Jan 20, 2020 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
We live under two political systems: one centered on foreign affairs, the other primarily domestic. It’s called Federalism—the two share power. Neither subservient or above the other and each with separate duties. Like a good marriage, a team.
Thomas Jefferson explained, “The states are not subordinate to the national government but rather the two are coordinate departments of one single and integral whole…. The one is domestic the other the foreign branch of the same government.”
The Founders were aware of the nature of all governments to grow. George Washington warned, “Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” In order to ensure the fire does not spread and burn down the home, one builds a fireplace to keep the fire contained. That fireplace is the Constitution, particularly Section 8, which lists all powers that are given to Congress. Everything Congress did was to be clearly linked to at least one of these enumerated grants of power. The states who created the federal government, retained unto themselves all other powers as per Amendments 9 and 10 of the Constitution.
The advantages of federalism are enormous. States become laboratories of experimentation. Californians remember numerous “brownouts” at the turn of the century because of California’s failed energy policies. Other states viewing this were careful to avoid the same policies. States look to sister states for models and borrow from them in refining their own programs. These places of experimentation work to everyone’s advantage. What if we had federalized California’s failed energy policy? We would have had “brownouts“ on a national scale.
Had our power crazed federal government refrained from its natural inclination to take more power, healthcare reform could have gone through this experimental process designed by our Founding Fathers. We would then have been able to identify the weaknesses or strengths while they were still geographically isolated. Only three states had tried it: Oregon, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. That was clearly not enough to identify and avoid the “brownouts “ in the area of healthcare. Instead, they took a half-baked idea and made it mandatory for all and called it Obamacare.
Since healthcare was, and is not yet, a listed authority of the federal government it necessitates an enlargement of the enumerated list through Article V, requiring ratification by “3/4th of the Several States.” Since more than 60% of the people did not want this, the Constitution would have protected us from what we know now was unsustainable.
To protect Federalism the Founders did two things. First, Senators were to be selected by state legislatures so the U. S. Senate would be protective of state concerns. All law required the approval of the House of Representatives—the peoples’ representatives—and the Senate—the states’ representatives. That is why we have two branches of government to make law—two perspectives. The Seventeenth Amendment, mandating that the people, rather than the state legislators, elect U. S. Senators, destroyed this protection. Senators are today simply glorified House members. State issues thereafter were left mostly unrepresented—thus unprotected—on the federal level.
Second, the structure of the U. S. Constitution listed and defined federal power Article I, Section 8, leaving all power not specifically listed with the states as per the 10th Amendment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Progressive (socialist) Movement of the early 20th Century wrecked havoc on Federalism. The 16th Amendment, removing the previous constitutional taxing requirements based upon “apportionment among the several States “ and “census or enumeration,” to simply incomes, which could be raised arbitrarily at will. This left the federal government with unlimited resources to spend and expand—feeding its natural tendency to grow.
It used this excess to bribe states, counties, and cities to perform functions not listed in the Constitution, like the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit of the Ford and Carter Administrations, which funding later could be denied if states refused to comply. Consequently states became addicted to federal money making it near impossible for them to “just say no” to federal takeover in their domestic dominion. A third of their resources come from the federal government.
Federal courts have amplified federal law by a twisted interpretation of the poorly constructed Amendment 14, also to the detriment of Federalism. Amendment 18, repealed by Amendment 21, openly invited the federal government to decide approved beverages for us and then from there to approved drugs; all matters constitutionally left entirely to state jurisdiction.
Failure to preserve Federalism has cost us much liberty, most notably limited government. Lawmakers totally ignore both the listed areas of government (Article I, Sec. 8) and Amendment 10. State legislators have no influence in the U.S. Senate, once designed to protect them. States are bribed into compliance and now are addicted to federal handouts. They have become mostly administrative agents of the federal government without immunity to federal intrusion nor will to use nullification to block unconstitutional law. And we are excessively taxed.
We do not need an Article V constitutional convention to restore Federalism, just more lawmakers who understand the Constitution as written and will adhere to it, especially in the areas specified above. Now is the time to find and elevate them.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jan 13, 2020 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph.D.
