Congress Has Their Hands in the Cookie Jar Again and Again

This is an update to a previous blog I wrote for a couple of other sites.

The original blog:

Congress Has Their Hands in the Cookie Jar Again

Congress has decided to redistribute some of the Department of Defense Operating Budget (ammunition, training, supplies, etc.) to pork.  My son is a member of the Ohio National Guard.  Last year his unit was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq.  Six months before the deployment their orders were changed to Kuwait.  Why?  Lack of training to be combat ready.  Lack of training is always about money.

I'm hardly complaining that my son did not get to go to Iraq.  But, some other mothers' sons and daughters had to do an extra tour in Iraq because my son's unit could not be deployed to a combat zone.

Click to see The Washington Times article that names names.  It was truly a bipartisan effort, the kind of effort we can't get on any other issue.

 Update:

Not satisfied with having denied funds in the Defense Spending Bill for activities needed to keep our military trained and supplied, Congress took another shot at our military fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Our representative in the House, Lee Terry, let us know about it.

In a letter from Lee Terry that we received today, he let us know this:

I did vote against the emergency war funding bill, H.R. 2346.  This bill provides emergency supplemental funding for the military, but what you may not know is it also gives billions of dollars to our enemies.  After closely analyzing this bill, the truth is money was cut for our troop to support the IMF by adding $108 billion for foreign economic bailouts.  In fact, the extreme Islamic regime in Iran will get $1.8 billion from IMF funds under this legislation.  It is atrocious when some in Washington use our military as political pawns.  An emergency war funding bill should be about war funding, not about irresponsible government spending.

 The bill contains other spending besides just emergency war funding.  And it is already signed, sealed and delivered into law.  It's just the first I have heard about it.  Not that it was a secret.  There is just too much legislation to track everything.  Even if I worked full time as a Congressional watchdog I couldn't keep up with those people.

Divided We Stand

Tonight I asked my husband if he remembered the last time this country was this divided.  He just nodded and said, "Viet Nam, Kent State, Watts riots, Feminism."  Some of you reading this won't remember how divided this country was over Viet Nam, race and feminism.  The late sixties and early seventies were chaos politically and philosophically.

Recently, on Facebook my daughter raised the question of Viet Nam and that whole era.  A man that is older than I am refuted my classification of this time as chaotic.  He remembered a good economy and that the government was in control.  I was younger and I remember it differently.  I wasn't in the job market; I was in high school and college.  The economy was not a concern for me yet and politics was something for politicians.  But I remember being horrified at the race riots in Watts, the shooting at Kent State, bra burning protests that embarrassed me.  I had already seen the horrors of the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RLK in a few short years.

What does this have to do with now?  A lot.  I see a lot of political chaos.  The Democratic Party is divided; the Republican Party is divided.  We are facing deficits that will devastate our country in the long run. We are facing political divisiveness that replicates the 60's and 70's.  Two unpopular wars, Johnson's "great society" (Obama's progressive agenda), and taxes.

I have been there and done that.  We can recover.  I refuse to be negative.  But, it is going to take a lot of work...by Conservatives that believe in limited government, no nanny state and our constitution.

The Trilateral Commission

You have probably seen the History Channel's documentaries about the Freemasons and how they influenced our founding fathers and many of our leaders in high elected offices throughout our country's history.  But have you ever heard of the Trilateral Commission, a private organization to which many of our recent leaders have belonged?  I use the past tense because the commission requires those serving in government resign when they are elected or appointed to a government office.

The commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski, two globalists who have used the Trilateral Commission to influence US foreign and monetary policy in both Republican and Democratic administrations since Jimmy Carter's.  It's original membership consisted of influential citizens of Japan, Europe and North America., about 350 in all, who considered key problems affecting the democratic industrialized countries.  In recent years the membership has been expanded to include China (not so democratic), India and Eastern Europe.  At their annual meetings members present position papers on various issues which are debated and published after the meeting as consensus positions.  Members return to their respective countries to try to implement policies consistent with those positions. [1]

Originally the stated purpose of the Trilateral Commission was to create a new international economic order, a financial interdependence that has grown into globalization and insured that the recent financial crisis has been felt around the globe. [2]  But, there seems to be an underlying agenda to the global financial interdependence.

