Losing America's Livelihood

The New American ^ | 1/26/04 | William Jasper

[ninenot]

Up to 14 million jobs … are at risk of being shipped overseas, two UC Berkeley economists said Wednesday in a research report.

— Contra Costa Times October 30, 2003

“We’re trying to move everything we can offshore,” HP [Hewlett-Packard] Services chief Ann Livermore told Wall Street analysts at a meeting Wednesday.

— Forbes, December 5, 2002

But as the US economy has slowly shifted toward service jobs, factory jobs have been steadily lost — in fact, in just the past 39 months, some 2.8 million have vanished.

— Christian Science Monitor December 11, 2003

Will America be a Third World country in 20 years?

— Paul Craig Roberts, columnist-economist, January 21, 2003

John Williams has been shrimping since 1960. Together with his wife, Kathleen, he operates three shrimp boats out of Tarpon Springs, Florida, north of Tampa Bay. He has weathered recessions, squalls and hurricanes. But he is now facing a tidal wave that has already buried thousands of his fellow shrimp fishermen. It is a tidal wave of foreign shrimp — nearly one billion pounds of it — crashing onto the U.S. market from Red China, Vietnam, Thailand, India and more than a dozen other countries.
Last year Williams’ outfit, Gulf Partners, Ltd., hauled in about one million pounds of shrimp. “We’ve produced about the same amount of product for the past several years,” he told The New American, “but the price we get has dropped dramatically. Our gross revenue has dropped more than 50 percent. But our operational costs haven’t gone down; in fact, they’ve gone up.” According to Williams, who is secretary-treasurer of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, an eight-state coalition of shrimpers, the value of U.S.-harvested shrimp was cut in half, from $1.25 billion in 2000 to $560 million in 2002. Employment at southern shrimp plants dropped 40 percent.
The plight of America’s shrimping industry is symptomatic of the dire consequences potentially awaiting every U.S. industry. It also starkly illustrates how suddenly an entire sector of our economy can be targeted and hollowed out, if not completely destroyed.
For generations, shrimping has provided a good livelihood for several hundred thousand Americans in Gulf Coast communities from Texas to Florida. Then, virtually overnight, foreign producers almost completely took over the U.S. market and now provide 88 percent of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. And it isn’t because the foreign shrimp industry is more efficient or produces a better quality product. The real tsunami hit U.S. shrimpers in 2002, when the European Union, Japan and Canada banned shrimp from China, Thailand and Vietnam because of detected residues of chloramphenicol, a potent, broad-spectrum antibiotic suspected of causing aplastic anemia and other blood conditions. China, Thailand and Vietnam unloaded their shrimp cargoes on the U.S. market instead, even though federal regulations prohibit use of chloramphenicol in food-producing animals and animal feed products.
Shrimp fishermen like John Williams are fuming. “Another year like this and there won’t be any domestic shrimp industry left to speak of,” Williams told The New American, noting that he recently saw a repossessed $800,000 shrimp boat sell for $100,000 at a bank auction. “This is just plain wrong when a whole industry of hardworking, taxpaying American citizens can be put out of business like this by foreign competitors subsidized by their governments.”
What Williams finds even more galling is that our government is subsidizing his foreign competitors, too! Yes, the same federal policymakers who have slapped domestic shrimp producers with onerous regulations, are not only helping his foreign shrimpers with incredible trade privileges, but actually aiding them with loans, grants and loan guarantees as well. Through assistance provided by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Export-Import Bank and other foreign aid programs, “we’re not only giving them loans and subsidies, but advanced technology too,” Williams notes with exasperation.
In 2002 and 2003, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) introduced the Shrimp Importation Financing Fairness Act, which aimed to stop some of these policies that are aiding the destruction of our domestic shrimping industry. The Paul bill would declare a moratorium on federal regulations that are making U.S. shrimping non-competitive and end funding of federal programs and international institutions that provide financial aid to countries that are dumping their subsidized shrimp on our market.
Rep. Paul’s legislation names seven countries — Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Brazil — as the main dumping culprits. But paragraphs 8 and 9 of Section 2 are the real shockers in the bill. Most Americans would be stunned to learn what our political leaders are doing with our tax dollars. Those two paragraphs read:

(8) Since 1999 our Government has provided more than $1,800,000,000 in financing and insurance for these foreign countries through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and our Government’s current exposure relative to these countries through our Export-Import Bank totals some $14,800,000,000, bringing the total subsidy of these countries by the United States to over $16,500,000,000.
(9) Many of these countries are not market-oriented, and hence their participation in United States-supported international finance regimes amounts to a direct subsidy by American taxpayers in the shrimping sector of their international competitors.

That’s $16.5 billion. With help like that, is it any wonder that these countries are able to produce the glut of shrimp that is destroying our shrimping industry?

Different Industries, Same Story

What do Gulf Coast shrimp boat owners like John Williams have in common with tool and die makers in the Great Lakes region, sawmill owners in the Pacific Northwest, Midwest farmers, Texas ranchers, New England manufacturers, or California software engineers and computer consultants? The same thing that their business counterparts throughout the U.S. in virtually every industry share: the threat of extinction due to perverse government policies that penalize American producers and reward their foreign competitors. They are caught in a vise of regulatory policies that have driven their operating costs far above those of their foreign competitors, and U.S. trade policies that encourage foreign producers to dump their products on the American market. On top of that, the U.S. government pours billions of U.S. tax dollars into subsidies for their foreign competitors!
America’s tool and die industry is in danger of going the way of our shrimping industry. Why should that concern the vast majority of Americans who are not directly involved in this industry? Because it is essential to all manufacturing. The industrial machinery that is used to manufacture almost everything — from cell phones, toothbrushes and Barbie dolls to computer chips, medical diagnostic equipment and fighter jet engines — begins with tool and die makers. We cannot expect to sustain a modern society, let alone defend ourselves and maintain our prosperity and technological leadership, without them. But our tool and die industry is rapidly disappearing. In Michigan, about 34,000 tooling jobs have vanished in the last five years, according to state labor data. The National Tooling & Machining Association (NTMA) reports that about 30 percent of the country’s toolmakers have gone out of business since 2000 and many more are expected to follow.
“Guys that were earning $20 an hour two years ago making very high-precision tools are now stocking shelves at Wal-Mart,” said NTMA President Matt Coffey in a recent Detroit Free Press article on the plight of the tooling industry. Coffey estimates that there are fewer than 10,000 U.S. tooling companies today, down from roughly 14,000 a few years ago. Which could mean that 140,000 tooling jobs have disappeared nationally since 2000. This trend will prove disastrous for our country, if allowed to continue.
“One of the advantages our manufacturers always have had is that the toolmakers were here and were good,” Peter Morici, former chief economist for the U.S. International Trade Commission, told the Free Press. “It undermines the whole manufacturing base in the long term if they go away,” he noted. “When all these little toolmakers go away, they don’t re-open. Their sons do something else and that skill is lost. The decline of toolmaking is like the growth of a desert. Once it starts, it’s tough to stop from spreading.”
Mr. Morici’s comments echo the alarm expressed by Bob Davis, general manager of Modern Die Systems Inc. of Elwood, Indiana, in an interview with The New American last year (“Your Job May Be Next!” March 10, 2003). “Our government has set it up so that it is unprofitable to manufacture here in the U.S.,” he told this writer. Mr. Davis noted the tremendous disincentives to production posed by taxes, regulations, employee medical insurance, and labor union obstruction — the combined effects of which are driving many businesses into the ground, or out of the country. We are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. “Our country’s entire production capability will be stripped bare if this continues,” Davis said. “And with it will go all of the jobs and small and medium-sized independent businesses that are the bedrock of the American middle class.”