Most understand that socialism conquered its first country, Russia, in 1917 under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and has always been a revolutionary doctrine never content to allow any people to choose another way. Eighteen months later it was organized to do the same in America. Yes, colluding with Russia has been a part of our history for over 100 years but it has been the Socialists who colluded. We see three times in the 20th Century when its imprint was most evident: after World War I, after World War II and during theVietnam War. Space permits only a brief summation of each.
“It was in 1919 that a majority of the membership of the Socialist Party of the United States voted to join the Comintern, established by the Bolsheviks.” It was August 31, that splinter socialist groups formed the Communist Labor Party of America under the leadership of John Reed and Benjamin Gitlow. They quickly attached themselves to labor unions especially the International Workers of the World (IWW) famous for its use of sabotage and violence in protesting World War I.
Allegiance to The 21 Conditions of the Russian Comintern was required for membership so those joining were loyal to the Bolshevik Revolution and its ideology above our own government. One of these 21 conditions read: “Every party wishing to belong to the Communist International must systematically and persistently develop a Communist agitation within the trade unions.” Iron discipline and periodic cleansing rid them of the less revolutionary.
Any enemy of the Soviet Republic was their enemy. They understood that propaganda was their main weapon and it was to be used in spreading the communist ideology and eventually overthrowing the U.S. government (Steve Byas, “Communist Part USA Is 100 Year Old This Year,” New American, May 20, 2019).
When Lenin encouraged world revolution in 1919, loyal Communists went to work everywhere. In America they called for labor union strikes across the nation “urging the workers to rise up against the government of the United States.” Some 2,600 strikes resulted with over 6,000 arrested. These were accompanied by a wave of bombings, some 36 bombs mailed to prominent politicians in April 1919 alone (“Send Death Bombs to 36 U.S. Leaders” Chicago Tribune, May 1, 1919). In June another 8 bombs, of 25 pounds of dynamite each, was sent to mostly prominent government officials (Wreck Judge Nott’s Home, The New York Times, June 3, 1919). In 1920 “a wagonload of explosives was detonated on Wall Street, killing 38 people and injuring 200 others” (Byas). Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s own home was bombed twice.
Most history textbooks undermine these events and villainize Palmer omitting that the raids were conducted under the authority of numerous states as well as the federal government. The Constitution defines treason as giving aid and comfort to the enemy which does allow the death sentence. In kindness many found guilty were offered one-way transportation to Russia on the Buford, the ship nicknamed the “Soviet Ark.” Many chose to go there. The only death sentences given for the sabotage and violence of the Red Scare was to radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and that for the murders of Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli.—not for their political affiliation.
The Great Depression brought the nation to its knees and the Socialist’s, modeling the Russian led USSR, openly planned conquest. William Z. Foster, head of the Communist Party USA, in his book “Toward Soviet America” wrote of what “the American Soviet government” would look like. It would nationalize education, “The studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught on the basis of Marxist dialectical materialism, internationalism.” All religious schools and churches would be abolished. God would be banished and all property collectivized (Byas). So much of what he advocated then has been implemented under socialism and liberalism.
With a philosophy mirroring Socialist Russia, America was awash with spies for the Kremlin. Benjamin Gitlow, who defected from the Communist Labor Party of America he co-founded, confided, “The Communist Party of the United States is proud of the spies it has supplied to the Soviet government out of its own ranks” (Byas). Remember it was socialists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who passed atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union for which they were executed in 1953. Communist State Department, wonder boy, Alger Hiss, also passed atomic secrets to Russia, played a major role in communist victories under Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference, and became acting secretary-general of the UN in 1945, among other things.
The third major attempt to communize, thus overthrow our system of government, was during the Vietnam War. I have in my possession hundreds of Senate and House Hearings of American socialists colluding with Russia. So prevalent was the problem that U.S. News and World Report published “Communism and the New Left,” in 1970 with chapters on how Socialists exploited war, blacks, disorder, youth, and labor. A favorite chapter is “Spying for Russia.” We lost the Vietnam War primarily because of the Socialist enemy within America. Consequently
South Vietnam and Cambodia were turned over to the communists.
