Apr 5, 2016 | Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
Voters might be confused by the difference between a caucus and a primary, each state offering one or the other to find the right contenders for the general election in November. So let us treat both.
In a primary the overriding principle is that everyone should vote regardless of how informed or ill-informed one is. Television is the primary—often the only—source of information for older voters and social media for younger voters. Neither source by itself is enough. Candidates can submit a word statement, often a paragraph, promoting themselves on the ballot, but rarely is enough given for voters to make an intelligent choice. This is the only free coverage allowed a candidate. Candidates seeking the office of judge rarely leave any information on the ballot from which to evaluate them. Many voters just guess.
In a primary voting choice may be but a whim. There exists nothing to protect us from the non informed. One giving only 10 seconds of forethought may erase the vote of someone spending six months studying an issue or candidate. The whole system is an ignorance paradise. Voting may take twenty minutes.
In a primary the candidate “buys” the office. Successful candidates know that they must hire a campaign manager who develops campaign strategies, never gives specifics (if the campaign slogan cannot fit on postage stamp it is too complex) and spends tens of thousands of dollars on media ads mostly defining the opponent as evil. Of course, those who give large contributions expect access to the winner after the election so he/she mostly represents them. The poor, outside being used on occasion for street demonstrations or envy politics, have no real representation in either major political party.
In primary elections it is not a matter of how well informed, experienced or qualified one is. What is absolutely critical to winning is whom you hire to promote you. Money, not knowledge, is second. The rest of the campaign you become a professional beggar asking everyone, always and endlessly to contribute to your campaign. Running for office is not the model of Abraham Lincoln riding the caboose of a train from town to town giving speeches to those gathered at each stop. Today candidates give their messages to special interest groups who can deliver votes and money. Far more time is spent asking for money than explaining views. Regular voters only know of a candidate by way of television, print or social media.
The following is representative. In the greater Bakersfield, CA area campaign manager Mark Abernathy is the “king maker.” Those in the know realize this. In a conversation with him he named virtually everyone holding public office in the area as his and boasted of his winning at least 90% of all elections the previous ten years. He often ran several candidates for different offices simultaneously. Those he brought to power were expected to endorse his future candidates. Rarely did anyone beat the “Abernathy machine.” He is certainly a pleasant fellow, dedicated to his philosophy, and skilled and ruthless in the art of getting someone elected but at a hefty price. In a phone conversation with me he said, “I perceive that you do not have money.” I agreed and he selected his own candidate to run. Thus in 2010, I failed to secure a seat in the California State Legislature before a single vote was cast.
In a caucus there is protection from the “drive-by” voter. Some precincts in the Utah caucus, as our example state, allow the presidential vote to take place first, thus voters wishing to participate only in selecting the president can choose to leave. In others they are not allowed to vote for president until the end of the evening thus they also influence county and state offices.
Beyond this everything changes for all other offices in a caucus state. Those more interested remain and nominate from their neighbors those they view as better qualified to differentiate between the candidates. They want their most qualified to choose for them. They accept that all voters are not equal. Each of 2235 precincts in Utah choose from one to five delegates to differentiate between state candidates and a larger number to do the same for all county candidates. Thousands of State delegates meet in the Salt Lake City area and county delegates somewhere in their county the following month. In that 30-day time period candidates seek to impress these selected delegates with their credentials for the office wanted and delegates can meet with and ask probing questions. This is a far better vetting process than voting based on sound-bytes and hunches.
With respect to issues, caucus delegate voters are far more informed than the general public because the public selected them for this quality. There exists no public acclaim for delegates. They have to take off work with no compensation for meals and/or travel for a weekend. They do it for love of country.
In a caucus no one “buys” the office as in primaries. Since candidates do not have to appeal to the less informed, only to delegates, much more interested in details over generalities, they normally do not have the vast expenditures of money needed in a primary election. A poor candidate can compete for any state or federal office, which is far more democratic than in a state utilizing the primary system for selecting candidates. The representatives of the people choose their leaders rather than “king makers” as in primaries. Candidates can put priority on sharing what they might wish to do rather than on fund raising and appealing to the moneyed class ignoring the poor.
Mar 28, 2016 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
No one is informed enough to do it all. “So tell us who will tell you what to do.” Ted Cruz did just this March 17, submitting a list of 23 persons as his national security team to advise him giving some preference to Elliott Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State, Andrew McCarthy, former U. S. Attorney, and Jim Talent, former Missouri Senator. Problem is, Elliott Abrams is a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a high profile position in the organization, and is as “establishment” as it is possible to be. Insider Elliott Abrams was an assistant secretary of state to Ronald Reagan and a deputy national security advisor to George W. Bush. So much for Cruz not using the “Washington Cartel.”
