Amnesty and Betrayal

Bill Clinton uttered countless deceptive words during his eight-year occupancy of the White House, but perhaps none captured the essence of his slippery dishonesty better than these: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” In defending his proposed amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, George W. Bush is striving to set a new record for brazen presidential dishonesty.

“This plan is not amnesty, placing undocumented workers on the automatic path of citizenship,” insisted Mr. Bush at a January 12 press conference in Monterrey, Mexico, as he stood alongside Mexican President Vicente Fox. “I oppose amnesty because it encourages the violation of our laws and perpetuates illegal immigration.”

As has often been said, crime unpunished is crime rewarded. In his January 7 White House address calling for a “new temporary worker program,” the president outlined a plan that would reward those who violated our immigration laws by jumping the queue and taking up residence here illegally:

It’s vitally important to recognize that the Bush plan would not be limited to the current illegal alien population, which is commonly estimated to be 6-12 million (but may be 20 million or more). As the president’s own words demonstrate, it would also extend to “those in foreign countries who seek to participate in the program.”

Supposedly, those coming from foreign countries would need a job offer in advance of their arrival. But the president’s invitation had an immediate, and quite predictable, effect. “The U.S. Border Patrol marks January 7 as the day illegal crossing numbers surge,” reported a January 10 Arizona Star dispatch from the Mexican border town of Hermosillo. “We’re starting to see an increase already,” commented Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame. It’s reasonable to expect that a similar “amnesty rush” is underway elsewhere as millions — or tens of millions — of others race to take advantage of the Bush plan.

Ah, but that plan isn’t an amnesty, insists the president, clinging to his official fiction with Clintonian tenacity. Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) has no use for such evasions. “Millions of people who broke the law by entering, staying, and working in our country will not be punished, but rather rewarded with a visa,” comments Rep. Paul. “This is amnesty, plain and simple. Lawbreakers are given legal status, while those seeking to immigrate legally face years of paperwork and long waits for a visa.”

More disturbing still is the fact that the Bush plan represents merely the first installment. The Mexican regime has already broadcast demands for further concessions. Mexican President Fox offered honeyed words of support for the Bush plan during his January 12 joint press conference with Bush. But prior to Bush’s trip to Monterrey, Fox had told the Mexican press that the Bush plan “es más pequeñito de lo que buscamos” (“it’s much smaller than what we’re looking for”). And Mexico’s El Universal had reported, “The secretary of Foreign Relations, Luis Ernesto Derbez, affirmed that [Fox] cannot be satisfied with George W. Bush’s proposal to grant temporary employment to immigrants.... [T]he goal is a total and complete program that protects those [Mexicans] in the United States and those who aspire to go there.” (Emphasis added.)

The Mexican regime will be satisfied with nothing less than the abolition of our southern border, and our absorption of as many people as that government sees fit to send north. Eventually, the process begun by the Bush plan would “solve” the illegal immigration problem by simply removing our borders altogether — and by effectively destroying the concept of U.S. citizenship as well.

Anatomy of a Betrayal

Supposedly, the newly legalized “temporary workers” would return to their home countries after the permits expire.

“My proposal expects that most temporary workers will eventually return permanently to their home countries when the period of work that I will be negotiating with Congress has expired,” explained the president in Monterrey. Toward that end, he continued, “I’ll work with [Mexican] President Fox and other leaders on a plan to give temporary workers credit in their home countries’ retirement systems for the time they work in the United States.”

The administration’s proposal would also “reduce the cost of sending money home to families and local communities,” continued the president. Such remittances from Mexican workers in America are that nation’s second-largest source of foreign income. Additionally, as the president pointed out, through the Inter-American Development Bank “we” — meaning American taxpayers — “are expanding access to credit for small business entrepreneurs” in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

All of this taxpayer-funded largesse is necessary, insists the president, in order to “reduce the pressures that create illegal immigration” by expanding economic opportunity south of our border. But the amnesty itself creates a powerful incentive for newly legalized immigrants to establish themselves here and begin the process of chain immigration, through which untold millions of new immigrants would be brought in. This is what happened with the most recent immigration amnesty in 1986.

In anticipation of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservative” rhetoric, former Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, the chief sponsor of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), insisted that the earlier amnesty was “a humane approach to immigration reform.” Simpson also admitted at the time, “I don’t know what the impact will be.” Eighteen years later, we now know the impact: 6-12 million, and possibly 20 million or more, illegal aliens. If amnesty is granted to that population, and it begins the process of chain immigration of relatives from abroad, and it is supplemented by millions of others who come here based on job offers extended through Bush’s temporary worker program, we might as well disband the border patrol and discontinue the fiction of having immigration controls at all.

Global “Job Fair”

President Bush’s concern for the economic plight of illegal aliens in our midst is as puzzling as his indifference to the economic circumstances of American workers.