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

America’s small- and medium-sized businesses traditionally have been a vital source of jobs, as well as a wellspring of creativity, invention and innovation that has propelled us to global economic and technological dominance. Limited government interference in the marketplace combined with a general acceptance of Christian morality was the key that unleashed the American entrepreneurial spirit and gave rise to our prosperity and the development of a large middle class. But the free enterprise system that made our economic miracle possible is being suffocated in a socialist swamp of regulatory red tape. U.S. regulatory costs — especially from regulations allegedly aimed at environmental and safety risks — are particularly hazardous to small and medium businesses.
The true extent of that hazard is amply exposed in an important study released in December 2003 by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The comprehensive NAM study significantly noted that “compliance costs for regulations can be regarded as the ‘silent killer’ of manufacturing competitiveness.” The report revealed that the regulatory, tax and mandate burden is adding at least a staggering 22.4 percent (nearly $5 per hour worked) to the cost of doing business in the U.S. relative to our major foreign competitors. To appreciate the magnitude of this burden, consider that these external costs imposed by government are more than twice the average direct labor costs of U.S. manufacturers, which are 11 percent.
NAM President Jerry Jasinowski noted that the NAM study documents that “we are essentially shooting ourselves in the foot competitively by making it too expensive to make products in America.” What’s more, the regulatory agencies have negated many of the impressive gains in production efficiency of the past decade. “Taken together,” notes Jasinowski, “external non-production costs have offset a large part of the 54 percent increase in productivity achieved since 1990.”
“U.S. manufacturing has demonstrated the ability to overcome pure wage differentials with trading partners through innovation, capital investment and productivity,” said James Berges, President of Emerson, a St. Louis-based manufacturer of industrial equipment. “But when the additional external costs described in this [NAM] paper are piled on, the task becomes unmanageable, even in the best companies.”
In fact, the piling on can be worse than unmanageable; it is often fatal. Thousands of small and medium businesses already have been slain by this silent killer and many more will succumb to its deadly effects. (See sidebar.)