Cruz went on to announce the rest of his team, 20 others to advise him, two of which, Stewart R. Baker and Michael Pillsbury, are also Council on Foreign Relations members. Baker served as assistant secretary for policy at Department of Human Services and as general counsel of NSA. Pillsbury was a Reagan campaign advisor in 1980 and served as assistant undersecretary of defense for policy planning. He is also author of three books on China.
Cruz said of the 23 proposed advisors, three of which are CFR members (13%), “I am honored and humbled to have a range of respected voices willing to offer their best advice. These are trusted friends who will form a core of our broader national security team.”
All this after Donald Trump admitted two weeks previously that he too had selected the most establishment group in America to advise him. It appears now that all three of those who would advise him, Richard Haass, John M. “Jack” Keane and Jack Howard Jacobs are CFR members. Insider Haass has been CFR president the past 13 years. Trump did release five additional names on March 21, of which only Carter Page is CFR.
Thus far Trump’s CFR advisors are four of eight or 50%, with the organization president involved personally. So far the establishment group least influences Cruz at 13%, all specializing in foreign policy. Hillary Clinton’s long standing affection for the organization, and her husband and daughter’s membership in, plus her previously stated admission of having Haass as a key adviser as Secretary of State, show us that the “establishment” would retain strong influence in her administration. None of these candidates are non-establishment.
Notable political scientist Lester Milbraith observed in his work Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, page 247, that “the influence of the CFR throughout government is so pervasive that it is difficult to distinguish the CFR from government programs.” Prominent political scientist Thomas R. Dye in his textbook Who’s Running America? The Bush Restoration, page 188, wrote “The history of CFR policy accomplishments is dazzling” then traced in detail their dominating role in foreign policy accomplishment from the 1920’s through the George Bush Administration from their own boasts of success in Council on Foreign Relations Annual Reports.
I have told my students for over 30 years that the next UN Ambassador, Secretary of State, Ambassadors to both Russia and China will be from this organization, as will a third of his/her cabinet. Not might be!! Will be!! Also no one gets to be president without CFR approval. No exception!! We get to choose which one of their approved party finalists we want, but the first election is theirs. I make the same prediction today for whoever replaces Barack Obama as president.
Such has been the case since its Wall Street creators J.P. Morgan, Colonel Edward M. House, Elihu Root and other internationalists in 1921, founded the Council on Foreign Relations. It is the special interest group of Wall Street, supported by grants from the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford foundations. Its journal, Foreign Affairs, is “considered throughout the world to be the unofficial mouthpiece of U.S. foreign policy. Few important initiatives in U.S. policy have not been first outlined in articles in this publication,” says political scientist Thomas R. Dye.
So why support a Cruz presidency if he too has establishment influence? He is the only presidential candidate in this election year cycle that has publicly condemned the CFR. He recently called it “a pit of vipers” and a “pernicious nest of snakes.”
It might be useful to compare his CFR influence (13%) against that of 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney whose 20 person pre-election advisory list, more than half of whom, eleven to be exact, were members of the elite, semi-secret Council on Foreign Relations—the most establishment organization in American history. For decades the CFR has been the special interest group, “think tank” if you prefer, that provides a majority of the “experts” in every administration, Democrat or Republican. It is our shadow government.
Perhaps we have reached the time when the cancer cannot be fully removed from the body and Cruz is attempting to minimize the “pit of vipers” as much as is possible. Certainly the CFR is most passionate about foreign policy than any other policy area. Cruz may see flexibility in the other areas if he gives on this one. Two factors remain in his favor. The dislike between he and the establishment is real and he remains the most likely to problem solve with the Constitution.
Mar 19, 2016 | Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
Beware of politicians who wish to do “good” with someone else’s money. They are abundant in both major political parties and will destroy liberty. Here is why?
In listening to the 2016 debates of either party you would not know that we are over 19 trillion dollars in debt and that to pay it off each individual would have to pay $59,145, each taxpayer $159,759 (US Debt Clock.org) since this would include children and the half of adults who do not pay taxes. Democrats want everything free or subsidized—healthcare, housing, food, and now, under either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, free college. They can’t give away enough. Republicans want a military budget big enough to sustain 900 bases throughout the world.