“Over the past 10 years, more than 2 million low-skilled American workers have been displaced from their jobs,” writes CNN financial analyst Lou Dobbs. “And each 10 percent increase in the immigrant workforce decreases U.S. wages by 3.5 percent.” Mr. Bush and his political allies blithely assure the public that illegal immigrants are doing jobs nobody wants. However, points out Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, “what they really mean is that they are doing jobs that they as middle- and upper-class people don’t want.”

“Massive immigration is vastly more popular among the elites than among the public,” Steve Sailer, president of the Human Biodiversity Institute, told THE NEW AMERICAN. “Lawyers, politicians, and business executives won’t find their pay driven down much by increased competition. On the other hand, if I was, say, a carpenter, I’d be horrified by what the President of the United States is planning to do to me and my family. What’s the global average wage made by carpenters? I’d be surprised if it were more than 33 percent of the average American carpenter’s wage, and I wouldn’t be shocked if it were only 10 percent as much.”

“It’s all a matter of supply and demand,” explains Sailer. “As they teach you during the first week of Econ 101, when the supply of labor goes up its price [wage] goes down.... The only restriction the Bush people are talking about is that the job offers to foreigners must meet the minimum wage. That’s $5.15 per hour, or $10,712 for a full-time worker.”

Sailer describes the Bush plan as “a globalist libertarian’s fantasy. It’s essentially identical to the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s long campaign for a constitutional amendment reading ‘There shall be open borders.’” This would mean not only a deluge of low-skilled, low-paid labor from Mexico, but from across the globe. According to Dobbs, “for all the world the president’s [immigration proposal] … sounds like a national job fair for those businesses and farms that don’t want to pay a living wage and for those foreigners who correctly think U.S. border security is a joke and are willing to break our laws to live here.”

The immediate beneficiaries would be illegal workers from Mexico, and a Mexican government that uses illegal immigration to the U.S. as (in the words of former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda) a “safety valve.” But there are literally billions of people willing to work for even less than Mexicans are. “In this age of cheap jet travel, poor Mexican immigrant job hunters might find themselves undercut by even poorer temporary workers from, say, Bangladesh who may be willing to work for even less,” Sailer predicts. “According to UN figures, there are several billion people poorer than the average Mexican.”

With hi-tech and manufacturing jobs fleeing the country, and millions of low-skill workers flooding in, what will America look like just a few years from now if Bush’s amnesty proposal is enacted?

Just the First Step

The January 8 New York Times editorially praised the Bush amnesty as a prelude to a larger effort to reform our immigration system: “For simply reopening what has always been a torturous debate in this country, the president deserves applause. He has recognized that the nation’s immigration system is, as he put it, ‘broken.’” But the unspoken purpose of the process the Bush plan would inaugurate is to demolish, rather than repair, what remains of our immigration system.

The invited audience for President Bush’s January 7 White House announcement included representatives from various “citizen groups,” such as the Hispanic Alliance for Progress, the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans, the Latino Coalition, and the League of United Latin American Citizens. The address itself served as an overture for a hastily called “Summit of the Americas” in Monterrey, Mexico, the following week. These two facts underscore the real purpose of the amnesty proposal: It is a significant step toward the amalgamation of the U.S. with Mexico — as well as Canada, and eventually every other country in this hemisphere — into a regional political bloc.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox signed a document called the “Guanajuato Proposal,” pledging that their governments would “strive to consolidate a North American economic community whose benefits reach the lesser-developed areas of the region and extend to the most vulnerable social groups in our countries.”

Within a few months of that declaration, the Mexican government had composed a five-point program to hasten “consolidation” with the U.S.:

This list of demands, according to then-Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda, were essentially non-negotiable: He insisted that the U.S. had to accept “the whole enchilada, or nothing.” The Bush administration has dutifully worked to meet that nation’s demands — without exacting anything from Mexico in return.

During Fox’s 2001 visit to the U.S., the groundwork was laid for the so-called “Partnership for Prosperity” (PfP) — an initiative designed to use American tax dollars to build Mexico’s manufacturing sector. According to the U.S. State Department, PfP’s action plan calls for U.S. assistance — meaning taxpayer subsidies — to Mexico to boost investment in housing and commercial infrastructure to boost Mexican productivity. This has the unavoidable effect of drawing manufacturing jobs south of the border — even as low-wage jobs are increasingly snapped up by illegal immigrants (pardon me — future temporary workers) surging northward.

The Bush administration’s indecent eagerness to eradicate our southern border and consolidate our nation with Mexico was noted by Newsweek political analyst Howard Fineman. “Whatever else George W. Bush does, or doesn’t do, he has earned a place in history as the first American president to place Hispanic voters at the center of politics, and the first to view the land between Canada and Guatemala as one,” noted Fineman. “It makes sense, if you think about it: Texas, long ago and far away, was part of Mexico. Now a Texan is trying to reassemble the Old Country, and then some.”

