Senator Jeffords Hands Senate Leadership to the Democrats
By Joel Skousen
The Powers That Be (PTB) apparently have more than one way of getting their
way, even when an election doesn’t turn out the way they want. Last year I
reported that US powerbrokers had ordained George W. Bush to be the new
president, forcing sore-loser Al Gore to take a fall. But the establishment’s
standard modus operandi is to hand the Congress back to the Democrats
during a phony Republican administration so that the Republicans can have an
excuse for not making good on their conservative campaign promises. It didn’t
work out that way, even though the Democrats came within one senator of
controlling the Senate.
Now they have their way. After weeks of planning and consulting with major
Democratic power brokers, Vermont Senator James Jeffords declared this week that
his defection from the Republican Party is official. In all the media hype about
Jeffords holding to his "principles" Jeffords is referred to as a moderate,
which in reality means he’s a liberal. The was nothing principled about his
decision. Jeffords has always been a big-government man amongst liberal
Republicans—any number of whom could have defected if they were not so busy
trying to play the "moderate Republican" role. Jeffords didn’t have
the honesty to switch completely over to the Democratic Party, with which he has
formed a secret alliance. Instead he claims he is an independent.
Even though the Democrats don’t pick up a seat with this strategy, the
Republicans lose one and therefore cannot control the Senate leadership.
Jeffords intends to help install Democrat Tom Daschle as majority leader, which
will be very bad for the conservative agenda, especially with regards to
preserving the Second Amendment. All committee chairmanships will now switch to
the Democratic Party. Another very big effect will be that the Democrats will
guarantee that none of Bush’s conservative judgeships (what few there are)
will receive favorable treatment in confirmation hearings.
There was a lot of back room wheeling and dealing in the past two weeks
with the Republicans trying desperately to retain control. You may ask, if there
is a conspiracy to give at least partial control of Congress to the Democrats,
why is the Republican hierarchy (which is part of the conspiracy) trying to
resist? Keep in mind, that just as Al Gore was a certified member of the
establishment, he was never told that he was being set up to lose. In other
words, persons quite high in the organizational matrix of power may never be
privy to the long-term plan. They are often simply predictable people who only
know there is a power structure they work for and dare not challenge. Thus, it
is my analysis that both Republican and Democratic leaders have their secret
(but separate) ties to the power structure and both think they are the
"real anointed ones." For their own part, Republican leaders dutifully
tried to cut a deal with conservative Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia to switch
to the Republicans but he declined. A couple of other feelers were put out to
others as well, but there were no takers. The PTB could have convinced any one
of several people to switch to the Republican Party, had they wished to keep the
status quo in Congress, but they didn’t. Now that President Bush will have to
deal with a Democrat-controlled Senate, watch for him to say all the right words
about working with the Democratic Senate leadership in a bipartisan manner. More
than ever, it means Bush now has the excuse to explain away every failure of his
conservative agenda and every endorsement of dangerous compromises, as the
following example will demonstrate. His "bipartisan mandate" suddenly
has gone from a voluntary sellout to mandatory collusion.
BUSH’S EDUCATION PACKAGE STRIPPED OF ANY CONSERVATIVE PRETEXT
Just as establishment power brokers (who have control of the Bush
administration) count on the courts to overturn any pro-life legislation that
gets through Congress, they rely on a coalition of Democrats and a liberal
Republicans in Congress to gut the most conservative reforms, such as those that
were originally present in Bush’s education package. Naturally, the Democrats
will take the blame and the Republicans will tell their supporters they tried,
thus preserving their conservative bona fides.
What we have left in the current education package is an old fashioned
Democratic bill increasing both spending (22%) and federal control over public
schools, violating the original intent of the Constitution reserving
non-delegated federal powers to the states. Vouchers and school choice were both
stripped from the bill while in committee and were soundly rejected when
presented as amendments on the floor. The worst parts of the bill are still
intact: federal funding of education that is tied to a national testing
program (based upon a politically correct de facto national curriculum,
forced upon students as schools pressure their own teachers to "teach to
the test" in order to salvage their federal funds); and the endowment of
new control powers to the education tzar giving him virtual veto powers over any
school’s funding when that school doesn’t meet national standards.
Conservatives bought into this Bush boondoggle because of the promise of
preserving "local control." However, anyone who has worked with a
local school board knows that local control is a dangerous illusion.