There exists little, or no talk, of cutting anything. Where will all the money come from? Democrats want to rob the wealthy, who create our jobs, and Republicans say they will create such a robust economy that there is no need to worry. In either case, both major political parties will ignore the problem away.
This is precisely where we were two presidential elections ago. Barack Obama answered the problem by doubling those on food stamps and nearly doubling your share of the national debt, thus charging our children another $9 trillion.
But aside from our creating conditions favoring an impending fiscal collapse from the “give-a-ways” of the past, a bigger related problem is the creation of a generation that expects the government to continually give more to them for free with someone else’s money. When votes are attached to the public giving we will never elect those that will cut the gift giving.
Under socialism vote power favors those who want things for free, as they, in time, become the majority. This process is accelerated, and corrupted, when politicians link government gift giving with their being elected. Gift giving does not always initially include money. This was exemplified when Obama, seeing a close election coming in 2012, and wishing to capture the Hispanic vote more fully, decided to not enforce established immigration law to befriend this eventual vote group. Remember, illegals have many friends and family in the U.S. who are voters and in time will become such themselves. His victory has been attributed, in large part, to this group’s massive turnout for him. Gift giving, however, always includes money eventually as this group did demand services as in education, medical, and etc.
As the poor, as a class, always tend to favor government intervention and thus financial favors from government to their benefit, and since all government money comes from the middle and upper classes through ever increasing taxes, (presently 47% of the adult population pay no federal income tax and a good share of these make up the non-productive class) they eventually destroy the productive base of society as government takes over more of the economy by confiscation or regulation. The overriding principle is, the more socialism the higher the taxes and burden on the producing class.
Finally someone, less burdened by political correctness than I, is blunt enough to say it as it is—so blunt that even the low information voter cannot miss it. Those who feed off the labor of others need to know what they are doing to the country by pushing for the freebies. An unknown author nailed the problem on the head when he wrote.
“The folks who are getting the free stuff don’t like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff. And the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop “And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting. Now, the people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.
“So, the people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff and giving them the free stuff in the first place.
“We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.
“Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them. The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 238 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States, as we know it.”
Again, beware of politicians who wish to do “good” with someone else’s money. They are abundant in both major political parties and will destroy liberty.
Mar 14, 2016 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
I am so sorry to have to report that Trump is with the establishment after all. What I share below may be evidence of one of the biggest con games on the American people in decades. The anger against the establishment is real and voting in virtually every state whether for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders clearly demonstrates that a revolution from the establishment is under way. But what if one of the biggest leaders of this revolution against is, in fact, an establishment candidate? Remember, it is the establishment’s press that says Trump is non-establishment and has given him many times more press than anyone else.
Trump skirted the question as to who would be his key advisers as president once before by saying that he would select the best minds. In the March 3rd Presidential Debate he was asked by Chris Wallace, “Who are the best people?” “Can you reveal two or three names for national security?” Trump answered, “I think Richard Haas is excellent.” “I have a lot of respect for him.” “General Kane is excellent.” “I like Colonel Jacobs very much.” “I see him.” “I know him.”
Richard Haass is in his thirteenth year as president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also a member of the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission, two other groups long accused of working for globalization (code for world government). No one in America is more establishment than he and his organization, and he is the first name on the lips of Donald Trump as an advisor. The CFR has been the most powerful special interest group in the media and politics for the last 90 years. It is the establishment!
Ironically Richard Haass is the same advisor to Hillary Clinton who, while Secretary of State speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, then dedicating a branch CFR sub-center in Washington D. C., said. “Thank you very much Richard. I am delighted to be at these new headquarters. I have been often to the mother ship in New York City but it is good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council so this will mean that I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”
Notice that she was on a first name basis with Richard Haass and admits having been guided over the years by him. More recently she has addressed the CFR in New York City on January 19, 2015, and November 19, 2015. Hillary is also a Bilderberger as is Bill Clinton but he adds the Trilateral Commission to his list of globalist organizations. Daughter Chelsea is also CFR.
General Kane, presumably retired Major General Robert C. Kane, Trump’s second named advisor, has considerable Iraqi War experience and as such should be a strong source of advice. He is not presently listed on the CFR membership list but could be among many, including Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, whom have a warm relationship with the “mother ship” of the establishment without published membership.
Colonel Jacobs, presumably Colonel Jack Howard Jacobs, now retired, recipient of the Medal of Honor for bravery in the Vietnam War, was Trump’s third identified source of advisement. He currently serves as a military analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Jack H. Jacobs, is a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member.
