Kidogo's World
We must go back to the system of constitutional money. We will not be able to hold our politicians accountable until we get rid of the Fed.
Howard Phillips
In order for civil government to be legitimate, it must be accountable. Our civil government today, especially the federal government, has become a law unto itself, rather than an instrument for the people who gave it the authority which it seeks to exercise.
Most decisions should be made in the private sector. Most decisions should be subject to either family accountability, or business accountability, or the market place, or whatever. Whenever decision-making authority is taken over by civil government, civil government must permit the people to restrain its activities, to overview and hold it accountable for its activities through the electoral process.
In our lifetime we have seen the transfer of power, not simply from the private sector to the public sector, but from the state and local level to the federal level, from elected officials to appointed officials, from appointed officials to career bureaucrats, and from career bureaucrats to the personnel of private organizations which are given money not only to implement policies determined upon by electorally accountable public officials, but to influence policies and in some cases to make policy.
There are several significant threats to the principle of accountability, to the idea that the government works for you, that the politicians are public servants accountable to you.
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Pension System
There are many things we could talk about. One thing we can talk about is the pension system. It is an outrage that any elected official should receive a pension for public service in an elected office. The service of an elected office is a temporary opportunity to give back to our society some of the benefits received from it. It is not supposed to be a career. One of the reasons we have unaccountable career politicians is that we pay them to be career politicians. We need to eliminate congressional pensions.
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Source of Congressional Pay
Another thing we need to do is to return control over congressional pay from the members of Congress themselves to the legislatures of the states which send them to Washington. Now I think the 17th Amendment was a pretty bad amendment. Until the 17th Amendment the state legislatures chose their U.S. Senators. This had a couple of advantages. One, it meant that you didn't have to be a millionaire to be elected to the U.S. Senate. You didn't have to accommodate big media to be elected to the Senate. Someone with no resources, by virtue of being well-respected by his colleagues in the legislature could win election to the Senate.
But more important than that, it meant that the states were represented in the United States Senate and that the states were able to exercise a restraining influence on the Federal government.
One of the oldest rules of life is that he who pays the piper calls the tune. The members of Congress set their own salaries and they call their own tune. But if the voters back home, through their state legislatures decide whether they will be paid and how much they will be paid, it will shift the balance of power back to the states and people and make it less likely that members of Congress will be a law unto themselves exempting themselves from many of the laws they pass.
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Civil Service System
We need to change the Civil Service System. I was in a major federal agency which had a multi-million-dollar budget directly and indirectly. I had 2000 civil servants who reported to me. Another 500,000 people worked for private organizations which the agency I headed funded, who worked for themselves. People of the agency only theoretically worked for me, because they worked to thwart everything that I did. They disagreed with everything I was doing. I was trying to close the agency down.
But the problem of the Civil Service System is the executive department heads in the government have no ability to hire or fire at will. The President of the United States has the ability to name only one or two thousand people, whereas there are millions of people in the Federal government, most of whom stay there no matter who the President is; and if they disagree with his policy, they can thwart it with impunity. Almost no one ever gets fired by the Federal government. Its very difficult to fire. They have all kinds of protections that prevent their getting fired. We do not have an accountable political system. They have the ability to spend money in whatever way they want, virtually without review or without accountability. ThatŐs the reality of the Civil Service System.
If you want evidence of the kinds of abuses to which it can lead, study the case of Aldrich Ames. Aldrich Ames is the person who, as head of Soviet Counter Intelligence Agency at the United Stated Central Intelligence Agency, betrayed you and me -- betrayed our country and turned over information to Moscow which led to the murder of 12 people and more who were intelligence assets of the United States. In any ordinary organization Aldrich Ames would have been fired years ago. He was known to be a drunkard, incompetent, and was known to publicly oppose the policies of the government of the United States. Indeed, in open conversations with his friends he called himself a Stalinist. Not just a liberal, he was a Stalinist. Instead of being fired he was promoted. This kind of thing happens every day in the government of the United States and is one reason the civil service system has to be eliminated or radically reformed.
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Non-Profit Corporations
Another threat to accountability is what I call government by non profit corporations. Most people do not even know that this exists. It was started during the days of the Great Society. Under the Great Society people in the federal executive branch bureaucracy were given the authority to create new organizations which were called non-profit corporations which had self-designated and self-perpetuated boards of governors, and they were able to give your tax dollars to these organizations.
These organizations were given the authority to do many things. They were given the authority to lobby, they were given the authority to organize, to bring law suits, to organize coalitions, to organize demonstrations, they were given the authority to promote their agenda -- one of them is National Gay Men's Health Crisis, which uses your tax dollars to run pro-homosexual advertisements in newspapers, television, and subways in New York City. Most people don't realize that is a tax-funded organization -- millions of dollars. There's an organization in California called Coyote, which is a union of prostitutes which received a grant of about $200,000 during the Bush administration. The reason it received the money is that prostitutes had experience in dealing with people who had problems with AIDS, so they were given money to teach people about making their sexual practices less hazardous. On their agenda, however, abstinence was nowhere mentioned. Monogamy was nowhere mentioned. This was funded by Ronald Reagan and George Bush. There are hundreds of similar organizations.