Sitting at every school board meeting is legal counsel telling the board what
the law says they can and cannot do. Almost all the substantive issues are
controlled either by a liberal state school bureaucracy policy or a federal
rule. But no matter—conservatives are so enamored with thinking they can
"take back" their schools, they fail to realize public schools never
belonged to them in the first place. Public schools are government schools
and will always be controlled by the PTB as long as conservatives tolerate the
monopoly on tax funding public schools have. Take away that funding and replace
it with 100% user fee funding and educational freedom will instantly return.
ASHCROFT GIVES VERBAL SUPPORT TO SECOND AMENDMENT
The official legal policy of the Clinton administration was that there
existed no individual right to bear arms according to the Second Amendment—only
a "collective right" related to government sponsored militia service.
In a dramatic announcement timed to play well at the NRA convention this week in
Kansas City, Attorney General John Ashcroft has reversed the distorted Janet
Reno policy and has reaffirmed the traditional opinion that all law-abiding
citizens have the individual right to keep and bear firearms.
I’m cautiously optimistic about this change. Keep in mind that this may still
be only verbal support that may not equate to a change in the hostility
of government prosecutors towards private possession and use of arms. Ashcroft,
playing up his commitments to "enforce existing gun laws" with vigor,
is beefing up funding of the ATF to demonstrate his commitment to fight
"gun violence." But somehow firearms dealers and law-abiding
individuals still feel most of the heat from the ATF.
In other news, the FBI—also under Ashcroft’s control—spent $8 million
dollars this fiscal year buying dossiers on all citizens from Choicepoint (a
former division of the giant credit report firm Equifax). The FBI has no legal
mandate to track normal citizens who are not guilty of criminal activities. But
that doesn’t seem to matter anymore, even in the Ashcroft Justice Department.
Why the dichotomy on the part of Ashcroft? Simple: Ashcroft has become a team
player. All true conservatives who are appointed within a Republican
administration (for image purposes) come on board with an ironclad commitment to
the dangerous principle that Republicans must "do whatever it takes"
to stay in power—even if that means sacrificing one’s own personal
principles to "support the president." This kind of yes-manship is
what leads otherwise good people to violate their conscience in the name of
loyalty to laws and leaders. Without the restraints of principles, unconditional
loyalties within political parties, police agencies and the military will take
us down the same road to tyranny that allowed Hitler to subvert the German
nation in the 30’s and 40’s. It wasn’t Hitler alone that subverted Germany’s
will to resist evil, but the excessive loyalty to the "rule of law"
above all else in German society that undermined most individuals’ sense of
right and wrong—especially within the enforcement sector.
ISRAEL’S UNILATERAL CEASEFIRE A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT
Even though Arafat and his terrorist cohorts have shown no sign of accepting
the unilateral ceasefire Israel imposed on itself this week, Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon continues to enforce it despite his sworn duty to protect his
citizens. Car bombs, mortar attacks, commuter attacks, and Arab sniping at
selected Jewish neighborhoods continues.
While the Bush administration continues to claim it is not taking sides in its
"balanced," softball approach to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian war,
all indications point to the same behind-the-scenes pressure towards an Israeli
security sellout that the Clinton-CFR team was pushing. For example, the
Mitchell team was presumably sent to Israel only to investigate the causes of
the recent Intifada, but instead they used their platform to outline a plan for
resolution of the conflict—a de facto Bush administration "peace
process" initiative. The Mitchell report recommended an immediate
cease-fire, a return to Israeli funding of the Palestinian Authority (their
current enemies), and a freeze on all Jewish settlements in the occupied
territories. Even though the Sharon government promised it would never agree to
negotiations while under fire, nor to a settlement freeze, this is exactly what
is being done—ostensibly in response to the world’s incessant criticism of
an "excessive" Israeli military response to the ongoing Palestinian
attacks.
If anything, the military response has never been enough, and that is why the
problem persists. This week the Palestinians admitted they have been manufacturing
indigenous mortar shells within the Palestinian Authority. Even though this
is a violation of the Oslo Accords, the left refuses to report on this, let
alone allow Israel to invade this terrorist "safe haven" and clean out
the arms caches. It’s no wonder that mortar has become the weapon of choice.
Worse, the Israeli government knows where many of these mortars are manufactured
and so far has refused to take them out.
The Israeli right seems to suffer under the same illusions as American
conservatives. Whenever a phony right-wing government comes to power,
conservatives become so consumed with hope that they invent all kinds of excuses
to defend the existing administration, despite a continual litany of
compromises.
WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF (excerpt) April 27, 2001 Copyright Joel Skousen. Quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief. Website: http://www.joelskousen.com
(Ed. Note: We thank Joel Skousen for allowing his insights to be reprinted in part at Web Today. For access to his complete weekly columns, available by subscription, we refer you to his homepage http://www.joelskousen.com)
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