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Opinion
Reece Terry, publisher
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Friday, July 13, 2012
Corinth, Miss.
July 27: D-Day for gun control BY DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN Without much fanfare and as little publicity as possible, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will go to New York City to sign the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), now in the final stages of negotiation at the U.N. The Treaty marks the beginning of an international crusade to impose gun controls on the United States and repeal our Second Amendment rights. The ATT is nominally to stop international arms sales to gangs, criminals, and violent groups. But, as is so often the case with U.N. treaties, this is merely a convenient facade behind which to conceal the ATT’s true intent: to force gun control on the United States. Secretary Clinton will doubtlessly succeed in inserting language into the treaty belying this intent and asserting that the treaty in no way is to restrict our right to bear arms. But even this language will be meaningless in the face of the overall construct set up by the treaty. The ATT is to be administered by an International Support Unit (ISU), which will assure that “parties [to the treaty] small take all necessary measures to control brokering activities taking place within its territories... to prevent the diversion of exported arms to the illicit market or to unintended end users.” The ISU will determine whether nations are in compliance with this requirement and will move to assure that they do, indeed, take “all necessary measures.” This requirement will inexorably lead to gun registration, restrictions on ownership, and, eventually, even outright bans on firearms. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said it best: “After the Treaty is approved and comes into force, you will find out that it has this implication or that implication and that it requires Congress to adopt legislation to restrict the ownership of firearms.” Bolton explains that “the Administration knows that it cannot obtain this kind of legislation in purely a domestic context. They will use an international agreement to get domestically what they couldn’t get otherwise.” The Treaty makes no sense otherwise except as a circuitous vehicle to achieve gun control in the U.S. The vast majority of all small arms and light arms exports (the nominal focus of the Treaty) are from sales by the governments of the U.S., Russia, China, Germany and Israel. Individual or corporate arms trafficking is a distinct minority. But it is to absorb the brunt of the Treaty’s regulations. Insofar as the Treaty restricts governmental action, it bars governments from arming “illicit” groups in other nations. This provision could well be interpreted to ban U.S. arms sales to Iranian or Syrian dissidents. It could even be used by China to stop us from selling arms to Taiwan since the U.N. does not recognize Taiwan as a nation but rather an entity occupying territory that should belong to China. And let’s not forget how well the United States has done in reducing murders and other crimes despite the absence of comprehensive gun controls and bans. In 1993, there were 24,350 homicides in the U.S. Last year, there were 13,576 (despite a growth of 60 million in the population). Only 9,000 of these murders involved a firearm. (Less than one-third of the highway deaths each year in the U.S.) Obama has left gun control off his legislative agenda so far. Now his strategy becomes apparent: Use international treaties to achieve it. And bear in mind that under the Supremacy Clause of our constitution, we would be obliged to enforce the ATT despite the Second Amendment. International treaties have the force of constitutional law in the U.S. If it is ratified at the lame duck session of the Senate this year, then nothing can ever change it. Goodbye Second Amendment. Right now, we need 34 courageous Republican Senators to stop up and demand that Hillary not sign the Treaty and indicate their intention to vote against its ratification if it is submitted. Only such an action can stop this treachery in its tracks. (Dick Morris, former advisor to the Clinton administration, is a commentator and author of “Rewriting History.” He is also a columnist for the New York Post and The Hill. His wife, Eileen McGann is an attorney and consultant.)
Prayer for today Living Christ, we offer to you all that we are — our doubts and our faith. We believe; help our unbelief. Amen.
A verse to share I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. — 2 Corinthians 6:18 (NIV)
Reece Terry publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
Casino capitalists are playing with fire Comes now news from across the pond that executives at one of the world’s most respected banks, Barclays, rigged Libor. Even the venerable Bank of England is apparently being investigated. For sports fans, this is like fixing the Super Bowl or doping a horse in the Derby. But it is rather more serious. For the London Interbank Offered Rate is the benchmark interest rate for trillions in loans around the world. Manipulate Libor a small fraction of a point, and lenders reap millions more in interest income on hundreds of billions in loans. How many more such blows to their credibility can the financial elites sustain before people turn on the capitalist system itself? Recall. Three years into the Great Depression, the Republican Party -- America’s Party since Abraham Lincoln’s time -- was crushed by FDR. Socialist Norman Thomas won 900,000 votes in 1932. Communist William Z. Foster won more than 100,000. Charging “money-changers in the temple of our civilization” with moral culpability, FDR became the century’s most successful politician. Demagogic, perhaps, but in 1936 FDR would carry every state but Maine and Vermont. In recent decades, a series of shocks has fertilized the
ground for a populist assault on global capitalism. In Europe, radical parties of the Pat right and left Buchanan are rising -to overthrow Columnist the establishment center. Manifest incompetence is but one cause of the sinking confidence in our financial elite. In the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, our idiot-bankers had to be bailed out with Brady bonds. In 1995, one year after NAFTA passed, Mexico threatened to default. Goldman Sachs was bailed out of its huge Mexican exposure by a loyal alumnus, Treasury’s Robert Rubin, who dipped into the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund. Mexico devalued and began dumping winter vegetables into the United States, wiping out Florida producers, as U.S. plants moved south to exploit the newly cheapened Mexican labor. In the Asian debt crisis of the 1990s, Rubin and Alan Greenspan led the bailouts. Asia’s nations devalued and began exporting heavily to the United States to earn the dollars to pay back their loans. Who paid for that bailout? U.S. workers who lost manufacturing jobs when cheap Asian goods poured into the U.S. market, forc-