“The ultimate goal of any White House policy ought to be a North American economic and political alliance similar in scope and ambition to the European Union,” opined an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial on September 7, 2001. “Unlike the varied landscapes and cultures of European Union members, the United States, Canada and Mexico already share a great deal in common, and language is not as great a barrier. President Bush, for example, is quite comfortable with the blended Mexican-Anglo culture forged in the border states of Texas, California and Arizona.”

President Bush has only offered oblique hints of the agenda that Fineman correctly described. Mexican President Fox has been more candid.

During a May 16, 2002 speech in Madrid, Fox boasted: “In the last few months we have managed to achieve an improvement in the situation of many Mexicans in [the United States], regardless of their migratory status, through schemes that have permitted them access to health and education systems, identity documents, as well as the full respect for their human rights.” Here Fox referred to the incremental legalization illegal Mexican immigrants achieved when various state and local governments began to accept matricula consular cards as official ID. Those cards are issued by Mexican consulates without regard to the recipient’s legal status. Easily counterfeited, the matricula cards give illegal aliens access to employment, health benefits, banking services and — in some states — driver’s licenses.

In the Madrid speech, Fox explained that demolishing the distinction between legal and illegal Mexican immigrants is necessary in order to advance the merger of the U.S. and Mexico: “Eventually our long-range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada, our other regional partner, an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union, with the goal of attending to future themes [such as] the future prosperity of North America, and the movement of capital, goods, services, and persons.” Such movement of persons would no longer be “immigration” or “emigration” — terms referring to the crossing of international borders — but merely “migration” within one vast political entity. In other words: goodbye to U.S. citizenship.

Significantly, in his remarks at the January 12 press conference in Monterrey, Fox pointedly, and repeatedly, used the term “migration” to refer to the Bush plan, referring variously to “that migration topic,” “the migration matters,” “this migration proposal,” the “migration flow,” and so on. Tellingly, he also referred to “the leaders of the countries of America” — rather than to national leaders of separate and independent nations.

Patient Persistence

Amnesty for illegal aliens, a central piece in the agenda for hemispheric consolidation, would almost certainly have been announced long ago were it not for 9-11 — an event that demonstrated, in a tragic and lethal fashion, the mortal danger resulting from the failure to secure our borders.

However, merger-minded elites in both the U.S. and Mexico regrouped and continued their campaign for amnesty. Last fall, a coalition of radical groups — including the Communist Party — organized the “Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.” In that campaign, busloads of illegal aliens were brought to Washington to lobby on behalf of amnesty.

Vicente Fox did his part by visiting three southwestern states — Texas, Arizona and New Mexico — to lobby state legislatures to support the amnesty drive. “We share nation and language,” Fox told the New Mexico legislature. “In addition to our geographical vicinity, we are united by inseparable bonds, history, values and interests.... We must join together.... You need Mexico and Mexicans, and we need you.”

Acting as the supposed leader of “Mexicans living abroad” (a group that, according to the Mexican government, includes Americans of Mexican ancestry born in this country), Fox demanded that lawmakers in this country “facilitate access to health care and education services for all those who share our border.... Without this, it is impossible to think about the path to greater integration and shared prosperity.”

Open borders, amnesty for illegals, subsidies for Mexico’s economy, exporting manufacturing capacity south of the border, expanded welfare benefits for foreigners who entered our nation illegally — these are all part of the same seamless design. As Fox himself put it, that design is the “integration” of the U.S. and Mexico into a hemisphere-wide political unit.

Many observers believe that the Bush amnesty plan is part of a political strategy aimed at courting the Hispanic vote — which would be a shockingly cynical and opportunistic venture. But the truth is even worse: President Bush is consciously betraying our nation by undermining our borders, our sovereignty, and the integrity of our laws. And he is doing this as part of a campaign that will — if successful — result in an end to our national independence and our constitutional order.

Every American worthy of the name must not accept this incredible betrayal — and must not allow it to be consummated.

Let's flesh it out a bit

Part II — 1983
The John Birch Society's survey entitled The Insiders was released early in 1979. Over twelve hundred copies were purchased and put into use by members in a matter of months. Several hundred thousand copies of the printed text, in booklet form, were also purchased and distributed throughout the nation. In addition, reprint permission was granted to several other publishers, and their efforts undoubtedly doubled the readership of this analysis of the powerful few who dictate American policy.
It is impossible to know how many Americans saw or read The Insiders or one of the many similar treatises which paralleled it or were stimulated by it. Millions, for sure. Tens of millions, most likely.
By early 1980, the accumulated exposure of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, the two most identifiable Insider organizations, had begun to produce some dramatic effects. For one, these organizations became well enough known to be "hot topics" on the campaign circuit. Informed voters from coast to coast, especially those who were disenchanted with the Carter Administration, began to seek candidates who were not tied to either of these groups.
In New Hampshire, for instance, where the first presidential primary is held every fourth February, most of the candidates for the Republican nomination were happily responding to voters that they were "not now and never have been" members of Davld Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission or his Council on Foreign Relations. But Republican candidates George Bush and John Anderson could not join in such a response because each had connections to both of these elitist organizations.
This issue was not confined solely to New Hampshire either. It was a nationwide phenomenon. Witness a February 8, 1980 article in the New York Times. (26) Reporting on a Ronald Reagan campaign trip through the South during the first week of February, the article stated that Mr. Reagan had attacked President Carter's foreign policy because he had found that "19 key members of the Administration are or have been members of the Trilateral Commission." It also noted that when Mr. Reagan was pressed to back up his charge, an aide listed the names of President Carter, Vice President Mondale, Secretary of State Vance, Secretary of Defense Brown, and fifteen other Carter officials.
The report further stated that Reagan advisor Edwin Meese told the reporters: "...all of these people come out of an international economic-industrial organization with a pattern of thinking on world affairs." He made the very interesting comment that their influence led to a "softening" of our nation's defense capability. Both he and Mr. Reagan could have added that practically all of these Carter Administration officials were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations. But neither chose to do so.

