The Ford Motor Company just posted a $2.7 billion profit for 2009, which, overall, was the worst year on record for the auto industry. Total US vehicle sales plunged 21% last year.

To survive such an awful year, Chrysler and General Motors took the “easy” way out – grabbing billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up their bad management. In doing so, they accepted government control of their companies, even suffering the humiliation of Obama firing the head of GM. That earned the company the moniker – Government Motors. Both of these companies now live under the threat that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will soon be designing their cars. Yea – that’ll work.

Even though Ford had suffered the same outrageous losses in previous years as GM and Chrysler, Ford refused government money, deciding instead to save its own skin.

Consumers liked that decision and that has done more to help Ford’s recovery than anything else. Consumers wanted to let the marked decide if car manufactures should survive or not.  Yet another sign that the revolution taking place in America is real.

Think how many cars all of the automakers could have sold if they weren’t shackled under government regulations covering everything from gas mileage to CO2 emissions. Those regulations force up the cost of cars by the thousands of dollars. Again, the market should decide if it’s important to consumers to have such cars or not. Had that been the case, neither GM or Chrysler would have needed a bailout. But government is afraid to let individual Americans make such decisions.

Moreover, if government would get out of the energy business more cars could be sold with gas prices hovering below a dollar per gallon. It could happen if oil companies weren’t blocked from drilling American oil for Americans and if they were allowed to build new refineries (none have been built since the 1970s). But government potentates won’t allow it, dictating instead that taxpayer money be spent on alternative fuels that simply do not exist in quantities enough to sustain us.

Americans are furious over the massive “Changes” toward government control of the Obama Administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress, be it health care or bailouts. Americans want limited government, free markets and politicians who listen. Ford listened and it’s reaping the benefits. Well done.

Many politicians are asking the question today: “Why are the American People so angry?” The following may lend a clue to the clueless.

According to the annual “Index on Economic Freedom,” produced by the Heritage Foundation, the United States now ranks 8^th, just behind Canada. That’s a drop of two full points since last year, and the largest drop of all nations in overall economic freedom.  .

The index ranking is based on 10 measures of economic openness, regulatory efficiency, the rule of law, and competitiveness. The basic principles of economic freedom emphasized in the index are individual empowerment, equitable treatment and the promotion of competition.

According to the Heritage Index, the U.S. lost ground in seven of the ten categories. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the massive bailouts, government intervention in such things are the auto and banking industries, and runaway environmental protection policies.

While the United States is among the “most declined” nations, Mexico ranks among the “most improved.” The United States was once the bastion of economic and personal freedom for its citizens, making it the wealthiest economy and the highest standard of living in the world. Today, it has chosen to abandon that model of freedom, instead seeking economic security through government programs and controls.

As a result, our nation stands on the edge of economic collapse; more than 10% of our people are out of work; costs are skyrocketing, and goods and services are becoming harder to come by.

Socialism does not work. It robs the fruits of labor from one citizen to fill the pockets of another. It kills incentive. It demoralizes industrious people. And it leads to misery. Socialism combined with Fascist Corporatism (as in the current trend toward Public/Private Partnerships) creates government-sanctioned monopolies, giving the corporations the reins of power over government at the expense of the people. That is the model America has now chosen to follow.

The United States is on a path to destruction. In one year it’s dropped two more points toward totalitarianism. The people feel the pain and are furious about it. And yet, the Obama Administration still thinks the anger and protests are just false products of the Republicans and Fox News. Astonishing.

See the complete Economic Freedom Index at www.heritage.org/index.

It has been an amazing year, watching the once-powerful global warming movement virtually collapse into scandal and disrepute as the “climategate” revelations of data tampering continue to grow.

I have written many times on these pages that “there is no man-made global warming.” The powerful global warming lobby has attacked its opponents of “cooler heads” scientists who have demanded facts rather than political agendas. The Global Warming alarmists have blocked grants from being given to researchers that dispute their findings that the earth is being destroyed by human civilization. They have intimidated science publications that dare print opposing reports. They have even called for “Nureumberg-style show trials for anyone who dares disagree with them.