An excerpt from a letter from President Jimmy Carter (a former member) to the Trilateral Commission to be read to members at their 1977 meeting in Tokyo:

As I emphasized in my campaign,a strong partnership among us is of the greatest importance.  We share economic, political and security concerns that make it logical we should seek ever-increasing cooperation and understanding.  And this cooperation is essential not only gor our three regions, but in the global search for a more just and equitable world order (emphasis added).  I hope to see you on the occassion of your next meeting in Washington, and I look forward to receiving reports on your work in Tokyo.[3]

An excerpt from a letter from Zbigniew Brzezunski, Jimmy Carter's Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, to be read to the members at the same 1977 meeting in Tokyo:

I remain convinced that, on the larger architectural issues of today, collaboration among our regions is of the utmost necessity.  This collaboration must be dedicated to the fashinong of a more just and equitable world order (emphasis added).  This will require a prolonged process, but I think we can look forward with confidence and take some pride in the contribution the commission is making.[4]

Note the identical phrases in each letter.  Coincidence?  Or does the Trilateral Commission have an underlying utopian-like (OK socialist) agenda for the world?

Citizens of any free country have the right to belong to any organization they choose.  When those organizations influence our national policies, policies that may be inimical to a capitalistic United States, then I think we should know a lot more about the organization.  A Google search for the Trilateral Commission certainly yields tens of thousands of web sites (some of which are rather extreme), but we don't hear much in the media about this thirty-five year old organization that has influenced our national policies almost as long.  And if you have any doubt the Commission has influenced our policies, here is a partial list of members and former members who have held elected or appointed positions in our federal government.

Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Tim Geitner, Dick Cheney, Susan Rice, Paul Volker, Al Gore, Richard Holbrooke, Walter Mondale, Robert McNamara, Alexander Haig, Alan Greenspan, Madeleine Albright, George Schultz, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher

Barack Obama has never been a member, but he obviously has close ties with a number of Commission members.

Many of these members have been involved in US monetary or foreign policy.  There is no doubt the Trilateral Commission goals for the world have influenced our policies.  The press should be more active in reporting its influence on US politicians.

[1]  http://www.trilateral.org/about.htm

[2]  http://www.trilateral.org/about.htm

[3]  http://www.augustreview.com/news_commentary/trilateral_commission/obama:_trilateral_commission_endgame_20090127110/

[4]  http://www.augustreview.com/news_commentary/trilateral_commission/obama:_trilateral_commission_endgame_20090127110/

My Son

My son is being married this week.  I'll be away until next week.

Conceptual Language

When was the last time you asked your lawyer to write a contract, following basic guidelines, and then signed it without going over the details?  I'm willing to bet....never.  But, that is what Congress does every single time they vote on a bill.

Bills going through Congress are so complicated now that I suppse it is naive of me to expect members of Congress to have read what they vote on.  They all have a staff, but I guess it is asking too much to expect their staff's have read the bill and explained the nuances of the legislation when it shows up in legislative language.  In fact, lobbyists actually write the bills, using "conceptual language" approved by congressional committees.  If any of you actually tried to read HR 3200 (the House bill most often referred to by the media) you know just how arcane the language and how long it took for the actual provisions of the bill to be explained.  And, are we trusting lobbyists to write a bill that actually does what Congress intended?  I wonder how much midnight oil is burned to come up with language that MIGHT be interpreted by the courts in favor of the industry suppling the brain power to actually write the legislation.

I have served on the national board of a very large non profit.  I have an inkling how this works.  In order to avoid large expenditures of cash on extra meetings, we would sometimes have the organization's staff or our attorney write a motion based on "conceptual language".  But, the final motion was always available to be read BEFORE a vote was taken.  And, when the motion was not in keeping with the board's intent, it was sent back for a rewrite.  Have you ever seen Congress send a motion back to be rewritten? 

Kudos to John Conyers who told us there was no reason to read the bill unless he had two lawyers and two days to have the bill explained to him.  Personally, I would take the two days with two lawyers, but obviously Congress does not think this is a necessity.

Do You Read the Fine Print

When you sign a document, do you read the fine print?  I must admit I have been guilty of signing a credit card agreement, even real estate transactions (at a house closing do you stop and read the fine print?), and car insurance without reading the fine print.

I have never had to contract on my own for health insurance.  I have had to either accept what was provided or find a way to live with it.  But, if I were in the marketplace, with my own dollars, looking for health insurance I would want to know what I was buying.  This is my life, and the life of my family that the federal government wants me to place in their hands and they don't want to tell me the details or how it would affect my family before they put it into law.

Congress, apparently, does not want us to know what we are buying in health care.  The process for legislation is complicated.  And, what our representatives agree to, in committee, is rewritten by lobbyists into "so called" legal language (arcane and not understandable to anyone with no access to the Congressional Record or the Library of Congress and days to figure it out).  Who knows what happens between markup and the real bill?

My daughter actually read all of HR3200.  She is an attorney with access to more information than I have.  Even she would be challenged to read some arcane language bill with reference to amending a zillion other bills and still know what was going on.

I think Americans want to know, specifically, how any health care reform will affect them. They would not buy a policy that refused to reveal the details and they are not buying a "trust me" policy from the Democrats.