Anti-Elitist Reversals
The history of that period shows that Ronald Reagan exploited this issue very capably. On February 26th, in New Hampshire where the matter had become the deciding issue in the primary, voters gave him a lopsided victory. His strong showing and the correspondingly weak showing by George Bush delighted the nation's conservatives and set a pattern for future victories that carried Mr. Reagan all the way to the White House.
But something else happened on February 26, 1980 that should have raised many more eyebrows than it did. On the very day that Ronald Reagan convincingly won the nation's first primary, he replaced his campaign manager with longtime Council on Foreign Relations member William J. Casey. Mr. Casey served as the Reagan campaign manager for the balance of the campaign, and was later rewarded with an appointment as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The selection of William J. Casey in the strategically important position of campaign manager was highly significant. He is a New York lawyer who served the Nixon Administration in several positions including Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Chairman of the Export-Import Bank. In those two posts especially, he gained a reputation as a crusader for U.S. taxpayer-financed aid and trade with communist nations.
During this same period, while serving as an official of the State Department, Casey declared in a public speech given in Garden City, New York, that he favored U.S. policies leading to interdependence among nations and to the sacrificing of our nation's independence. (27) These attitudes are thoroughly in agreement with the long-term objectives of the Insiders, but are not at all consistent with the public positions taken by Mr. Reagan. But very few made note of the Casey appointment because very few knew anything about Mr. Casey.
With CFR member William J. Casey on the team, the Reagan campaign was still able to focus attention on the Trilateral Commission and on fellow Republican George Bush's ties to it. But nothing was said about the older, larger, and more dangerously influential Council on Foreign Relations.

Rockefeller Ties
In April 1980, Mr. Reagan told an interviewer from the Christian Science Monitor (28) that he would shun the directions of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. But George Bush, who had recently resigned both from the Trilateral Commission and from the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, could not shake the stigma of his Insider connection.
In Florida, understanding about the Trilateral Commission led to widespread use of a political advertisement which claimed, "The same people who gave you Jimmy Carter want now to give you George Bush." (29) An identical ad appeared in Texas. The Reagan bandwagon, propelled in part by its attack on the Insiders, began to score one primary victory after another.
Eventually, Ronald Reagan convincingly won the Republican nomination. Conservatives across the nation were delighted That is, they were delighted until he shocked his supporters by selecting George Bush as his running mate. George Bush was the very epitome of the Insider Establishment type that had made so many of these people strong Reagan backers in the first place. That night, at the Republican convention, the word "betrayal" was in common usage.
Ronald Reagan had repeatedly and publicly promised that he would pick a running mate who shared his well-known conservative views. But, of all the Republicans available, he picked the man who was the darling of the Rockefellers. Nor was the Rockefeller-Bush relationship any secret.
Campaign finance information had already revealed that prior to December 31,1979, the Bush for President campaign had received individual $1,000 contributions (the highest amount allowed by law) from David Rockefeller, Edwin Rockefeller, Helen Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, Mary Rockefeller, Godfrey Rockefeller, and several other Rockefeller relatives and employees.
Staunch Reagan supporters frantically tried to stop the Bush nomination. But political considerations quickly forced them to go along. One after another, they began to state that their man was still at the top of the ticket. "It was Reagan-Bush, not Bush-Reagan," they said. But all had to admit that the issue of Trilateral domination of the Carter Administration could hardly be used with a Trilateralist veteran like Bush on the ticket.
From the time William Casey joined the Reagan team in February, the issue of CFR domination of America could not be used. And when George Bush was tapped as the Reagan running mate, the Trilateral issue was also dead. Only a very few realized that when those two issues were lost, the hope that future President Reagan would keep Insiders from key positions in government was also lost.
As the summer of 1980 faded into fall, Insiders were showing up in every conceivable part of the Reagan campaign. In September. a casual "Prelude to Victory" party was given by the Reagans at their rented East Coast home in Middleburg, Virginia. A photo taken at the party shows that the place of honor, at Mr. Reagan's immediate right, was given to none other than David Rockefeller, the leader of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission. Guests at this party included Dr. Henry Kissinger and other CFR and Trilateral members. (30)
Two weeks before the election, the front page of the New York Times carried a photo showing the future President campaigning in Cincinnati. Alongside him as his foreign policy advisors who the President said would answer questions for him, were Senator Howard Baker, former Ambassador Anne Armstrong, and former Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger. All were members of either the CFR or the Trilateral Commission or both. (31)