And so it was for almost two decades. However, just a couple of years ago a group of courageous scientists were given the opportunity to have their say, in opposition to the alarmists strong-arm tactics. First through congressional hearings chaired by U.S. Senate Environment Committee Chairman James Inhofe. Those hearings were the first time the Global Warming “skeptics” were given a public voice. The results were astounding. Cracks began to surface in the once mighty global warming juggernaut.

Then the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank sponsored the first ever Climate Change conference featuring the “skeptics” viewpoint. More than 700 of them gathered in New York City to tell the world of their findings that clearly disputed the claims of global warming. That conference and the Senate hearings started a lively debate between the two sides. No longer could the acolytes of Al Gore claim consensus. Far from it. In a short time the tide began to turn. Global warming was losing its stranglehold on policy. Legislation like Cap and Trade, once considered unstoppable, was suddenly derailed.

Then came the December, 2009 Climategate scandal. On the eve of the most important International Climate Change conference in history, in which the final provisions for world-wide environmental restrictions were to be imposed on every nation in the world, scandal erupted. Ten years worth of e-mail correspondence among the leading Climate Change proponents revealed devastating details of manipulation of research data for the purpose of supporting a cynical political agenda based on global warming propaganda. The e-mails, in fact, revealed precisely what the “skeptics” had been claiming all along, that climate change had very little to do with environmental protection – and everything to do with the creation of a new global economic system intent on wealth redistribution. And the climate change walls came tumbling down.

Now, in May, 2010, in Chicago, the Heartland Institute is going to hold its 4^th International Climate Change Conference – the first since the Climategate scandal was revealed. This event may well be the final nail in global warming’s coffin.

You can be there to witness history. The American Policy Center and the DeWeese Report are proud to be co-sponsors of this historic event. And I invite you to join me at this incredible event. Mingle and meet with more than 900 scientists and policy makers who have stood up to the global warming alarmists. You will not want to miss the address by Lord Christopher Monckton, the man who has challenged Al Gore to a debate on the issue, a “anywhere, anytime.” And you will hear from scientists like Dr. Fred Singer and Dr. Patrick Michaels, who have fought right from the beginning against the lies of the global warming alarmists. The speaker lists includes more than 70 scientists, economists and policy experts, including two former astronauts.

For more information and registration, contact the Heartland Institute by phone: 312-377-4000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              312-377-4000      end_of_the_skype_highlighting or at www.heartland.org.

Here is the background on the global warming debate and the conference.

Background

Putting an End to Global Warming Alarmism

Global warming is the most important environmental issue of our time. If those who are sounding the alarm about a possible climate catastrophe are right, then governments must raise energy costs directly, with taxes, or indirectly, with mandates and subsidies, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year in wealth or economic activity will be sucked up and redistributed by governments.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions even modestly is estimated to cost the average household in the U.S. approximately $3,372 per year and would destroy 2.4 million jobs. Electricity prices would double, and manufacturers would move their factories to places such as China and India that have cheaper energy and fewer environmental regulations.

If global warming is indeed a crisis, billions of dollars taken from taxpayers will flow into the coffers of radical environmental groups, giving them the resources and stature to implement other parts of their anti-technology, anti-business agenda. None of that money will go to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This explains the paradox that even though the scientific community is deeply divided over the causes and consequences of global warming, every single environmental advocacy group in the U.S. (and probably the world) believes it is a crisis.

Global Warming Is Not a Crisis

But global warming is not, in fact, a crisis. Here’s how we know this:

• Since 2007, more than 31,072 American scientists, including 9,021 with PhDs, have signed the a petition which says, in part, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

• A 2003 international survey of climate scientists (with 530 responding) found only 9.4 percent “strongly agreed” and 25.3 percent “agreed” with the statement “climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.” Some 10.2 percent “strongly disagreed.”

• A 2006 survey of scientists in the U.S. found 41 percent disagreed that the planet’s recent warmth “can be, in large part, attributed to human activity,” and 71 percent disagreed that recent hurricane activity is significantly attributable to human activity.

• A recent review of 1,117 abstracts of scientific journal articles on “global climate change” found only 13 (1 percent) explicitly endorse the “consensus view” while 34 reject or cast doubt on the view that human activity has been the main driver of warming over the past 50 years.