Also in my possession is at least a hundred books about U.S. Socialists colluding with Russia. It is a very old story.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jan 6, 2020 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Four years ago Newsweek reported in a powerful article “CHINA FORCES ITS POLITICAL PRISONERS TO SELL BODY PARTS,” but little has been printed in American news outlets since. So what did they report and can it still be confirmed?
They reported, “Dozens of highly respected investigators, scholars and government officials around the world claim the Chinese government is harvesting organs from groups considered to be political or cultural enemies of the regime currently in power.” It identified “members of Christian house churches, Tibetans and especially followers of Falun Gong, an outlawed peaceful Chinese religious movement created in 1992” as being “forced into “organ harvesting since the 1990’s.” These groups, already incarcerated, have become the government’s secret source “to fill the growing demand for organs and to provide ‘organ tourists’ from Western nations with potentially life-saving treatments.”
Newsweek reported that the practice on death row prisoners was widely known, practiced, and admitted to by Chinese authorities but it has since escalated. “Sometimes the ‘donor’ has still been alive during this process—the organ-removal process is what actually kills them.” The victims are merely prisoners of conscience taken mostly from religious groups. The Chinese government in December 2014 announced its discontinuance, unfortunately, “data show organ donations in China have actually increased, which seems extremely unlikely if the practice has truly ceased,” Newsweek reported Feb. 1, 2016.
Most of what Newsweek boldly printed had been confirmed September 12, 2012 by the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2012 in their “Chinese Communist Party Organ Harvesting of Religious and Political Dissidents” Hearing. Such was also confirmed by the European Parliament in 2013,
Then issue silence for almost four years; finally the Australian paper, The Sydney Morning Herald broke the silence Nov. 9, 2019, with an article, “Crimes against humanity: is China killing political prisoners for their organs?” by Tim Elliott. It documented the creation of the China Tribunal in London by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China. This body headed by a seven-person panel and chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice investigated the stream of documentation flowing out of China.
Its exhaustive 12 month inquiry “examined thousands of pages of submissions, including previous investigations and academic papers, internal Chinese medical records, and reports from Amnesty International, independent watchdog group Freedom House and the United Nations Committee Against Torture. It reviewed undercover video footage taken inside Chinese hospitals, covert telephone recordings with Chinese transplant surgeons, and heard from 50 witnesses, some of whom appeared in person and others via video link, from France, Canada, the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Korea.”
It confirmed, in its 60 page summary report released June 2019, everything that Newsweek, The House Committee and the European Union had shared, but instead of ending in 2014, as the Chinese government promised, it vastly accelerated. “It found that official transplant statistics in China are routinely falsified, and that instead of performing 10,000 operations as claimed, the real figure is between 60,000 and 90,000 a year. It found that the main source of these organs were Falun Gong, but that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority – up to 1.5 million of whom are incarcerated in China – were at risk of becoming the next ‘organ bank’.”
It also established “that illicit organ transplants had become a lucrative industry in China, directed by the state and enabled by the military.” The China Tribunal “accused the People’s Republic of China of having committed mass murder, and warned that governments or any other bodies that engaged with it in any substantial way ‘should now recognize that they are interacting with a criminal state’.”
One highly disturbing new finding from Tribunal testimony was the concept of “incomplete executed” prisoners. This “often via a gunshot to the right side of the chest, is not uncommon, the purpose being to maintain blood circulation to the organs,” presumably to enhance viability of healthy extraction. Some witnesses “recounted how they had been told by guards that they would be killed for their organs; how guards referred to Falun Gong prisoners as “merchandise”; and that they were “being kept as spare goods”.
The China Tribunal Report, as summarized by The Sidney Morning Herald, revealed that China did not have a volunteer organ donor program until 2013, largely because the “Chinese people have a cultural aversion to organ donation, owing to a traditional belief that the body must be buried intact.” The Red Cross in Beijing in 2015, “didn’t even have a donor office and hadn’t arranged a single case of organ donation.” Yet, “there seemed to be an endless supply of organs.”