Driving Jobs Offshore

Even large corporations cannot absorb the crushing U.S. regulatory burden for long without losing competitiveness vis-à-vis foreign producers. However, large corporations have options not readily available to many smaller businesses: They can more easily move their manufacturing and processing operations overseas, outsource many of their service sectors to cheaper foreign providers, and import cheaper foreign employees under various visa programs. And that is precisely what they are doing, in huge quantum jumps that defy any historic comparison.
America is in the midst of an enormous job outsourcing boom that gives every indication of accelerating. In addition to the continued massive hemorrhaging of America’s manufacturing and blue-collar jobs that began two decades ago, we now have a huge and growing crisis involving the flight of millions of hi-tech and white-collar jobs. If appropriate action is not taken to address the factors propelling this massive exodus, it is not an exaggeration to say that America is headed toward has-been status. A much-quoted study by Forrester Research Inc. last year predicted that at least 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the U.S. to low-cost countries by 2015.
An October 2003 report by researchers from the University of California-Berkeley’s Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics suggests that the Forrester predictions may be extremely conservative. According to the Berkeley researchers, as many as 14 million service jobs are at risk of outsourcing.
The authors of the Berkeley report, Ashok Deo Bardhan and Cynthia A. Kroll, note that “the recent boom in outsourcing is causing growing apprehension in the U.S. that this may well be the largest out-migration of non-manufacturing jobs in the history of the U.S. economy.” (Emphasis added.)
Many of these jobs are going to India. By tabulating reports in Indian newspapers and business journals for the month of July 2003 alone, Bardhan and Kroll reported that they found “25,000 to 30,000 new outsourcing related jobs announced by U.S. firms. In the same month, there were 2,087 mass layoff actions carried out by U.S. employers resulting in a loss of 226,435 jobs.”
“The jobs being created in India and elsewhere are in a wide range of service sectors,” say Bardhan and Kroll, “such as geographic information systems services for insurance companies, stock market research for financial firms, medical transcription services, legal online database research, and data analysis for consulting firms, in addition to customer service call centers, payroll and other back-office related activities.”
In addition to the millions of U.S. jobs that soon could be leaving for India, China, Russia and other offshore destinations, there is the added threat to American workers from imported labor. Hundreds of thousands of American information technology (IT) workers have lost their jobs in the past several years to foreign replacements through the L-1 and H-1B visa programs. American software engineers, computer designers, technicians, electrical engineers and other hi-tech employees are being replaced by workers from India, Pakistan, the Middle East and China.
No other country in the world has adopted such reckless and suicidal immigration policies. Incredibly, the Bush administration is advocating an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens that dwarfs the amnesty proposals of Bill Clinton. Moreover, President George Bush and many members of Congress enthusiastically favor more outsourcing, more L-1 and H1-B visas, and more immigration overall. At a December 15, 2003 press conference, President Bush stated: “I have constantly said that we need to have an immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee.” (Emphasis added.) There is virtually an unlimited supply of willing employees worldwide who would be more than happy to immigrate to the U.S., but how is that going to help put Americans back to work?
It won’t, says Jan Frelick, who has experienced the outsourcing and foreign “temps” up close and personal. Mrs. Frelick worked for computer giant Hewlett-Packard in the San Francisco Bay area but transferred to HP’s facility in the Sacramento area in 1990. As computer security administrator for her division and a member of the division’s business control team, she had a ringside seat from which she watched HP outsource droves of jobs. “Then, on August 24, 2001,” Frelick told The New American, “it happened to me. I wasn’t ‘downsized’ — the term they deceptively use — I was replaced. So were almost all other employees in many units. The IT Support Desk, for instance, which previously was staffed completely by Americans, is now staffed by people from India.”

False Solutions, Toxic Antidotes

The cheery advocates of globalization blithely dismiss concerns about massive job losses, the wholesale gutting of our economy and the flight of entire industries from our shores. Their mantra-like response is that the huge exodus of jobs, manufacturing, and technology is actually a good thing representing the elimination of obsolete remnants of the “old economy,” to make way for the higher value, cutting-edge technologies and jobs of the new global economy. These glib advocates are dealing in voodoo economics and globaloney social science. The jobs and technology we are outsourcing do not have to do with genuinely obsolete technology like buggy whips and whale oil lamps, as the globalists assert. They have to do with the production of real wealth, real products and real services that are essential to sustaining a modern, prosperous society.
Where are the wonderful new jobs the globalists keep promising? Hundreds of thousands of skilled and experienced white collar and blue collar workers — engineers, computer programmers, toolmakers, accountants and technicians — are unemployed, or have been reduced to taking near-minimum-wage jobs. Political forces, not market forces, are driving these devastating changes. As we have noted above, it is perverse government policies that are responsible for making American companies uncompetitive, subsidizing our foreign competition, outsourcing jobs and flooding our job market with immigrants and “temporary” foreign workers. America has gone through economic downturns before and seen periods of high unemployment. But the economy has always rebounded and the jobs have returned as businesses have revved up production. However, that is not going to happen with the thousands of businesses and the millions of jobs we have been losing.
The Bush administration and its allies in Congress — Republican and Democrat — have given no indication of reversing our disastrous course. Indeed they are proposing supposed solutions that would prove to be even more calamitous. They are saddling U.S. businesses with even more oppressive mandates and regulatory overkill, while pushing for more job outsourcing, more temporary worker visas, far greater immigration quotas, an amnesty for illegal aliens and the removal of virtually all tariffs.
Moreover, the president has staked out 2004 to push for completion of the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, a plan to merge the countries of the Western Hemisphere into a European Union-style common market. However, like the original European Common Market, the FTAA is much more than a trade pact. It has been designed to evolve into a supranational regional government, but in a much shorter time span than it took the Europeans to arrive at that stage. Like the EU, the FTAA’s central executive authority would be strongly socialistic and would gradually claim the power to overrule the national laws and constitutions of its member states. The FTAA Declarations, Plans of Action and Charter drafts call for regional “integration,” in accordance with the charters of the UN and the World Trade Organization. The FTAA would establish a bureaucracy of agencies to monitor, and eventually dictate, regional health, education, labor, environment, foreign aid, immigration and security policies. Like the EU, the FTAA is set up to acquire, gradually, full legislative, executive and judicial powers. As such, it is plainly a power grab disguised in the garb of a trade agreement.
The most frightening aspect of the proposed FTAA is the fact that its realization would spell the end to our national sovereignty and sweep aside constitutional impediments to the concentration of tyrannical power. But the more immediately felt effects would include a rapid dissolving of our borders and an enormous deluge of immigrants (both legal and illegal) from Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, billions of dollars of agricultural products, textiles, manufactured goods and other products will flood our markets devastating every industry sector in the same way that our domestic shrimp industry has been wrecked.
These so-called solutions are manifestly suicidal. If America is to be spared sinking into Third World status, we must completely reverse course. That means awakening and energizing a minority of the American public sufficient to compel Congress to: abolish the socialist regulatory monster that is destroying our country’s competitiveness; take back control of our borders and enforce sensible, reduced immigration; end all U.S. taxpayer subsidies to foreign competitors; and defeat the FTAA. It’s really very simple. Not easy, but simple.