For those unacquainted with the nearly 100 year old Council on Foreign Relations centered in New York City, it has provided virtually all our Secretaries of State, UN ambassadors, ambassadors to Russia and China and at least a third of all cabinet members of all presidents, whether Democrat or Republican, since its inception in 1921. The establishment press is largely their press. The CFR has never denied this influence and, in fact, boast of it.
Longtime CFR chairman, and now chairman emeritus of the organization, David Rockefeller, in his 2002 book, Memoirs, admitted. “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum… attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a of a secret cabal working against the best interest of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
As indicated in other recent columns the establishment Republican choices of Chris Christie, then Jeb Bush, then Marco Rubio (all rejected by the voters) were whom they much preferred. To them Trump is a “bull in a china closet,” but still a deal maker, a compromiser that will listen to them. The Trump list of three to advise him, two of whom are CFR members, one the CFR Chairman, reveals that if he is elected they remain in charge and the American voter, totally betrayed, will believe that the establishment has been eliminated from control over the process. Ted Cruz who calls them a “pit of vipers” is totally unacceptable to them and thus is the only Republican choice left that removes them from power.
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 has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Mar 7, 2016 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
We have previously demonstrated that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, if elected, will not be the first to introduce socialism into mainstream America. Previous presidents have done so already and it has been in our diet for most of a hundred years. Both he and opponent Hillary Clinton would make militant socialist Eugene V. Debbs, founder of the Socialist Party of America (1901) and five-time presidential candidate, look like todays conservative republican. With a vote for either Sanders or Clinton many Americans are almost running to socialism. Why?
The Athenian democracy idea profoundly changed the world that was ruled by monarchies; a king stayed in power and passed it on to posterity until removed. The “great idea” gave ever-larger portions of vote power to the masses but it had no brakes. When is society democratized enough? Should every man have an equal vote? Are they equally informed, equally intelligent, equally gifted? No, but as it expands the next level wants everything as well. Once tasted it enlarges until all have an equal participation despite their differences or ignorance.
Nearly 300 years after democracy was first introduced in Athens Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), wrote of democracy’s inherent weakness, that being, when everyman is allowed to rise to the level his talent and industry permit him, some will become rich and others poor. The rich will always despise the poor, and the poor will always envy the rich. When the poor obtain the same vote power as the rich under a democracy, as they always will, given their greater numbers, they will use that power to take from the rich. It may take some time for this to happen because democracy does initially encourage the profit motive, which stimulates everyone’s desire to get rich. This is good for a society because to do so they invest in society, which creates additional business, that employ more people, that develop an ever-larger middle class. The middle class, Aristotle believed, should be the ruling class as it is closer to the poor and better understands their legitimate needs and, at the same time, it has enough of the world’s goods not to covet, thus destroy, the rich class. Still, in time the less productive will grow, especially when they can attach their vote to politicians who, to get elected, promise them ever more.
Again, history has demonstrated that democracy has no brakes and, once entered into, gradually transitions into socialism, which also has no brakes. At what moment is society democratized enough, or socialized enough? As things become freer for the non-productive part of society, and they believe themselves entitled thereto, more money must be confiscated from the productive middle and upper classes and it is the rich class and entrepreneurial middle class that risk their money to create the jobs. When has a poor man ever created a job for anyone? In time these classes cannot provide the money that is demanded of them to feed and otherwise subsidize the less productive class. They are disincentivized, and then destroyed, by ever-higher taxes. All too soon the definition of rich is ever lowered until it destroys the rich class and feeds on the middle class through excessive taxation—even until all are poor. Despite the promises, the only thing that socialism gives is slavery and shared poverty.
My point again, democracies have no brakes. They do not know how to stop, and failing to stop, always degenerate into socialism. They do not have a limit. Aristotle recognized this when he wrote, ““Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.” When that understanding is lost, the force to democratize more increases as voting becomes more universal which is what democracies encourage. Shouldn’t everyone have an equal vote? Those in Athens came to believe so. Said Aristotle, “Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal” (Ibid.).
As voting becomes more universal, vote power favors the poor as they, in time, become the majority. This process is accelerated, and corrupted, when politicians link government gift giving with their election. As the poor, as a class, always tend to favor government intervention and thus financial favors from government to their benefit, and since all government money comes from the middle and upper classes through ever increasing taxes, (presently 47% of the adult population pay no federal income tax and a good share of these make up the non-productive class) they eventually destroy the productive base of society as government takes over more of the economy by confiscation or regulation. The overriding principle is, the more socialism the higher the taxes and burden on the producing class.