The Report wrote about the difficulty in free countries of voluntarily obtaining the volume of organs needed. “In the UK, the average waiting time for a liver transplant is 135 days. In Australia, people needing a kidney can wait between five and seven years. Waiting times in China, meanwhile, can be as little as two weeks” says Fiatarone Singh from the University of Sydney. “Booking in a transplant … is impossible in a normal, voluntary organ donor system,….There is only one way you can do this, and that is where you have an organ bank – a large group of people who are being held in detention and killed on demand.”
The documentation confirms that Communist China offers organ replacement on demand and uses unfavored religious groups as its donor bank—a crime against humanity.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 31, 2019 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
As a college professor teaching the Constitution for forty years I am disturbed when those in power demonstrate constitutional illiteracy. Such is the time in which we live.
Impeachment means accused. Three presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were impeached (accused), none were removed from office in a subsequent Senate trial. Nixon removed himself by resigning, the other two continued in office filling their terms.
The House alone formulates the charges (Art. I, Sec. 2, Cla. 5) which must be treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors (Art. II, Sec. 4). Constitutionally no other charges are impeachable. The House cannot make up any offense that is not clearly one of these as in “obstruction of justice” or “obstruction of Congress.” “The Senate has the sole power to try all Impeachments” and the Chief Justice presides (Art. I Sec. 3, Cla. 6). The Senate cannot add to the list of charges. Constitutionally simple and practiced the last 231 years until now.
If House leadership chooses to discontinue the impeachment process by not passing its listed charges to the Senate—even after a positive vote on the charges was taken—it has not finished its process. Trump is, in effect, not charged because it is the only body constitutionally allowed to bring charges.. The accused cannot be said to have been impeached. The charges are effectively dropped. The moment that House leadership passes the baton to the Senate, Trump will join the others afore mentioned as having been accused (impeached) and will finish his term in office unless the Senate votes to remove him which has never happened to any president. It would be unconstitutional for the Senate to go into House chambers and, in effect, take the impeachment baton from them.
Nancy Pelosi, had no authority to turn the accusation process, normally done by the whole House, into the appearance of a trial in two House committees—which she did. It confused voters, “If tried and convicted, why is Trump still president?”
The founders wanted one body to accuse, a separate body to try. Any crime by a president is a crime against the people, thus the larger numbered House and more frequently elected, should be the one listing the accusations. This is why the House of Representative has “sole Power of Impeachment (Art. 1, Sec.2, Cla. 5), meaning initiating the accusing process.
Why was the House purposely forbidden doing more than accuse? Alexander Hamilton, the frequently cited founder of the Democratic Party, understood the greater emotion and passions of this body which made it the perfect body to originate the complaints but not to deliberate them. He wrote in The Federalist Papers #65, they would be “too often the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction, and on this account, can hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny”—think Chairmen Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. Remember Democratic leaders were calling for the impeachment of Trump before he was inaugurated and thereafter have unsuccessfully searched for a crime.
Hamilton prophetically continued, “in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” Remember in the House “trial” the president, his lawyers, and Republican colleagues were excluded due process, even calling witnesses.
Why was the Senate, with six-year terms rather than two and then elected by their state legislature, thought by the Constitutional Convention to be “the most fit depositary of this important trust?” Because, Hamilton explained, it was “least hasty in condemning” and “will be most inclined to allow due weight to the arguments which may be supposed to have produced it.”
Hamilton asked: “Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel CONFIDENCE ENOUGH IN ITS OWN SITUATION, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS?” The Senate is not so emotionally charged as is the more frequently elected House, reason can prevail. Notice the Democrats cannot wait 10 months for the people to vote again so emotionally charged are they as exemplified by Democratic Majority Whip James Clyburn reportedly saying, “Give the President a fair trial, then hang him.”
Still, Hamilton warned, “it ought not to be forgotten that the demon of faction [political party] will, at certain seasons, extend his sceptre over all numerous bodies of men.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, not satisfied with the two House charges—neither a crime or listed in the Constitution as impeachable offenses—remains in search of a crime, forever demanding more witnesses. Even if found the Senate cannot constitutionally add to the list of accusations given it by the House.
