Posted on 05/13/2003 11:50:17 PM PDT by Republican_Strategist
BUSH BLUNDERS ARE HARD TO KEEP UP WITH
By Pastor Chuck Baldwin May 12, 2003 NewsWithViews.com The foibles and follies of this administration are too numerous to count. With the exception of Monica Lewinsky, they rival anything in the previous administration. Of course, most neocons refuse to notice. Therefore, this column will also be ignored. However, for those who are interested in the truth, here are some of the latest examples of Bush's blunders: *Bush threw his support behind a liberal Republican who supports increased taxes, abortion and additional gun control to be a Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. That man is Illinois Governor Jim Edgar. Thankfully, Edgar decided to not seek the nomination, but that didn't stop Bush from doing his best to send another liberal to Washington, D.C. Next, watch for Bush to do the same thing in California. *Bush continues his support for the Clinton-Gore gun ban enacted back in 1994. Despite objections from gun groups, including the National Rifle Association, the President is determined to re-institute the so-called "assault weapons" ban that is scheduled to sunset next year. So much for Bush being "pro-gun." *As Commander-In-Chief, President Bush has the authority to establish guidelines and policies for our nation's military. When Bill Clinton became President, he implemented the infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy allowing homosexuals to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Bush has continued that policy. Clinton also introduced women to front-line combat roles. And true to form, Bush continues this reprehensible Clinton policy. In fact, one would be extremely hard-pressed to find any Clinton policy that Bush has reversed! I can't think of a single one. *NAFTA and GATT came into existence early in the Clinton administration. Bush continues those polices and even wants to expand them. He has proposed expanding this agreement throughout the Americas and is now calling for a Mideast Free Trade agreement. Say good-bye to more American jobs; say hello to more foreign goods and to more foreign workers. *Bush is determined to oversee the creation of a Palestinian state. After sending American soldiers to fight and die in an undeclared war against Iraq, Bush wants to create another such country by giving the P.L.O. radicals their own nation. Clinton wanted to do the same thing, of course, but was shouted down by conservatives. Today, those same conservatives sit mute and dumb as Bush sets about to finish what Clinton started. *Speaking of finishing what Clinton started, Bush successfully created the Department of Homeland Security and the totalitarian-laced USA Patriot Act. There is an even more egregious version currently worming its way into law. All this was the brainchild of Bill Clinton, of course. However, he could not accomplish his pernicious plans because conservatives and Republicans would not support them. Now they do. *Bush is likely to invoke Executive Privilege in order to continue the cover-up about what he and other top government leaders knew prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some thirty days prior to the attacks, Bush reportedly received a CIA Intelligence Report which warned, "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning." More details are leaking out almost daily. A Democratic Presidential contender, Senator Bob Graham of Florida, says Bush knows much more than he is telling and is demanding that the administration come clean about what really took place. Before that happens, however, Bush will claim Executive Privilege and the truth will be covered up once again. |
No, the Farm Bill was loaded with grade A pork, but that's a far cry from collectivism.
This is Collectivism.
When Vladimir Ilych Lenin (1870-1924) and the Bolshevik party seized control of Russia in 1917, they gradually introduced collectivization. That is, property was seized from its owners without compensation, and consolidated into collectives supposedly owned by the state and controlled by the people. Workers in each factory or company were organized into (compulsory) collectives, supposedly with some power and input into how the factory or company would operate. In fact, they were usually organized into sham unions, and the factory or company became a totally-controlled part of the command economy of the Bolshevik-controlled state. Real criticism of the management of the enterprise was usually not allowed. Criticism was dangerous.
This system worked so badly in practice that in 1921 Lenin retreated from it. War Communism, as the policy was called, had been introduced partly to fight White opposition to the Revolution but mostly for ideological reasons. (The German philosopher and economist Karl Marx (1818-1883) had believed that capitalist production was exploitive.) War Communism reduced industrial production to one-seventh of what it had been before the Revolution and caused a famine that took five million lives. Like Castro five decades later, Lenin thus announced a New Economic Policy (1921-1928) that allowed a certain amount of small-scale capitalism.
The New Economic Policy worked a bit better. It produced some goods, but was rather corrupt. By the late 1920s Lenin's successor Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) felt it wasn't working. He was unhappy with having reintroduced some capitalistic features. !n 1928 Stalin again abolished capitalism.
Collectivization returned to high gear in the early 1930s when Stalin collectivized Soviet agriculture. This ruthless, merciless policy caused the death of perhaps 16,000,000 people, many by execution but most by famine. About nine million were Ukrainians.
The Soviets tried to hide the results of the collectivization: famine, starvation, and death. But word eventually leaked to the West.
Since then collectivization has had a terrible reputation. The failures of collectivist agriculture and the similar failures of industrial collectivization have destroyed collectivism in the minds of most people.
But this did not occur all at once. For decades the Soviets introduced forced collectivization into the Eastern European countries that fell into their orbit. The Chinese under Mao Zedong introduced collectivization into China as soon as they had taken power in 1947. They executed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of landlords and capitalists, and proceeded to create communes. These succeeded about as well as the Soviet ones, i.e., not at all. (If there is one thing the 20th century learned, it is -- Don't collectivize agriculture!)
Forced collectivization of farms and industrial enterprises worked so badly that by 1960 the Soviets were giving bonuses to workers and factories who produced beyond the quota established in the Five-Year Plan. In some collectivized enterprises throughout the Soviet bloc, management sometimes tried to get around central organization and to introduce a certain amount of freedom in production. Most of the Soviet Union's food came from private plots tended by caring farmers, though this land was actually only a minor fraction of the acreage devoted to agriculture in the collectives. Agricultural collectives were vastly unproductive.
Thus in the 1980s and 1990s Hungary quietly began decollectivizing numerous enterprises. Even communist Cuba under Fidel Castro (19 - ) began to allow small businesses.
GOTCHA.
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