These kinds of organizations have received scores and scores of millions of dollars. In the early 1980s the Urban Institute, which is itself a government-subsidized non-profit corporation, reported that then -- this was in '82 or '83 -- $40 billion dollars a year out of the federal treasury was being shared by more than than 100,000 non-profit groups. These groups, in turn, used their large staff to lobby for more federal grants. And these entities are in every federal department and agency, some in the State Department, the Transportation Department, the Department of Urban Development, Small Business Administration, National Endowment for the Arts, Legal Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control É.
And these organizations are a law unto themselves. They have more influence on public policy in many cases than our elected Senators and Congressmen. And they are able to use the courts to advance their agenda. They are able to use the media to advance their agenda.
We need to cut off their money -- lock, stock, and barrel. It is a very simple thing to do. We need only to get Presidents who will veto the appropriations. But do you know something? All the Presidents we have had, have not only not cut off their money, they have proposed it. The money for them has been in the budgets of Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. We haven't had a President who has even tried to cut off their money. So that's another threat to accountability which undergirds our political system.
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Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve is a threat to accountability. The framers of the Constitution had no provision for a private organization to kill trees and put green ink on paper and call it money. Under the Constitution of the United States, Congress was granted the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof; and the reason they talked about coining money, rather than creating Federal Reserve Notes and other forms of paper, was that money was intended to be apolitical. It was intended to have a value by weight. The Federal Reserve must be eliminated. We must go back to the system of constitutional money. We will not be able to hold our politicians accountable until we get rid of the Fed.
The Fed is an instrument through which greedy people, with no respect for your rights, manipulate the political process and make it harder for this to be a country of independent families and free individuals. The Federal Reserve is one of the biggest dangers ever created, and it has a practical impact. This, my friends, is a fact.
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Runaway Judiciary
Another threat is the run-away judiciary. The judiciary has no right to make laws. The judiciary has no right to disregard the oath which judges take under the Constitution and substitute its opinions for the opinions of the people as well as legislators.
But the good news is that you have as much right to interpret the Constitution of the United States as does the Chief Justice. Every state legislator has this right, every governor, every member of Congress. The Supreme Court and the lower courts have no monopoly in terms of determining what the meaning of the Constitution of the United States is.
The decisions of our Federal courts are binding only on the parties to the case. Rowe v. Wade was binding on Rowe and was binding on Wade but on none other. That's an important principle to remember. It's a principle which is true. The Supreme Court does not have the power to overrule the Constitution. It does not have the power to overrule you. It only has jurisdiction over the parties to the case.
Another interesting fact: under the Constitution of the United States the only court which has organic or permanent standing is the Supreme Court of the United States. All the inferior courts, every federal court of appeals, every federal district court -- every one of them is a creature of statute. That which is created by statute can be abolished by statute. They can also be abolished by having their money cut off. We do not have to live with unconstitutional judges. We can cut off their money, we can throw them out on their ear.
There is an illusion that federal judges have life tenure. That certainly isn't true. Nothing in the Constitution grants life tenure to federal judges. It says they shall serve during good behavior. "Good behavior" is very different from "life tenure." "Good behavior" was not intended by the framers to be "life tenure." Read the debates at the convention and you'll see that is the case.
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Government Land Ownership
The Constitution gives the federal government the power to own land for two purposes only. One, to maintain a federal district -- the District of Columbia, and two, to maintain necessary military facilities.
But do you know that in some states the federal government owns 80 to 90% of the land? States like Nevada, like Utah. Even in California they just declared another umpteen millions of acres off limits to the public.
What the federal government is doing is emulating the royal family's role. There are certain lands that belong to the king and no one can hunt there without the king's permission. No one can travel there without the king's permission. The government of the United States is assuming an illicit monarchical position which is totally beyond the Constitution. The explicit language in the Constitution prohibits the government of the United States from controlling any land except for those two purposes. That land has to be returned to the states and to the people.
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Regulatory Agencies
Regulatory agencies: Every regulatory agency from the Internal Revenue Service to the Federal Communication Commission is unconstitutional. Under the Constitution of the United States, Article I, reads, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." All legislative powers. Judges may not have legislative powers. Regulatory agencies may not have legislative powers. If there is a regulatory function formed at the federal level it's got to be performed by people whom you can hold accountable at the ballot box. That is why that language is so clear in the Constitution.
A case in point is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I don't favor racial discrimination. There's not a bigoted bone in my body. But I do oppose Federal Government telling private individuals, families, and businesses who they can hire, who they can fire, what they can do in the work place. The very existence of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is an affront to the Constitution. It should be abolished. It has no right to exist. It is a disgrace. Again, funding for it was increased by Republican Presidents who were afraid of being criticized as being against quotas and equal employment opportunity.