Again, if House leadership chooses to discontinue the impeachment process by not passing its charges to the Senate—even after a positive vote on the charges was taken—it has not finished its process. The charges in effect are dropped by the only body constitutionally empowered to bring charges. It has stopped the process and the accused, President Trump, cannot be said to have been impeached because the charges were dropped.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 22, 2019 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
It was in the eighth grade when I moved from Santa to Christ as my main focus of Christmas. I well remember the star saturated night when the heavens overwhelmingly testified of God’s awesomeness. I could feel the words of my favorite Christmas carol “Silent Night” go down into my soul as never before as I both sang and pondered its words. Perhaps it was the scenic nativity-like setting where I found myself, hand milking my neighbor’s cow while he was away for a week, the three-sided shed that allowed my gaze into the dark but star-lit, cold, cloudless night which allowed my peek into the heavens and most of all, it was Christmas Eve. I was alone with Christ. It could not have been more impressive and it was the same every morning and night that week.
I never had that experience again in the same way but I always had an intense love for the carols that spoke of his birth: “Oh Holy Night,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Joy to the World,” and “The First Noel.” They were just different somehow—far more powerful than regular jingles. My background was not particularly unique for the time period. Santa was there for the children but he never competed with Christ for the spotlight. The transition to Christ just followed with maturity. Years followed years, I had children and now they have children and, because of home and church the songs have passed on as they had for hundreds of years before. But, unfortunately, this does not happen for everyone.
Today the earth is still bathed with happy songs but radio stations seldom play the ageless Christ-birth songs: “Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains,” “With Wondering Awe,” “Away in the Manger,” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Outdoor nativity decorations are virtually non-existent unless you make your own. Even indoor nativity scenes are hard to find. Stores have almost nothing to purchase that speaks to this Holy Night. Have we removed Christ from Christmas?
There are no television shows or movies that address Nativity themes but Hollywood never really did much in this direction anyway, the “Waltons” or “Little House on the Prairie” were the exception, but then again that was in an earlier generation. There is no Nativity symbolism on television programs today. Everything is “feel good” like, I found a new love on Christmas, or Santa related. Even the Grinch is given more attention than Christ.
All references to Christ have been removed from our schools and teachers dare not encourage the singing of traditional Christmas carols, although any tune without the mention of Jesus Christ is encouraged. A culture that did not know the words of “Silent Night,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “Joy to the World,” or, “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful” would have been unheard of in my day, but is the norm today. Only the churches and homes give any exposure to Christ in Christmas, as was so for me and generations before me. Sadly some churches may give more emphasis to Santa than Christ. Neither churches nor communities have Nativity plays as once they did.
The reason for the season is Jesus Christ, that is why it is called Christ-mas but few homes show any evidence that He is center placed. Most Americans consider themselves unchurched (a term for those without religious affiliation) so the incentive to read, tell or act out the “Old Story” is mostly gone. Seemingly each generation transfers to the next less of Christ in Christmas.
Today we do not wish to offend other religions so Christmas has turned into Winter Break and Easter into Spring Break. I refuse to use these terms. Some advocate changing Christmas to Winter Holiday. The undermining of Christ’s special day is endless and seemingly intentional.
Why not change to a traditional Christmas this Christmas season, like generations before you? In your home play mostly the traditional Christ centered songs. Instead of a Santa, or reindeer in your front yard make a nativity scene. Take yourself or family to a church service. Find a service that will speak of that special night and rehearse the events of that most special day. Go caroling to shut-ins or to a nursing home. Read to your friends and loved ones on Christmas Eve the story of the birth of Jesus Christ—the one believed by all Christians to be the Savior of the world. If you have children let them act it out. Give Christ a few hours of your month. You will never be sorry that you took this challenge.
You may never have a special moment in a shed milking a cow on a cold starry night, as I did as a 14 year-old boy, but this same special feeling can find a way of filling your soul just as intensely in its own way. Then you will not be an accomplice in removing Christ from Christmas and will join those who wonder why anyone would want to.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 17, 2019 | Globalism, Liberty Articles, Take Action
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
With my new computer I receive unsolicited on screen messages from the Washington Post and New York Times, alerting me to news flashes they think credible and important for me to view immediately. The computer appears programed to do this automatically. But such represent an agreement with McIntosh that I should get very left leaning news first. Is this one of the subliminal message techniques Dr. Robert Epstein was speaking of in his July 16, 2019 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution?