As government controls ever more portions of the economy, democracy transcends to socialism. Again, at what point does democracy become socialism no one can say. Obamacare alone transferred one seventh of the economy to the federal government. Sometime in this transition democracy ceases to be democracy although the term continues to be used, socialism more accurately describes the real system, hence Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s warning in 2009 to Fidel Castro, one a socialist the other a communist, “We have to be careful lest we become right of Obama.” It needs noting that both Clinton and Sanders are left of Barack Obama.
So why is half of America running to socialism? They first desire what is from the sweat of others. Then once given come to believe it owed them. Getting something for nothing has always been a powerful motive.
Mar 7, 2016 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The near panic associated with the possibility of Bernie Sanders, after winning the New Hampshire primary and doing so well in South Carolina and Nevada, overtaking Hillary Clinton and becoming the Democratic nominee for president, is treated by the establishment press as a gigantic move into socialism, but it shouldn’t. Seven years ago, Feb. 16, 2009, Newsweek’s cover story proclaimed “We Are All Socialists Now.”
Editors Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas wrote, “Whether we want to admit it or not, the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state,” toward socialism, they observed, “even before Barack Obama’s largest fiscal bill in our history.” The cover of the magazine featured a red hand (republican) shaking a blue hand (democrat) in favor of socialism. Both parties accepted the “growing role of government in the economy,” they observed. “The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.” Moreover, “it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.”
If the “growing role in government” was how Newsweek measured socialism, the Obama years thereafter were even more socialist than they could have expected. In this time period the federal government obtained a controlling interest in General Motors, absorbed 1/7th of the economy under Obamacare, and expanded the power of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to oversee most homes in America. This land expansion was in addition to their ownership of a third of all the landmass in the United States known as federal land. This does not count the controlling influence over all businesses by the eighty thousand new pages of bureaucratic rules and regulations descending upon businesses annually that effectively manage most everything else.
Clearly we were replacing our Constitutional Republic, which emphasizes limited government and individual freedom, with socialism long before Sanders became a household name. His appeal to tax the rich even more to pay for free college is but a deeper step into the socialism that already exists in the United States. Newsweek observed correctly then that this was just the beginning. In light of their honesty it might behoove us to understand where socialist might be taking us by noting where socialism has taken others.
In 1975 the book, “From Under the Ruble,” authored by a variety of Soviet dissidents, all but one of whom were still living in the USSR, was published in the West. The participants were fully aware that their commentary on the socialist system smuggled to the “Free World” would undoubtedly unleash the wrath of the Soviet Bear and result in imprisonment, torture, and possibly death for them. Nonetheless, they felt that the West could avoid the loss of freedom they experienced if only it were warned.
Igor Shafarevich, a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and former Laureate of the Lenin Prize, attempted, in his chapter “Socialism in Our Past and Future,” to tell the West what socialism eventually worked out to be in practice. This is, of course, after any significant means of resistance had been removed by gun control. That is the first thing that goes in any tyrannical government. He found the economic definition of socialism, the meaningful governmental control of the means of production and distribution, shamefully incomplete.
Socialism resulted in complete control of private property. Property was defined as anything that existed including one’s own family and person. This included subordination of the individual to the power of the bureaucracy and state control of everyday life. Sexual promiscuity is first tolerated, even encourage, but ultimately procreation on a selective and supervised basis follows.
For the USSR socialism meant the destruction of the family as the basic institution of society and the rearing of children away from their parents in state schools or daycare centers. Marriage, as an acceptable practice, was also minimized.
One of the most defining characteristics of all profoundly socialist countries was the government’s extreme hatred of religion and their commitment to its ultimate destruction. It competes with the state as God.
The destruction of the hierarchy into which society has arranged itself was yet another characteristic under which Shafarevich lived. The idea of equality to a socialist had a special character. It meant the negation of the existence of any genuine differences between individuals: “equality” was turned into “equivalence.” Socialism aims to establish equality by the opposite means of destroying all the higher aspects of the personality.
Newsweek’s invitation to “think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world” should dissuade us from going there at all. Why would anyone want to embrace a system that ended all semblances of freedom and which, for them, self destructed in 1989? At least in the USSR, at that time, they would have been happy to trade their socialism for our freedom. Are we smart enough to listen to them and avoid all socialists in either party, of which there are several, this election?