Stacking the Cabinet
Election Day 1980 produced a Reagan landslide. Caught up in misguided euphoria, conservatives began talking about the return of fiscal and diplomatic sanity to the federal government. But the shock they felt when their man had chosen George Bush as his running mate returned when President-elect Reagan announced his selections for the new cabinet.
For Secretary of State, he chose Alexander Haig, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. For Secretary of the Treasury, Donald Regan, and for Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige — both members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Back in February, Edwin Meese had told reporters that Mr. Reagan opposed the Trilateral Commission because the organization's influence led to a "softening of defense." Yet, he chose for his Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, a member of the Trilateral Commission. Men from the same Insider team were still in power!Five months after Mr. Reagan had been sworn in as President, the Council on Foreign Relations noted in its Annual Report that 257 of its members were serving as U.S. government officials As in previous administrations, these individuals filled many of the important Assistant Secretary and Deputy Secretary posts at the State Department, Defense Department, Treasury Department, and so on.
For the critically important post of White House Chief of Staff, Mr. Reagan named James Baker III. The White House Chief of Staff determines who gets to see the President, what reading material will appear on his desk, and what his policy options might be on any given situation. But James Baker had fought against Ronald Reagan as the campaign manager for George Bush in 1980, and as a campaign staffer for Gerald Ford in 1976. He is a confirmed liberal who was an opponent of the philosophy enunciated by Mr. Reagan during the 1980 campaign. In his White House post, he leads a team of like-minded men who have virtually isolated the President from the many conservatives who supported his election bid.

Policy Reversals
As President, Mr. Reagan has been given the image of a tough anti-communist and a frugal budget-cutter. But the images do not hold up under close scrutiny. Only one year after taking office, he acquiesced in the taxpayer-funded bailout of Poland's indebtedness to large international banks. Even worse, he skirted the law which mandates that any nation in such financial difficulty must be formally declared in default before the U.S. government could assume its debts. What made this action doubly revealing was that it occurred at the very time that thousands of Polish citizens had been incarcerated in a typical communist crackdown against even a slight semblance of freedom.
During 1981 and 1982, Ronald Reagan personally signed authorizations for the U.S. Export-Import Bank to finance nuclear steam turbines for communist Rumania and power generation equipment and a steel plant for communist China. (32) Tens of millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars are being provided for the industrialization of these Red tyrannies.
Also, Reagan Administration officials announced plans to sell arms to Red China; they told anti-communist businessmen in El Salvador that the U.S. would oppose efforts by any anti-communist Salvadorans to gain control of their country; and these same Administration officials refused to honor a pledge to supply Free Chinese on Taiwan with the fighter planes deemed necessary by the Chinese for defense.
When the President authorized a joint Peking-Washington communique which stated that military support for the Free Chinese is no longer our nation's "long term policy," even CFR member Dan Rather of CBS News called the document a startling reversal of frequently stated Reagan rhetoric.
On the domestic front, the record of reversals is just as dramatic. When Mr. Reagan campaigned against Jimmy Carter, he said he would cut two percent ($13 billion) from the fiscal 1981 budget which he would inherit if elected.33 He did nothing about that budget. Instead, he went to work immediately on the budget for the following year.
On February 18, 1981, in one of his first speeches to the nation as President, he delivered his own budget proposals. In that address, he stated: "It is important to note that we are reducing the rate of increase in taxing and spending. We are not attempting to cut either spending or taxing to a level below that which we presently have." (Emphasis added.) Yet, America was inundated with propaganda which had practically everyone believing that the Reagan economic package contained a substantial reduction in federal spending. Supposed budget cuts were labelled "massive," "drastic," "historic," and "cruel." But simple arithmetic showed that what President Reagan proposed for fiscal 1982 was $40 billion more spending than could be found in the 1981 budget. By the end of fiscal 1982, instead of being reduced as candidate Reagan had promised, that figure had grown to a $70 billion increase over spending from 1981. And the deficit associated with it soared to $110 billion.
But the Reagan reputation, which had been gained by his campaign oratory and by erroneous descriptions of his economic program, continued to delight conservatives and anger liberals. At a press conference one year later on March 31, 1982, a reporter asked the President to respond to the accusation that he cared little for the nation's poor. Part of his lengthy response included the following statement: "Maybe this is the time with all the talk that's going around to expose once and for all the fairy tale, the myth, that we somehow are, overall, cutting government spending.... We're not gutting the programs for the needy." He then heatedly boasted that federal spending for student loans, welfare, meals, rents, job training, and social security was higher than it had been under Jimmy Carter's last budget.
It was the Reagan-led conservative philosophy that won a decisive victory in the 1980 elections. Promises to get tough with the communists, to cut spending, to balance the budget, and to abolish the Departments of Education and Energy appealed to millions. But there has been no change in the government's direction. America continues to help communists and to harm our nation's anticommunist friends. Federal spending continues to grow, and deficits are skyrocketing. And the bureaucrats at the Departments of Education and Energy are still in place.