In this hearing, evidence was provided that Big Tech, notably Google, and subliminal messaging techniques moved between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Epstein predicted that in 2020 “if all these companies are supporting the same candidate [as they did in 2016] there are 15 million votes on the line that can be shifted without peoples’ knowledge and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace.”
The previous April the Subcommittee had questioned witnesses from FaceBook and Twitter. But any serious examination of Big Tech censorship would have to include Google. Subcommittee chair Ted Cruz summarized the depth of the problem. “Google’s control over what people hear, watch, read, and say is unprecedented. Almost 90% of internet searches today use Google. Google’s domination of the search engine market is so complete that ‘to Google’ is now a common place verb. With that market power Google can, and often does, control our discourse… Every time we search on Google we see only the Web pages that Google decides we should see; in the order that Google decides we should see them. Type a few letters into the search bar and Google will tell you what you should be looking for.”
He continued: “The same is true of Google’s subsidiary YouTube—the second most visited web page in existence…. And when you submit a video people at YouTube determine whether you’ve engaged in so called hate speech; an ever changing and vague stance meant to give censorship an air of legitimacy. This is a staggering amount of power to ban speech, to manipulate search results, to destroy rivals, and to shape culture.”
Not surprising Google’s parent organization, Alphabet, was the number one financial supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But Google power is world wide, Dr. Epstein told the committee. Google has a “massive surveillance operation, censorship capabilities and unprecedented ability to manipulate the thinking of 2.5 billion people, soon to be 4 plus billion.” We add, if unchecked it could come to control every human on earth. Presently Google’s closest competitor is Microsoft’s Bing at 2.5% of the market (Robert Epstein, “To Break Googles’s Monopoly on Search, Make its Index Public,” Business Week, July 15, 2019).
Dr. Epstein told the Committee, “I know how to stop Big Tech in its tracks.” He recommended two big changes. The first, because these companies support the same presidential candidate and can shift up to 15 million votes in their candidates direction, Big Tech must be monitored. Since 2015 he has been developing technology “to capture on-line ‘esemeral experiences’” which he tested successfully the next year and which has increased in sophistication each year since. He expects to be ready for the 2020 presidential race fully capable of catching “Big Tech in the act, to instantly spot when FaceBook is bias in newsfeeds or when Twitter is suppressing tweets sent by Ann Colter or Elizabeth Warren.” He added: “To let Big Tech get away with subliminal manipulation on this scale would be to make the free and fair election meaningless.”
Second, “Congress can quickly end Google’s world-wide monopoly on search by declaring Google’s massive search index, the data base the company uses to generate search results, to be a public commodity accessible by all. Just as a 1956 consent decree forced AT&T to share all its patents. There is precedent in both law and Googles business practices to justify taking this step which will make on-line search competitive again and dramatically diminish Google’s power or rise.”
Google already shares this massive index with the Netherlands based company Startpage this “in return for fees generated by ads placed near Startpage search results.” This makes Startpage an acceptable replacement for Google primarily because you get “great search results, but with a difference. Google tracks your searches and also monitors you in other ways, so it gives you personalized results. Startpage doesn’t track you—it respects and guarantees your privacy—so it gives you generic results.” Dr. Epstein also recommended DuckDuckGo “which aggregates information obtained from 400 other non-Google sources, including its own modest crawler” (To Break Googles’s Monopoly).
But Epstein uses the Startpage model to show what would happen if Google’s massive index becomes public property. Perhaps hundreds of other startups would in time surface restoring competition to the information arena.
Google has 16 data centers so Congress could only make public domain of the eight in the United States. Other countries where centers exist would have to do the same to break the monopoly. The European Union has five. Since they had to levy $8 billion in fines against Google in 2017, they might be tempted to be first to make the index public domain (Ibid.).
Free elections in any country mandates the free availability of all information.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