[Protagoras]

What "seems" to you is irrelevant.

I won't be playing "dueling verses" with you. But I will tell you that you are going down a losing road if you are going to make the case that Jesus preached stopping the love for your fellow man at some man made border. And if you are trying to make the case that worldly goods are to be ignored, then I would submit that you should be willing to throw away all your worldly possessions and your standard of living to help your fellow man in all places, including China, Mexico, Africa etc.

When asked the question at judgment about why you thought your standard of living was more important than a subsistence existence in another country, I don't think your answer that you thought he only wanted you care for certain people will be well received.

Maybe you should try a different tack, you may have more luck.

[Protagoras]

Both Karl Marx and Ayn Rand were atheists.

LOL,, a new low, even for you.

If you have a point to make on that subject, be a man for a change and make it, don't beat around the bush.

I will resist the temptation to connect evil people to Christian beliefs.

[Willie Green]

Our great nation was founded on principles of individual freedom, liberty and opportunity, NOT corporate freedom, liberty and opportunity. The excesses of unbridled, laissez-faire Capitalism can be just as oppressive of individual freedom and opportunity as authoritarian Communism.

[spacewarp]

You seem to know an awful lot about me by labeling me a Demoncrat. Hmmmm. Maybe you're right. Maybe I should take to baby killing. Maybe I should fight for gays to have the right to marry their dogs. Maybe I should start using emotion for my arguments instead of logic.

You seem to have all the answers. Wow. Why haven't I seen this before. Because I don't bow down and serve at the foot of the now liberal big-spending, pro-illegal-immigrant, anti-rights GOP, I should declare myself a Democrat.



No.

How about you just go back and read what I've actually said. I'm in this for the long haul. And if in the short run, I upset the apple cart a bit, so be it. I intend to do whatever it takes to have a successful new party in this country. One that stands for liberty and personal freedom. What suprises me is there are so many so called conservatives who want to bash me for believing in freedom. I don't deny you your right to your party. I do deny your concept that for some reason there is some sort of God given right to the only makeup of this country being only the Democrats and Republicans.

If you go back and read what I've said in the past, you'll find out that my goal is to create a strong conservative party that will fracture the Democrats. Since the Republicans want to be like them, let's clear the way. Strip out their "Yellow-dog" Democrats and the folks who actually refuse to vote Republican, but can't stand the Democrats. Yes, we will pull some Republicans, but they were going to leave anyway. And I'd rather have them in the process, than out.