• In June 2009, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) released an 880-page report, titled Climate Change Reconsidered that presented the first comprehensive rebuttal of the reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). With contributions from more than 30 scientists and citations to more than 4,000 peer-reviewed studies, the NIPCC report concluded that climate change is not a crisis.

The mainstream of the scientific community, in other words, does not believe global warming is a crisis.

But Politicians Want to Act

Unfortunately, politicians respond to the loudest and best-funded interest groups, not to the voices of scientists or the average Joe. So they are in a tizzy about “doing something” to “stop global warming.” President-elect Barack Obama, for example, recently proclaimed:

Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season. Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.

There is not a single statement in this brief passage that is true. Lord Christopher Monckton, a British climate skeptic, in a paper published by the American Thinker on November 26, disputes point-by-point each of Obama’s claims about sea levels, coastlines, drought, famine, and storms. None of his points is original: the rebuttals have appeared many times in the scientific literature and even occasionally in the mainstream media. One of the most persuasive compilations of this literature is S. Fred Singer’s Nature, Not Human Action, Rules the Climate, which The Heartland Institute published earlier this year.

Politicians should realize that the public doesn’t want global warming legislation. Last June, when the 500-page Climate Security Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate, even Democrats fled from the massive costs and bureaucracy it would have entailed. As environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger reported at the time, “Democratic leaders finally killed the debate to avert an embarrassing defeat, but by then they had handed Republicans a powerful political club. Republicans have been bludgeoning Democrats with it ever since.”

About The Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute, principal sponsor of the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, is a national nonprofit research and education organization based in Chicago. Founded in 1984, its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.

Heartland has been involved in the debate over global warming since 1994, when members of its staff wrote a book titled Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism. In the years since then, Heartland has commissioned and published several policy studies on the science and economics of climate change. Heartland also publishes Environment & Climate News, a monthly public policy newspaper sent to approximately 72,000 readers, including more than 40,000 scientists and every state and national elected official in the U.S.

More than 100 academics and professional economists participate in Heartland’s peer review process, and nearly 100 experts on the staffs of other think tanks serve as contributing editors of Heartland’s publications. Approximately 400 state elected officials serve on Heartland’s Board of Legislative Advisors, providing feedback and guidance to Heartland’s staff. A 16-member Board of Directors oversees a staff of 37. The organization’s annual budget exceeds $7 million.

Funding for The Heartland Institute comes from charitable contributions from approximately 1,700 individual, foundation, and corporate donors. Funds from corporations represented less than 14 percent of Heartland’s annual budget in 2008, and no corporation gave more than 4 percent of Heartland’s budget that year.

Unalienable Rights versus Globalism

By Michael Shaw

Have we abandoned the uniquely American concept of the political, legal and educational recognition of unalienable rights? Reaffirming unalienable rights is our call to duty. You can contribute to this accomplishment by defending unalienable rights and by understanding and informing others of our government’s suicidal commitment to the ‘global to local’ program of Agenda 21 Sustainable Development.

Have we abandoned the uniquely American concept of the political, legal and educational recognition of unalienable rights? If so, is there a political movement to restore the core purpose and principle of the American Declaration of Independence?

As documented in Understanding Unalienable Rights, the dictionary meaning of unalienable rights has been corrupted. School children are no longer instructed about this most basic element of the Declaration of Independence. Leading liberty minded legal and “think tank” organizations often fronting the freedom movement, treat or label the seeking of unalienable right protections as outdated. They argue a system of “civil rights” [1] as the appropriate man-made replacement. Think tanks of most stripes quietly argue that the idea of unalienable rights is flawed and indefensible. Correspondingly, the idea has been largely abandoned by academia and intellectuals.

The question then becomes: Can the American experiment in freedom continue without a foundation predicated on the notion that each person possesses a life that is their own? I conclude that without the political recognition of unalienable rights it cannot be assured that the political system will recognize that your life belongs to you.

This is not a moot issue. At the root of the globalist movement is Agenda 21 Sustainable Development. This worldwide program agreed upon by 178 nations, including the United States, reveals the directive that human population is to be decreased by 85% (United Nations; Global Biodiversity Assessment Report, page 773). This policy has appealed to many who argue “overpopulation.” Accordingly, says the consensus, everyone’s “right to life” must be discarded in order to achieve globalist objectives.