More Reagan Duplicity
At the halfway point of the Reagan four-year Presidential term, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office forecast budget deficits in the $150 billion range for the Reagan-directed fiscal years 1982, 1984 and 1985.34 Others insisted that the deficits would be even higher. The largest deficit in the nation's history, prior to the Reagan Administration, was $66 billion during the Ford years. Budget deficits, of course, translate into inflation, high interest rates, business slowdown, higher taxes, and unemployment. If federal spending were no more than federal revenue, if we had the benefit of a balanced budget in other words, some of these problems would be far less severe.
Shortly after he took office, Mr. Reagan twisted the arms of conservative senators and congressmen to get them to raise the ceiling on the national debt. Had he insisted on no further increases, the spiralling growth of government could have been checked. But instead, he used his influence to authorize more debt. Then he did the very same thing again eight months later, and again in 1982. As a result, interest on the debt alone grew to $117 billion for fiscal 1982.
In his State of the Union address on January 26, 1982, President Reagan again appealed to conservative Americans when he stated:
Raising taxes won't balance the budget. It will encourage more government spending and less private investment. Raising taxes will slow economic growth, reduce production and destroy future jobs.... So, I will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayers. I will seek no tax increases this year.
But, in August 1982, his actions again failed to parallel his rhetoric, and he used all the muscle he could muster to get Congress to pass the largest tax increase in our nation's history — $227 billion over five years. Opponents of this huge tax increase were the principled conservatives who had supported his election bid. The President's allies on the tax increases included big spending liberals like Senator Edward Kennedy and Speaker of the House "Tip" O'Neill.One result of the failure of the Reagan Administration to stand by the philosophy which brought the President to the White House is that conservatives everywhere have been blamed for the nation's woes. The congressional elections of 1982 amounted to a significant setback for the entire conservative movement. It seemed to many voters that the conservative program had been tried and found wanting. The truth is that the conservative program has yet to be tried. And the reason why it has not been tried is that the Insiders who surround Ronald Reagan are still in control.
The President himself supplied dramatic evidence of the existence of this control in comments he made about the $5.5 billion increase in gasoline taxes he signed into law on January 5,1983.
At his press conference on September 28,1982, he was asked: "Knowing of your great distaste for taxes and tax increases, can you assure the American people now that you will flatly rule out any tax increases, revenue enhancers or specifically an increase in the gasoline tax?"
Mr. Reagan responded: "Unless there's a palace coup and I'm overtaken or overthrown, no, I don't see the necessity for that. I see the necessity for more economies, more reductions in government spending...."
Less than three months later, he was vigorously promoting that increase in the gasoline tax. Call it a "palace coup" or whatever, the chain of events certainly suggests that someone other than the President is in control.

CFR Lineage
When CFR member Alexander Haig resigned as Secretary of State, CFR board member George P. Shultz was immediately named to replace him. During confirmation hearings, several senators and a number of political writers worried openly about what became known as "the Bechtel Connection." It seemed almost sinister to them to have Mr. Shultz join another former Bechtel Corporation executive, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, in the Reagan Cabinet's inner circle. But the senators and the supposedly hard-nosed, prying reporters were assured that there was no cause for alarm, and the matter died.
If a common corporate lineage of these two cabinet officials stirs concern, however, why is there no concern whatsoever over the fact that both are current members of the Council on Foreign Relations? And why not even a bare mention of the fact that Mr. Shultz would be the tenth Secretary of State in a row to hold CFR membership before or immediately after his tenure?
That the CFR owns the State Department can hardly be denied. But it can be ignored, which is precisely what has been going on in America for decades. The result? Most Americans remain totally unaware that the same powerful Insiders still control our government.
The Council on Foreign Relations rarely receives any press coverage. When confronted by adversaries, spokesmen for the organization repeatedly insist that it is merely a glorified study group which takes no positions and has no stated policy on foreign or domestic affairs. Rather, they insist, the CFR merely offers the diverse thinking given by important students of world affairs.
Yet, in an unusually frank article about the Council appearing in the New York Times for October 30, 1982, author Richard Bernstein obviously reflected the attitude of the CFR executives with whom he had spoken when he wrote: "It [the Council] numbers among its achievements much of the country's post World War II planning, the basic ideas for reconciliation with China and the framework for an end to military involvement in Indochina." (35)
If an organization takes no positions and has no stated policies, how can it list as "achievements" the shaping of some of our government's most important decisions over the past forty years? And what "achievements" these have been!
Post World War II planning has seen the United States descend from undisputed world leadership and the admiration of virtually all nations to being militarily threatened by the USSR and being despised by almost everyone else. Post World War II planning, for which the CFR claims credit, has seen the United States bumble its way from a defeat here to a setback there to an error in judgment somewhere else, while freedom has retreated everywhere and the world increasingly falls under communist control.
Reconciliation with China, rather than being an achievement, puts our nation in bed with the world's most brutal tyranny and is making us adversaries of the friendly, productive, free and honorable Chinese on Taiwan.
Nor is the disgraceful conclusion to our military involvement in Indochina anything of which to be proud. The end saw three nations — Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam — fall to typically brutal communist tyranny. The toll in human slaughter which had followed in the wake of our nation's pullout from Southeast Asia is indescribable. And those who said that these nations would not fall like dominoes are now strangely silent.It is highly significant to see this corroboration of our long-held belief that the CFR helps to shape our nation's policies. The policies noted in Bernstein's New York Times article have produced communist victories in every case. It is, therefore, even more significant to have this admission of the remarkable dovetailing of CFR and communist goals.