ing the closure of U.S. factories. The Great Recession of 2008-2012, too, is the creation of a financial elite and political class who have largely escaped its consequences. George W. Bush and Congress pushed banks to make home loans to individuals who were credit risks. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought up the subprime mortgages and bundled them together into securities. Big banks traded them like gilt-edged bonds. When the whole house of paper collapsed in 2008, the banks screamed: “We’re too big to fail. If we go down, the country goes down.” They were rescued. The Fed bought up the bad paper, tripled the money supply and lent at near zero interest to the banks. Profits soared. But Middle America was not rescued. Middle America has gone through four years of deprivation without precedent since the 1930s. With the “Robber Barons,” one could see a connection between the wealth of the Rockefellers, Harrimans, Carnegies and Henry Ford, and their contributions. Railroads were tying America together. Oil was fueling industry. America was surpassing Britain in steel production. Ford was putting the nation on wheels. When J.P. Morgan took to the floor of the New
York Stock Exchange in 1907 to issue a buy order, he stopped a panic. There was perceived to be a connection between the wealth of these men and their achievements. They were helping make America the most awesome industrial nation known to man. But as scholar William Quirk writes in his essay “Saving the Big Casino,” our big banks now seem to rise and fall on profits and losses from the trading of “derivatives,” “credit default swaps” and “exotic securities” that not one man in a thousand understands. Fortunes are lost and made overnight. Names appear on the list of richest Americans no one has ever heard of. Cheating and corner-cutting are constantly being unearthed. Brokerand banker-gamblers in their 30s amass and flaunt nine-figure fortunes. Were the rest of America doing well, this might not matter. But America is not doing well. And Americans are coming to believe that a system where high-rollers rake in tens of millions playing Monopoly while workers who build things and make things never see a pay raise is rigged and wrong. Our casino capitalists are playing with fire. (Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” )
The Stossel solution to a healthier economy In order to get the correct answer to anything, one must ask the right question. That is what former ABC News and current Fox News TV host John Stossel does on his weekly program. If ever there was “must seeTV,” this is it. Stossel’s show on Saturday, June 30 was a classic. It was called “Government, Incorporated” and focused on what private industry can do less expensively and more efficiently than government. After watching it, I wondered why this isn’t happening. Why does inefficient, costly and unresponsive government continue to grow while the people and companies that could do the work much better are regulated and taxed to death? In part it’s because politicians speak only in poll-tested sound bites and rarely focus on what works. It isn’t as if we don’t have a history that can teach us. We know what works, but politicians too often prefer the issue to the solution. That’s where Stossel comes in. At the top of the program Stossel established the underlying foundation of his libertarian philosophy when it comes to govern-
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ment vs. private industry: “...even though the private sector is more efficient, poliCal ticians and Thomas bureaucrats usually won’t Columnist let go. They want their tentacles on everything. And the public is usually happy to go along, because we’re imprinted to believe the specialists in Washington and state capitals know better. They’re from the government. They’re here to help. And they’re so smart.” One of his guests was Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. Forget for a moment that Daniels is a Republican. Focus on his accomplishments. “You were $78 million in debt,” Stossel said during the program. “Now you have a $1.5 billion surplus.” In a controversial decision, Indiana leaders leased a 157-mile toll road to foreign investors. “In exchange,” writes Ryan Holeywell of Governing.com, “for a $3.8 billion, lump-sum payment, the investors would get to keep toll road revenue for 75 years ... a windfall for
Indiana, with little downside to taxpayers.” Next year, Daniels announced recently, his state’s surplus will be at least $2 billion. Taxpayers can expect a credit on their 2013 taxes. Daniels said he invokes what he calls “the Yellow Pages test. If it’s in there, then conceivably government shouldn’t be doing it itself.” And the result? “The result,” said Daniels, “is we’re repairing bridges, building roads. We’re the only state with a building boom in infrastructure and it didn’t cost the taxpayers a nickel.” Re-read that last sentence and then ask yourself why the federal government still sees itself as the primary builder of roads and bridges when it costs more and delivers less. This is a real solution to a nagging problem. Why isn’t it more widely embraced? Refer to Stossel’s previous answer about government: “They want their tentacles on everything.” They’re about power. The rest of the country wants results, which they must have in order for their businesses to survive and prosper. Amtrak was another subject addressed on the program. For 40 years, the rail
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service has been subsidized by government, but it still loses money, lots of it. The guest was Randal O’Toole who specializes in transportation for the CATO Institute. O’Toole noted that when government started subsidizing Amtrak rail fares were lower than airfares. Now it’s the reverse. Some routes, like New Orleans to Los Angeles, lose money, but because politicians want trains running through their states and districts, the money keeps flowing in from Washington. If results and not political outcomes or rehearsed sound bites become the primary objective in our political discourse, it’s difficult to refute arguments coming from Stossel’s show. Instead of focusing on the familiar talking points from politicians, John Stossel’s program demonstrates that the way to a healthier economy and a stronger government is through the private sector, not government. It doesn’t require a surgical procedure to remove that “imprint” that government can do it better; just a different way of thinking. (Readers may e-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.)
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