Further investigation of contemporary political philosophy demonstrates how our government has abandoned the notion of individual liberty. The freedom to speak has become subject to an increasing array of laws and politically correct mores. Travel is becoming monitored and increasingly restricted as the rules and infrastructure of Agenda 21’s land use element take effect. The intended consequence is to limit our mobility and use of resources. These are primary objectives in implementing Agenda 21. The global warming hysteria is being used to force people into “human settlements,” in order to contain and control human action. Man caused global warming fraud therefore serves the implementation of Agenda 21 and the destruction of liberty.

The abolition of private property is the first level of attack in the destruction of unalienable rights and the implementation of Sustainable Development. Following the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision, policies that sublimate private property to “public-private partnerships” have been secured under the law and many more have been and will be legislated. An example arises out of San Jose, California. There ordinances have subjected 1/3 of the private housing stock to the exercise of eminent domain on the basis that the city requires so called Smart Growth “redevelopment.”

What has been lost is the understanding that private property is not simply the ownership of something. Private property is the relationship between a person and a thing. It is a person’s use and enjoyment of something that reflects the essence of the ideal of private property. Your continuing use of what you think is yours, is now, for everyone, un-assured and unprotected. Private property is being abolished.

A system of private property rests on the economic system of free enterprise. Free enterprise means that the citizens own the means of production. This is not to be confused with the general definition of capitalism. The term “capitalism” was coined by Karl Marx to describe 19^th mid-century European political-economics which then, as now, is dominated by a fiat money system. Webster’s unabridged 1988 dictionary describes capitalism as, “The economic system… originally under fully competitive conditions… and its later phase by the growth of great corporations, increased governmental control, etc.” This transformative conversion was made possible through the public-private partnership system of fiat money which was adopted in the U.S. in 1913.

When freedom warriors defend the system of modern capitalism they often undermine the principals of free enterprise, secured by the ideal of private property. This happens as the “defenders” often play into globalist hands by virtue of furthering public-private partnership economics. Public-private partnership is the “new economy” brandished by the agents of modern globalism under Agenda 21.

The succeeding effort to abolish private property is the primary cause for the continuing collapse of freedom in America. George Washington warned; “Private property and freedom are inseparable.” As freedom fades, along with American sovereignty, the notion of unalienable rights will become erased from American consciousness. We cannot let this happen!

Public-private partnerships and Sustainable Development are in your community. This is why the study of Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is vital if our posterity and we are to enjoy a life of our own. Today, without public awareness of Agenda 21, the prospects for free enterprise and for freedom do look bleak.

Public-private partnerships (formerly known as economic fascism) must be exposed and disbanded before unalienable rights can again become recognized by the American government, maintained by our courts, and taught in schools.

A resumption of the American promise of a life that is truly your own is accomplished:

• When the environmental movement first values all human life,
• Where the law protects and guarantees individual liberty, and
• Where the right to the use of property is secured.

Reaffirming unalienable rights is our call to duty. You can contribute to this accomplishment most effectively by defending unalienable rights and by understanding and informing others of our government’s suicidal commitment to the ‘global to local’ program of Agenda 21 Sustainable Development.

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[1] Civil Rights demand Social Justice: applying the law to members of groups to advance a centralized interpretation of “common good”.

Michael Shaw is President of FreedomAdvocates.org

States Can Tell Feds to Shove It

By Sheriff Richard Mack (Ret.)

By now we have all heard the clichés and seen the posters from the “Tea Parties” espousing freedom, less government, and perhaps most of all, how the federal government had better back off trying to shove their national health care down our otherwise healthy throats. The truth of the matter is all the slogans of “Don’t Tread On Me” or “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death” or “We’re Mad As Hell And We’re Not Taking It Anymore,” don’t mean a thing when compared to the real and actual answer to all the protests, marches, and outrage.

The answer is in our own backyards! The States can stop every bit of it!  That’s right, the individual States can stop “Obamacare” and all other forms of out-of-control federal government mandates and “big brother” tactics. If Arizona, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Texas, etc. want nothing to do with National Health care as proposed by Barack Obama or Congress, then all they have to do is say “No!”