The threat to ghetto-ize American religion -- the threat to deny freedom of religious speech in the work place -- is one of the most outrageous and offensive plans ever considered by any government agency. Even though Congress has expressed opposition to these outrageous policies the bureaucrats are very persistent. It's like cancer. Unless you eliminate the cancer you die. It isnŐt enough to say "You canŐt pass this regulation." It isn't enough to cut back their money. You must eliminate the agency, otherwise they will haunt your house.
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Foreign Aid
In May [1991], I led a 40-person Baltic Liberation Tour to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, where all those anti-Communists whom we met pleaded with us not to delay their day of self-determination by assigning funds to the central government of the Soviet Union.
The Baltic leaders viewed Gorbachev not as a great reformer but as an instrument of tyranny, whose sweet smiles masked the brutal, murderous activities of the Red Army, the KGB, the Black Berets and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
They pointed out that with an official ruble to dollar exchange rate of at least 32 to one, every dollar of aid to Moscow in fact provided the Soviet Nomenklatura more than $32 of leverage over the lives of occupied peoples, who each seldom earned more than 300 rubles per month.
[And nowhere does the Constitution authorize any expenditure for foreign aid.]
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New World Order
In recent years there has been another growing threat to the accountability of our institutions. This is one of the most serious threats we have ever faced. This is the threat of the New World Order. The New World Order began to take form during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson who was instrumental in creating the League of Nations. Even though the United States did not join it, we supported it in many ways, and it had an effect on our institutions. After World War II the initial New World Order institutions were created, the World Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund which came out of something called Bretton Woods, and the United Nations.
Of course, while the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues, and the Constitution of the United States was written by the great patriots assembled in Philadelphia, the charter of the United Nations was written by a Soviet spy named Alger Hiss and was given force and effect with the signature not just of Franklin Roosevelt but of Joseph Stalin. I don't think any of us should have to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Nations. I don't think any of our young people should fight for any flag but the stars and stripes. I don't believe that we should ever send our military forces beyond our borders for any purpose except those purposes spelled out in the Constitution.
Under the Constitution the President can licitly call out the militia for only three purposes. One: to uphold the Constitution. Two: to suppress insurrection. Three: to repel foreign invasion.
It is unconstitutional for our troops to serve under UN direction, in Macedonia, in Bosnia, Rwanda or any of the other places around the world to which they have been sent and to which they are about to be assigned. It is completely and totally unconstitutional. Bill Clinton is acting unconstitutionally when he assigns U.S. troops in the manner in which he has been assigning them. Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution says "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the army and the navy of the United States and of the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the United States." So Bill Clinton does not act as Commander in Chief, and he loses his authority as Commander in Chief, when he purports to assign the defense forces of the United States to the service of the United Nations. That is unconstitutional, and there is no legitimate basis for sending our troops to Macedonia, to Rwanda, or to any such place.
The New World Order, through NAFTA, the dangerous new world trade organization, usurps our liberties, by taking control over money from your taxes for federal trade, and by taking control over decisions which should be made by members of Congress and state legislatures of the United States.
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World Trade Organization
Under the World Trade Organization Rwanda and Haiti would have twice as many votes as the United States of America. They would be able to join with other countries in overturning the laws of the United States of America and in proposing sanctions on our country. Yet the World Trade Organization agreement has been endorsed by every one of the 50 governors and by the leaders of both major political parties in Washington, D.C.
When the framers declared our independence they were declaring our nation because they understood that nationhood was a prerequisite to liberty. Your government cannot protect your liberties if your government surrenders its decision making powers to foreign entities which are beyond accountability to you.
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UN Convention on Rights of Child
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is horrendous. Almost all the treaties which are being considered are horrendous. Just as the World Trade Organization permits international entities to interfere with decisions that are to be made by Congress or the private sector, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child would establish a new form of law governing parent/child relationships. And it would seek to superimpose the authority not just for the nation state, but for international bureaucracies that would come against the powers of the fathers and mothers. My son, who works for Home School Legal Defense Association, has written a paper critiquing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; and if you would like a copy of it leave me your name and address.
There are a lot of terrible treaties that have been ratified, or may soon be ratified. The Genocide Convention was ratified during the Reagan administration; it had been in the bowels of Congress since the Truman years. Reagan raised it up and got it ratified.
Reagan correctly fought something called the UN Law of the Sea Treaty which would give international bodies control over access to the bottom of the sea. Clinton has revived that treaty and it is going to be debated in Congress this fall.
I believe that the President of the United States has the right to disregard treaties which transgress against the Constitution.
Look at Article VI. It says this ...
The Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.
Any treaty which transgresses the Constitution of the United States takes authority from the government of the United States which the government has no right to give. This is unconstitutional. The government of the United States has no right to surrender anything which it has not been given. You cannot give the federal government the right of control over your family. If the government purports to surrender that control to the UN, even if that covenant is ratified by the US Senate and is supported by every other country in the world, all we need is a President who will say that their writ does not run in the United States of America. That's what we need.
All these threats to accountability exist, and they constitute in the aggregate a crisis in accountability. Unless we deal with this crisis in accountability properly, what was once a free and independent nation will no longer be so in our lifetime Ń perhaps by the end of the century.
To continue: III Debt Crisis
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