So, you review your options. And review your comments. I'm as far from a Democrat as you can get. I am going third party not because I'm leaving the party, but because the Republican Party has left me.

So, don't smear me. Sheesh. If in the short term, some pain is there, so be it. I am thinking of my children. I want a country to still be here. What about you? Do you have children? Then why are you continuing to support that which offends the most liberal of Repbulicans? Why aren't you working within your party, or helping other parties to eliminate the junk like the Immigration bills, the Patriot Act, the illegal and wasteful Department of Education, the waste, fraud and abuse in the Welfare system (aside from the fact that it's extra-constitutional)? You seem to think I'm being irresponsible. I'm not. I'm doing what I see as necessary to facilitate the survival of our country. The Democrats have the topics that are being argued. Republicans seem to be interested only in implementing a "more conservative" version of their programs. They shouldn't be doing that. They should be ELIMINATING THEM!!!!!!

So, don't yell at me for wanting to make a change. I want our country to survive.

Sheesh.
Paul

[Protagoras]

Our great nation was founded on principles of individual freedom, liberty and opportunity, NOT corporate freedom, liberty and opportunity.

So you would be in favor of NO trade laws for individuals? Ok, lets go for that.

I realize that you are a Naderite Democrat anti corporation populist so I'll ask you to go down that road instead of going against your "religion".

The excesses of unbridled, laissez-faire Capitalism can be just as oppressive of individual freedom and opportunity as authoritarian Communism.

Sounds precisely like what a fascist says. It becomes more clear everyday where you are coming from.

[Consort]

You seem to know an awful lot about me by labeling me a Demoncrat.

Learn to read. I said you should vote Democrat; I didn't say you were a Democrat. In fact I don't think you identify with any party.

Maybe I should take to baby killing. Maybe I should fight for gays to have the right to marry their dogs. Maybe I should start using emotion for my arguments instead of logic.

Maybe that shows that you tend to overreact.

I intend to do whatever it takes to have a successful new party in this country. One that stands for liberty and personal freedom.

If such a party gains power, it will do exactly what the major parties are now doing to retain and grow its power. If it grows, many of the Dems and Repubs you now hate will switch to "your" party and you'll back to square one.

I do deny your concept that for some reason there is some sort of God given right to the only makeup of this country being only the Democrats and Republicans.

You left out the Independents, and it doesn't matter what you deny.

I'm as far from a Democrat as you can get.

Not if you help them win elections; and that's what you'd be doing. Discontented people like you helped to elect the Clintons. They didn't mean to......but they did.

I am going third party not because I'm leaving the party, but because the Republican Party has left me.

You forgot the barf alert.

So, don't smear me. Sheesh.

You don't need my help. Geez.

I am thinking of my children. I want a country to still be here.

We all are. We all do.

So, don't yell at me...don't label me.....don't smear me.....

Chill out.

[ninenot]

laissez-faire Capitalism can be just as oppressive of individual freedom and opportunity as authoritarian Communism.

With the same results: poverty in the hoi-polloi, wealth among the elites.

Not a co-incidence, by the way.

[ninenot]

Willie doesn't endorse Fascism either.

Let's go back to your advocacy of slave-labor wages both here AND in the Third World, so that unrestricted Capital may dominate--the fervent wish of Ms. Rand, who was humiliated and thrown out of polite Conservative society in the 1960's...

by Bill Buckley(?) Pinging the Elk for verification.

[Protagoras]

Not a co-incidence, by the way.

Another Bill Clinton/Nader "managed economy" guru heard from.

[Protagoras]

Willie doesn't endorse Fascism either.

Fascism is where property is privately owned but government controlled. He, and you, are fascists if you believe in that, whether you know it or not.