Double Jeopardy Elitism
The Trilateral Commission also attempts to convey the impression that it exists simply as a high-level discussion group which merely fosters economic and political cooperation. In 1982, the Commission released East-West Trade At A Crossroads which it quickly claimed contained only the views of its authors. (36)
This study recommends an increase in the trade with communist nations that fuels their military capabilities. Even after noting that the communist bloc nations are already heavily in debt to the West, and that previous trade had "produced no significant change in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union," the study also recommends supplying even more credit to stimulate greater trade. That credit, of course, is to be supplied by America's taxpayers. Nor is this any departure from previously held positions published by the Commission, or enunciated by its members.
What is most significant is that the recommendations given by this Trilateral Commission report are wholly in tune with the policies both of the U.S. government and the governments of the communist bloc nations. The American people do supply the communist nations with equipment, technology and credit, even while communist troops crush Poland and ravage Afghanistan, and while Soviet missiles are menacing the United States. What this Trilateral Commission publication recommends is no less consistent with Soviet desires than have been the so-called achievements of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Insiders of the Council on Foreign Relations and the newer Trilateral Commission have been controlling U.S. policy for decades. Unfortunately, these same individuals are still running things, despite the fact that the nomination and election of Ronald Reagan can be substantially attributed to a growing national revulsion at years of Insider control of this nation.

The Reagan Enigma
How then can one explain Ronald Reagan, the man on whom so many Americans placed such great hope? All we can say is that there are several theories to choose from, all of which fall in the realm of speculation.
One theory holds that he is a good man with fine instincts and excellent intentions, but is such a hater of confrontation that he has effectively been steamrolled by the non-conservatives who surround him.
Another theory holds that he was never a real conservative in the first place, but i8 a very capable orator who can read a good speech and produce a convincing image. The United Republicans of California published such a view in 1975, after having experienced all of the years that Ronald Reagan governed their state.(37)
One individual who shares the view that Mr. Reagan's political effect has never been conservative is Thomas Gale Moore of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In a syndicated column appearing in May 1981, (38) he discussed the much-publicized Reagan plans to cut spending and reduce bureaucratic regulation. But Mr. Moore then cautioned:
Skeptics find President Reagan's record as governor, often alluded to during the campaign, far from reassuring, especially since he used much the same rhetoric during his gubernatorial campaigns as appeared later during his campaign for the presidency.
While in Sacramento, he converted the state income tax into one of the most progressive in the nation, introduced withholding taxes, raised sales taxes, and sharply increased taxes on business.
While he was in office, California government expenditures increased faster than was typical of other states. Notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric, welfare expenditures alone escalated 61 percent in real terms during his two terms as governor.
That is hardly a record that should merit the label "conservative."
A third theory would excuse the President by holding that government is out of control in the fiscal sense, and that previously arranged international entanglements are so binding that not even a President can reverse runaway spending or call a halt to the increasingly obvious pro-communist stance taken by Washington. Happily, there are not too many who believe that this theory has any validity.
Finally, another theory, which is not inconsistent with certain aspects of the first two given above, is that, while Ronald Reagan is indeed the President, he is not the boss. Nor have a number of his predecessors really been in charge. Instead, the Insiders who really run America select a man whom they then permit to occupy the White House. But it is they who still run the government through like-minded individuals with whom they surround the President.
When Ronald Reagan announced that CFR member Donald Regan was to be his Secretary of the Treasury, an aide pointed out that Mr. Regan had donated $1,000, the maximum personal contribution allowed by law, to Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign. And that, in 1980, Donald Regan had also contributed to and raised money for left-wing congressmen who were engaged in tight races with conservative, Reagan-backed challengers. When an aide asked then President-elect Reagan why he would choose a man with such a background, Mr. Reagan is reported to have said: "Why didn't anyone tell me?" (39)
Why indeed did Ronald Reagan place Donald Regan in his cabinet? We suggest that he did not make the selection, but that the Insiders made it and have made many others, and that such a practice has been the rule rather than the exception for years.
In late 1960, when John Kennedy formed his cabinet, his selections included Robert McNamara for Secretary of Defense. At a gathering prior to their taking office, Mr. Kennedy had to be introduced to Mr. McNamara. Could he logically have picked a man to be Secretary of Defense whom he had never met? Or. is it not more reasonable to assume that the selection had been made for him? As Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara did a great deal to destroy our nation's then-unchallenged military advantage.
Time magazine reported that Richard Nixon selected Henry Kissinger for the White House post of Director of National Security based on having once met him at a cocktail party, and having read one of his books. Yet, CFR member Henry Kissinger was widely reported to have wept publicly when his patron Nelson Rockefeller lost the 1968 Republican nomination to Richard Nixon. Did Nixon choose Kissinger? Or, were the reports in U.S. News & World Report and elsewhere correct when they openly stated the Rockefellers placed Kissinger in the Nixon Administration's inner circle?

