimed more power over education the states have ‘been able to exercise less and have been forced to succumb to increasing amounts of federal regulation in exchange for federal dollars taken from its citizens in the first place. The top six departments engaged in education spending and the amounts they spent in current dollars in 1965 and in 2002 are as follows: Health and Human Services ($1,027,537. in ‘65; $22,858,490. in ‘02); Education ($1,027,523. in ‘65; $46,324,352 in ‘02; Agriculture ($768,927 in ‘65; $11,896;064 in ‘02); Defense ($587,412 in ‘65; $4,749,222 in ‘02); Energy ($412;434 in ‘65; $3,625,124 in ‘02); and Labor ($230,041 in ‘65; $6,364,200 in ‘02.) Even after programs and spending had shown lack of results, only a very few were removed in the last 40 years of so. When these strategies and programs fail, the government does end or change them. It throws more money at them. Besides, the socialists in Congress jump at any excuse to raise taxes. A lot of this increase in spending over the years ends up in the Union coffers thanks to the Democratic socialists who are always looking for ways to fill their own pockets with tax-payers money.

292 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

List of References The following list of publications were used as references. Some are duplicates of the same information and some publications are missing because this publication has been in the making for approximately twelve years. Locations of information is noted as follows: AI=articles on the Internet; AM= articles in magazines, newspapers, journals, etc; BK= books. “America” by Alistair Cook (Bk) “America’s Historylands—Landmarks of Liberty” by National Geographic Society (Bk) “American History, An” by Rebecca Brooks Gruver (Bk) “Antiwar left’s disturbing attack, The” by Charles Krauthammer (AM) “Berger Case, The; What’s going on at the Dept. of Justice?” Editorial (AM) “Big why of anti-Americanism” by Arnold Belchman (AM) “Capitalism & Freedom” by Milton Friedman (BK) “Class Warfare—Hard work and Education pays off in America” by Marcia Schroedar (AM) “Classic Capitalism” by Howard Fast “Code of Hammarabi, The” (AI) “Comeuppance” (about the National Education Assn.) by Pe-

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 293 ter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, Forbes Mag (AM) Note: When this article was published, the NEA had their members, all over the U.S. buy up all the Forbes magazines that contained this article and then burn them. Talk about censorship! “Conspiracy of Ignorance, The” by Martin :/ Gross “Council on Foreign Relations, The” by publiceye.org (AI). Note: More information can be received about the CFR by going onto the internet and using the Google search engine where one can find over 9,000,000 articles about the CFR. “Council on Foreign Relations and Mein Kampf ” (AI) “Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the,ad New World Order, the” by William Blasé (AI) “Daddy Warbuck’s Drugs and Death—CFR Member George Sores” (AI) “Death of Eurosocialism, The” by Pat Buchanan (AM) “Deadly Fear” by Jonathan Mirsky (AM) “Discovering America’s Past” by Reader’s Digest (BK) “Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism” by James G. Ryan (AM) “Europe’s New fault line” by Jeffrey Kuchener (AM) “Foreign Aid Yields a Paltry Return for U.S.” Gazette Telegraph, 1995 (AM) “Founding City, The” by David R. Boldt, Ed. (BK) “French Revolution” Columbia Encyclopedia (AM) “$44 Trillion” by Keven Drum (AI) “Globalization changing societal rules” by Jim Hoagland (AM)

294 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr. “Guns and Violence” by Joyce Lee Malcolm (BK) “Heaven on Earth” by Joshua Muravchik (BK) “Hillary Clinton—A Bilderbery Presidency” by oldthinkernews. com (AI) “History of the Supreme Court, The) Published by The Teaching Company (Lectures) “History of the United States, The) Published by The Teaching Company (Lectures) “Illuminati and the Council on Foreign Relations” by Myron C. Fagan (AI) Note: More information can be received

about the Illuminati by going onto the internet and using the Google search engine where one can find over 137,000 articles about the Illuminati. “Idled workers jobs bank a crucial GM” by Jeremy W. Peters (AM) “Initial List of Council on Foreign Relations Members” bu Foreignaffairs.org (AI) “Introduction to the ‘Little Sister’ of The Royal Institute of International affairs: The U.S. Council on Foreign Relations” by Eric Samuelson, J.D. (AI) “Jefferson Letter, The 1994” (AI) “Makers of the Modern Mind” by Thomas P. Neill, Ph.D. (BK) “Men in Black” by Mark R. Levin (BK) “Mill on Liberty” Alburey Castell, Ed. (BK) “Miracle at Philadelphia” by Catherine Drinker Bowen (BK)

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“Nation Deceived: Council on Foreign Relations Sponsorship of Covert Activities at Home and Abroad, A” From the RoundTable web site. (AI) “New World Order, The” by Pat Robertson (BK) “Nine Men Against America” by Rosalie M. Gordon (BK) “None Dare Call it CONSPIRACY” by Gary Allen with Larry Abraham (BK) “Old lesson from the Paris riots, An” by James Glassman (AM) “Our Republic in Peril” by Roger E. McCarthy (BK) “Power Elite Playbook, Bankers and Their Bombers, The” Conspiracyarchives.blogspot (AI) “Power Elite Playbook, Promoting War, The” by Deanna Spingola (AI) “Presidential Pardon For Patrol Agents” by Dewy Kidd (AM) “Proof of the Great Society’s failure” by Pat Buchanan (AM) “Quad Severlis Metes: Participating Government 1996” Lists member organizations of the Round Table Group, U.S. Government members of CRF, etc. (AI) Note: More information can be received about the Round Table Group by going onto the internet and using the Google search engine where one can find over 7,000,000 articles about the Round Table Group. “Rebirth of America, The” by Arthur DeMoss Foundation Pujblisher (BK) “Report describes dramatic removal of documents” by Associated Press (Berger Scandal)(BK)

296 _________________________Robert Gates, Sr.

“Road to SERFDOM, The” by Friedrich A. Hayek (BK) “Russian city’s scarce water might dry up” by Associated Press (AM) “Socialism doesn’t work But that doesn’t persuade the Left” by Dennis Prager (AM) “Socialism makes people less noble” by Dennis Prager (AM) “Socialism sanctions stealing in the name of doing good” by Walter E. Williams (AM) “Socialism still doesn’t work” by Victor Davis Hansom (AM) “socialist International” Lists All Party Members” by [email protected] “Short History of the Round Table, A—Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4” (AI) “Taft-Hartley Act” Ahead.com (AI) “They Preached Liberty” by Coral Ridge Ministries (BK) “Treason” by Ann Coulter (BK) “Treasonous Agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations” by Denny Kidd (AI) “Treasury of American Patriotism, A” by David H. Appel, Ed (BK) “Trilateral Commission, The” From Roundtable Website (AI) Note: More information can be received about the Trilateral Commission by going onto the internet and using the Google search engine where one can find over 1,000,000 articles about the Trilateral Commission.. “Urban rioting signals a far deeper peril” by Alex Alexiev (AM)

Paradise Lost_____________________________ 297 “Venona Achives” by Federal Bureau of Investigation (AM) “What the Merger of the NEA and the AFT-AFL-CIO Means to Us” by Rich Gibson (AI) “What’s So Sinister About Liberty, Prosperity and Peace” Freedominourtime.blogspot.com (AI) “Where We Stand—The Political Perspective of the Democratic Socialists of America” dsausa.org (AI) “World History Facts: From 1918 thru 1943” Ref History-1917_ files—History-1943_files. (AI) “World Philosophers, The” by Robert L Heilbroner (BK)