A Good Time to Make Use of National Unity?

02 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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America, crisis, Hurricane Harvey, Pat Buchanan, Texas, unity

Like 9/11, Hurricane Harvey brought us together.

In awe at the destruction 50 inches of rain did to East Texas and our fourth-largest city and in admiration as cable television showed countless hours of Texans humanely and heroically rescuing and aiding fellow Texans in the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

On display this week was America at her best.

Yet the destruction will not soon be repaired. Nearly a third of Harris County, home to 4.5 million people, was flooded. Beaumont and Port Arthur were swamped with 2 feet of rain and put underwater.

Estimates of the initial cost to the Treasury are north of $100 billion, with some saying the down payment alone will be closer to $200 billion. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the cost of Harvey will exceed that of the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II.

Though the country has appeared united since the storm hit, it is not likely to remain so. …

No, it won’t last. In fact, as one team of overweight, low-IQ felons after another take the field today, the Harvey effect begins to fade. After tomorrow’s Day of Prayer (which will surely gripe some in and of itself) the unity may be over.

As for tending to our own house – there’s still a fortune for some to make meddling overseas, the consequences be damned.

Still, it has been nice, this week, to see so many come together. It’s sad that it takes a disaster to do it.

WCPO_President_Trump_Houston_Harvey_1504385119423_65545642_ver1.0_640_480

WCPO.

Pat B. on the only N. Korea Option that makes Sense (and More)

11 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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America, Empire, North Korea, Pat Buchanan, War

If you haven’t read A Republic, Not an Empire, you should. Eighteen years later and Pat’s thinking is still timely:

If the past is prologue, and it has proven to be, the future holds this. A renewal of ICBM tests until a missile is perfected. Occasional atrocities creating crises between the U.S. and North Korea. America being repeatedly dragged to the brink of a war we do not want to fight.

As Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Sunday, such a war would be “catastrophic. … A conflict in North Korea … would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”

When the lesson sinks in that a war on the peninsula would be a catastrophe, and a growing arsenal of North Korean ICBMs targeted on America is intolerable, the question must arise:

Why not move U.S. forces off the peninsula, let South Korean troops replace them, sell Seoul all the modern weapons it needs, and let Seoul build its own nuclear arsenal to deter the North?

Remove any incentive for Kim to attack us, except to invite his own suicide. And tell China: Halt Kim’s ICBM program, or we will help South Korea and Japan become nuclear powers like Britain and France.

Given the rising risk of our war guarantees, from the eastern Baltic to the Korean DMZ — and the paltry rewards of the American Imperium — we are being bled from Libya to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen — a true America First foreign policy is going to become increasingly attractive.

Kim’s credible threat to one day be able to nuke a U.S. city is going to concentrate American minds wonderfully.

Here the best common sense solution is also the easiest. Sadly, common sense usually doesn’t coalesce until after an Empire falls and fades away. Ask Gibbon.

There was a recent glimmer of hope on a related matter: privatizing the war in Afghanistan (still fighting 16 years later, you know). But it was a false hope. Rather than a privateering program like the one that withstood the British Navy during the Revolution, they propose a mass extension of, a monopoly trust system for, the corporate welfare. More imperial faliure awaits.

And all the while, as we chase phantoms in places we don’t belong, the enemy within our own nations Aloha Snackbars away. Again and again.

2017-04-21T205536Z_1_LYNXMPED3K1GW_RTROPTP_4_FRANCE-SHOOTING-e1498767577855

Reuters.

Always from within, never without.

The Man Who Tried to Make America First Again

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

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America, conservative, Pat Buchanan, politics

Yesterday Politico ran an excellent expose on Pat Buchanan. Read it HERE. Do read it. I learned a few things I didn’t know about Pat even though I’ve been an admirer since at least 1992, to include supporting his 1996 Presidential bid.

Buchanan, for his part, feels both validated and vindicated. Long ago resigned to the reality that his policy views made him a pariah in the Republican Party—and stained him irrevocably with the ensuing accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia—he has lived to see the GOP come around to Buchananism and the country send its direct descendant to the White House.

“I was elated, delighted that Trump picked up on the exact issues on which I challenged Bush,” he tells me. “And then he goes and uses my slogan? It just doesn’t get any better than this.” Buchanan, who has published such books as The Death of the West, State of Emergency, Day of Reckoning and Suicide of a Superpower, admits that November’s election result “gave me hope” for the first time in recent memory.

But none of this means he’s suddenly bullish about America’s future. Buchanan says he has “always been a pessimist,” and despite Trump’s conquest, two things continue to color his dark forecast for the nation. First, Buchanan harbors deep concerns over whether Trump, with his off-topic tweeting and pointless fight-picking, has the requisite focus and discipline to execute his nationalist agenda—especially over the opposition of a media-establishment complex bent on his destruction. Second, even if Trump delivers on the loftiest of his promises, Buchanan fears it will be too little, too late. Sweeping change was needed 25 years ago, he says, before thousands of factories vanished due to the North American Free Trade Agreement, before millions of illegal immigrants entered the country, before trillions of dollars were squandered on regime change and nation-building.