[Protagoras]

Let's go back to your advocacy of slave-labor wages

The last hiding place for those who cannot prevail against the truth is to tell the big lie about what they say. Pathetic, as usual.

[spacewarp]

In fact I don't think you identify with any party.

So, you are basically saying that even though I identify with the Patriot Party, that you don't think I identify with any party? Does that mean you don't believe that I am identifying with the Patriot Party, or that you don't believe the Patriot Party is actually a Party?

Maybe that shows that you tend to overreact.

Maybe it shows that you don't understand sarcasm.

If such a party gains power, it will do exactly what the major parties are now doing to retain and grow its power. If it grows, many of the Dems and Repubs you now hate will switch to "your" party and you'll back to square one.

Actually, I don't "hate" the Democrats and Republicans. I "hate" their liberalism. I find it offensive and a destructive element to our society. And I find that a group of people at the top of each party is responsible for dragging us there. We don't have people like that at the top of our party. We may get some of them, but we'll work at weeding them out. And yes, if we do get to the point of liberalism, I will have to start over. No, I don't think we'll do the same as the two majors. I think we'll actually use reason and logic. We'll use the tools provided called the Constitution and bring our country back on track.

You left out the Independents, and it doesn't matter what you deny.

Actually, it DOES matter what I deny. I deny that there is some sort of God-given lock on the control of our country by the two major parties. If I didn't honestly believe that, then why would I even try? There are people like you in this country that seem to think there's this unbreakable power that keeps the two parties in control. I think that things are reaching a shatterpoint. Not much longer now, and one of those two is going to be out of power. Completely. I think its going to be the Democrats. And I'm pushing for that hard. So, just give up on trying to belittle my points of view.

You forgot the barf alert.

If you can't handle my assessment of the last few years of big spending, massive illegal immigration despite 9/11, giveaways to our enemies and in general a failure to approach freedom in any way shape or form without barfing, then tough. I believe the President has done some good things with regards to the War on Terror, and I'm happy he was there for 9/11. But, how many times am I going to have to open the paper and feel my blood pressure boil due to another "steal the left's agenda" program being passed or promoted by the President and the Republicans? You just don't get it. Where does the conservatism show up in the Prescription Drug program? Where does the conservatism show up in allowing and even encouraging illegal immigrants to raid and invade our country untouched by offering them amnesty?? The Republican Party has basically decided to invade the left to take the Democrats out. I like the idea of taking them out, but I don't like the fact that they are going so far to the left. So, I'm glad that I'm working towards an option so that when they decide to stay there and shove the Democrats to the curb, there will BE a place for the conservatives.

We all are. We all do.

Then why are you attacking me for actually taking a stand and saying enough is enough? If you are conservative and Republican (which more and more seems like a prison sentance than a blessing) then why aren't you standing in your party leaders offices every day saying "STOP IT!!!!!" Why aren't you calling them and writing them? Why aren't you doing something? Why don't I? I am doing something. I'm working on an alternative, because the leaders don't care anymore. They want their power and they don't care if you and I don't like it.

Chill out. I'll chill out when our country is back on track. And at this point, it's nowhere near the rails.

[Consort]

Does that mean you don't believe that I am identifying with the Patriot Party,...

Yes. You said: "I'm not voting for W. I'm voting either Constitution Party or Libertarian." And now you add the Patriot Party to the mix. You're all over the map and nowhere at the same time.

Actually, I don't "hate" the Democrats and Republicans.

Good.

There are people like you in this country that seem to think there's this unbreakable power that keeps the two parties in control.

I think that power is called "We the People" — voters across the country. The majority doesn't seem to agree with you at this time.

Where does the conservatism show up in...

When enough voters want more conservatism to show up, then they will vote for it. Yes? No?

Then why are you attacking me...smearing me, yelling at me...labeling me...

Drop the persecution complex.