Routing the Insiders
There is, of course, nothing wrong with any President relying on the advice of others in selecting his top assistants. What is vitally important is whose advice is being followed, what type of individuals are named to the positions, and what they do with the power given to them.
It is our view, as we implied earlier, that a tightly knit and very powerful group has run America far more than has any recent President. Its effect on our nation has been horrible. We call this group The Insiders and we dare to label their activity a conspiracy — a conspiracy that must be exposed and routed if the disastrous national policies of the past several decades are to be reversed.The route that must be followed in order to accomplish this reversal must begin by placing the mass of evidence about this conspiracy before the American people. A well-informed public will then work to see that it is represented by men and women at the congressional level who will not be intimidated or corrupted by Insider influence in government, the press, the academic world, the big labor unions, or anywhere else. The Insiders may indeed have working control of the presidency and the mechanisms for choosing a president, but their clout at the congressional and senatorial levels is a great deal less and exists largely through bluff. In time, a sufficiently aware public can even break the Insiders' grip on the White House itself.
Will America continue on a path which amounts to fiscal suicide? Will our government continue to build and support communism everywhere, while it works simultaneously to destroy the few remaining anti-communist nations? The John Birch Society wants to put an end to Insider control of the policies of this nation. If we are to succeed, the active help of many more Americans is needed in a massive educational crusade. Whether or not you decide to help will count heavily toward whether the future for this nation will be enslavement or freedom.
The Insiders are hoping that you will do nothing. But true Americans everywhere are asking for and counting on your help. The best kind of help you can give is active support for and membership in the John Birch Society.

Footnotes
26. "Reagan Steps Up Attack on Carter's Foreign Policy," New York Times, February 8, 1980.
27. "The Reshaping of the World Economy," an address by Acting Secretary of State William J. Casey at Adelphi University, March 3,1974.
28. "The Strange Tale of How Ronald Reagan Sold 0ut to the Trilateralist-tinged Republican Establishment," Kevin Phillips, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, August 4, 1980.
29. Newsweek, March 24, 1980.
30. W Magazine, September 26, 1980.
31. "A Day With Reagan," James Reston, New York Times, October 27,1980; also, New York Times, October 21, 1980.
32. Federal Register, May 29, 1981, Page 28833; Federal Register, September 9, 1982, Page 39655.
33. Televised address of October 24,1980.
34. The Review Of The News, August 11,1982.
35. "An Elite Group On U.S. Policy Is Diversifying," Richard Bernstein, New York Times, October 30, 1982.
36. East-West Trade At A Crossroads, Robert V. Roosa, Armin Gutowski, and Michaya Matsukawa, Trilateral Commission, 1982.
37. Oppose Candidacy of Reagan, United Republicans of California, San Gabriel, California, May 4, 1975. The UROC Resolution said of Ronald Reagan that his "deeds have served the liberals"; he "doubled the State Budget and raised taxes"; he "promoted regional government contrary to his expressed philosophy of local government"; and he "betrayed conservative principles in the areas of property rights, income tax withholding, gun control, medicine, mental health, welfare reform, crime control, etc." 38.
38. "Did Liberal Hearts Beat Under GOP Conservative Clothing?" Thomas Gale Moore, Boston Herald-American, May 12, 1981. Mr. Moore also showed that, after World War II, government always grew at a faster pace while Republicans occupied the White House (Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford) than it grew while Democrats held the Presidency (Truman, Kennedy and Johnson). He wrote, "In fact, the evidence suggests that a voter who wants a liberal policy should vote Republican; if he yearns for a conservative policy, he should cast his ballot for a Democrat."
39. Regan At Treasury, Gary Allen, American Opinion, February, 1981.

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