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Andre Chung / Politico.

Things would have worked out better had he made it to the White House in 1993, or 1997, or even 2001. Time was running out, then, and had expired by January of 2009. As the article notes, or Pat noted, the time for radical change was then, rather than now. The good news is that we can still gain a little Buchananism every week at http://buchanan.org/blog/.

I also can’t help but note that this subject article reads almost like a lifetime achievement piece or an obituary. I am not sure if it more resembles an epitaph for Pat or one for the Old Republic. It could be both.

I shared his uncharacteristic optimism about Trump last year as well as his current, well-founded reservations. That party to which he devoted so much attention continues to flounder, even in its victories. Just yesterday, also: Ryan: Focus is on keeping government open, not healthcare. Yes, we must keep Mordor up and running at all costs (and those are high). Of they try hard enough they may yet be able to wield the Ring of Power.

Back to Pat B.: he owns and displays a rare replica of Robert E. Lee’s 1851 Colt Navy revolver. That’s pretty cool.

An Empire Not A Corporation

29 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

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America, Articles of Confederation, Constitution, corporations, District of Corruption, Empire, faith, freedom, law, Pat Buchanan, politics, republic, The People, United States

Pat Buchanan wrote a great book – A Republic Not An Empire, (2002). I wrote this piece to answer something which troubled me from time to time. There is a theory out there in internet-land the United States is a giant corporation. It’s based on the same whimsical thinking that drives lottery sales and horoscopes.

Contrary to what you may read on Facebook the United States is not a corporation. Your birth certificate is not a stock certificate. You will not get rich by cashing in on the national debt. You might go to prison or worse but no money will come of it.

I’ve seen this enough to respond. It’s really a minor issue but I thought I should address it. I see the posts on Facebook from time to time. Posts like this:

The UNITED STATES of AMERICA is a corporation.

“The UNITED STATES of AMERICA is a corporation.Go to the UNITED STATES CODE (note the capitalization, indicating the corporation, not the Republic) Title 28 3002 (15) (A) (B) (C). It is stated unequivocally that the UNITED STATES is a corporation.”

I did look at the law; not what it says or means. The mis-cited law only has to do with the government hiring attorneys for debt collection and similar purposes. See: 28 USC 3002. Boring, yes; Constitution shattering, no.

The theory also revolves around The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, 16 Stat. 419 (1871). Yet, all this law did was regulate the governance of the District of Columbia. Such is one of the very few explicit powers granted Congress by the Constitution, Art. I, Sect. 8, CLS. 17.

Never have I met anyone in person who openly espoused this theory. And, I visit with quite a few conspiracy theorists. Should you meet such a person, humor them – unless they try to involve you in a scheme to collect on your shares or something. That road leads to prison or the poorhouse.

It’s a scam. Google.

Here’s a more in-depth look at the claim: Text of the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, The Daily Render, 2009. That’s really not worth reading and not worth quoting. It does shed light on the theory though. Why conceive of such fancy?

It seems simple. We do face some major problems today with “our” government. The theorists posit the U.S., in a state of disarray, bankrupted itself out of existence. In the place of the old republic those 19th Century geniuses left us with a national corporation. You, by birth, are a stock holder citizen and entitled to some vast sum of money based on the current national debt.

While the root rests on some disturbing truth, the rest is rubbish.

Some people really believe all of this. Part of the faith comes from a real realization that something is fundamentally wrong with America today. Part is based on tv-induced naivety and ignorance. Part on greed

This does not make sense economically. In order to cash in your “stock” – if everyone did, the only solution would be to print so much more funny money the currency would be worthless. So much for your shares. This fanciful belief makes the real problem even worse.

Let me briefly explain what the U.S. really is. The nation, following the too good success of the loose Confederation, was formed into a Constitutional Republic. Allegedly the rights of the free people were protected and the powers of the new government limited. Somewhere we fell off the wagon and those ideas were reversed. Both the authorities and the people were corrupted.

Today, the Constitution is an ignored artifact stuck away in a museum. Buchanan’s book aside the U.S. has degenerated into Empire, now approaching the late stages thereof. It’s an Empire without an emperor. Specifically, the political power is uneasilly split between ochlocracy (mob rule) and oligarchy (rule by the elite). The elite keeps the mob happy with handouts and spectacles and the mob keeps re-electing the elite. Cozy if crazy.

I’ve said before this country has owners – banks, insurance companies, and other well-connected entities. But their ownership is less like a corporation and more like a plantation. The mob plays the part of the slaves, stupidly trading their sacred freedom for false security and debased entertainment.

What to do? The corporate angle is too good to be true. Don’t believe it. Instead, believe in yourself and put your faith in a Higher Power. Whatever its form, if enough of us ignore the government long enough, it will go away.