[Willie Green]

I realize that you are a Naderite Democrat anti corporation populist

You've been on this forum long enough to know that I'm actually an America First! Buchanan conservative anti-globalization populist.
And I've been on this forum long enough to know that you're simply a disingenuous antagonist who relies on deliberate misinterpretation and misrepresentation of others' points of view with intent to inflame and marginalize.
((((yawn)))) Been down that road too many times.
Go harass somebody else with that idiocy.
I'm not interested in chasing you around in rhetorical circles.

[Protagoras]

I'm not interested in chasing you around in rhetorical circles.

What you really are interested in is not being exposed for what you are. An anti freedom enemy of all that this country promised to be.

Pat the whacko lost a long time ago, get over it.

[Willie Green]

What you really are interested in is not being exposed for what you are. An anti freedom enemy of all that this country promised to be.

What I am REALLY interested in is expressing MY OWN views on issues.
NOT in having them distorted by some character-assassinating flying monkey.
Thank-you for once again putting your "tactics" on display for all to see.

[spacewarp]

I am a member of the American Patriot Party. For the 2004 election, we will not be having a member of our party moving forward to attempt to compete in the Presidential race. I have clearly identified myself repeatedly as a member of the Patriot Party. I'm not "all over the map". I stated that I will vote Constitution Party or Libertarian because I firmly believe that the only way to enact real change is to actualy make a change.

I think that power is called "We the People" — voters across the country. The majority doesn't seem to agree with you at this time.

The majority of the people think they don't have a choice. They don't know any different and the media and people like you don't give any creedance to the chance for a new party to move forward. So, it has to be done through a grass roots method. "We the People" as you refer to, for the most part, want to do the things in their daily lives that allow them to just meander through the day, and be entertained on the weekend. They usually don't care too much about politics except around election time. Informed positions and informed consumers for the most part usually entertain the ideas of freedom and liberty differently than the average Joe. I think, given time and positions, the positons of our party, which are for personal freedom and reduction of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government will win out.

Strangely enough, we've seen basically, that the movie The American President has many truisms. Despite the liberal slant, some of the quotes were perfect for our time.

People want leadership, and in the absence of leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone.

The Democrats, mainly John Kerry are "stepping up to the microphone". But the problem is, so is Bush. He's not providing the conservative leadership he needs to. So, if you think that leading people to conservative decisions in their voting are not a positive thing, then move over. And if you think that my vote doesn't count, or is for the Democrat, you're just wrong. EVERY vote counts. (Unfortunately, that also includes the fraud votes in some states.)

As for the cute idea of pasting together some of my comments to make it look like I've got some sort of persecution complex, you have to admit that you have been somewhat agressive in your lashing out at me for not worshipping at the shrine of the GOP.

[Consort]

I am a member of the American Patriot Party. ...I will vote Constitution Party or Libertarian...

You made my point.

The majority of the people think they don't have a choice. They don't know any different...

And, of course, you know better than them, you're smarter than them, more politically aware than them, superior in every way...

Fragmenting the conservative base across a bunch of third rate Third Parties will enable the Liberals for years to come, IMO. Maybe that's your goal.

[Jim Cane]

This is a fact of life that aint gonna change for you LUDDITES!

Homelessness and starvation are facts of life, too. Most humans can starve far more quickly than they can master robot repair. A starving man will kill a fat man for his marbled meat, even though the fat man may dangle a hands free vacuum cleaner in front of him and insist that the starving man may purchase it much more cheaply now.

Of course the more likely scenario is for fat men to simply pay more in taxes to fund more government protection from the angry skinny guys. Government sponsored blackmail (socialism).

Another alternative is to simply disenfranchise the jobless, and send wackenhut troops door to door to remove any guns that the un-incorporated may harbor, and not worry about it. (fascism)

Either way, it's the death of the Republic.

[Protagoras]

What I am REALLY interested in is expressing MY OWN views on issues.

No , you are interested in expressing Pat's long ago discarded views. Pat lost, get over it.