For you skeptics…let’s look at the law. First, the U.S. Constitution is the ultimate and supreme law of the land. More specifically, the Bill of Rights was established, because some of our Founding Fathers, feared that the Constitution did not go far enough in restricting or limiting the central government.

Hamilton was one of a select few who wanted a bigger and powerful federal government. However, several key states and powerful delegates such as Patrick Henry, said they would not support the formation of a new government if the Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights, a supreme law to establish basic and fundamental human rights that could never, for
all future American generations, be violated, altered or encroached upon by government. So the Framers of our Constitution came up with ten; ten God-given freedoms that would forever be held inviolable by our own governments.

The last of these basic foundational principles was the one to protect the power, sovereignty, and the autonomy of the States; the Tenth Amendment. This amendment and law underscores the entire purpose of the Constitution to limit government and forbids the federal government from becoming more powerful than the “creator.”

Let’s be very clear here; the States in this case were the creator. They formed the federal government, not the other way around. Does anyone believe rationally that the States intended to form a new central government to control and command the States at will? Nothing could be further from the truth. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution details what duties the federal government will be responsible for under our new system of “balanced power.” Anything not mentioned in Article 1, Sec. 8, is “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” (Tenth Amendment)

Hence, the federal government was not allowed creativity or carte blanche to expand or assume power wherever and whenever they felt like it. The feds had only discrete and enumerated and very limited powers. Omnipotency was the last thing the Founding Fathers intended to award the newly formed federal government. They had just fought the Revolutionary War to stop such from Britain and their main concern was to prevent a recurrence here in America.

In perhaps the most recent and powerful Tenth Amendment decision in modern history, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mack/Printz v U.S. that “States are not subject to federal direction.” But today’s federal Tories argue that the “supremacy clause” of the U.S. Constitution says that the federal government is supreme and thus, trumps the States in all matters. Wrong! The supremacy clause is dealt with in Mack/Printz, in which the Supreme Court stated once and for all that the only thing “supreme” is the constitution itself. Our constitutional system of checks and balances certainly did not make the federal government king over the states, counties, and cities. Justice Scalia opined for the majority in Mack/Printz, that “Our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other.”

So yes, it is the duty of the State to stop the Obamacare “incursion.” To emphasize this principle Scalia quotes James Madison, “The local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the Supremacy, no more subject within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere.” The point to remember here is; where do we define the “sphere” of the federal government? That’s right; in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and anything not found within this section belongs to the States or to the People.

So where does health care belong? The last place it belongs is with the President or Congress. It is NOT their responsibility and the States need to make sure that Obama does not overstep his authority.

Just in case there is any doubt as to what the Supreme Court meant, let’s take one more look at Mack/Printz. “This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty. Hence, a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other…”  What? The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, has as a “structural protection of liberty” that States will keep the federal government in check? No wonder it was called a system of “checks and balances.”

The States (and Counties) are to maintain the balance of power by keeping the feds within their proper sphere. So do the States have to take the bullying of the federal government? Not hardly! The States do not have to take or support or pay for Obamacare or anything else from Washington DC.

The States are not subject to federal direction. They are sovereign and “The Constitution protects us from our own best intentions.” (Mack/Printz)  Which means the States can tell national health care proposals or laws to take a flying leap off the Washington monument. We are not subject to federal direction!

In the final order pursuant to the Mack/Printz ruling Scalia warned, “The federal government may neither, issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.”  It is rather obvious that nationalized health care definitely qualifies as a “federal regulatory program.”

Thus, the marching on Washington and pleas and protests to our DC politicians are misdirected. Such actions are “pie in the sky” dreaming that somehow expects the tyrants who created the tyranny, will miraculously put a stop to it. Throughout the history of the world such has never been the case. Tyrants have never stopped their own corrupt ways. However, in our system of “dual sovereignty,” the States can do it. If we are to take back America and keep this process peaceful, then state and local officials will have to step up to the plate.

Doing so is what States’ Rights and State Sovereignty are all about.

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Sheriff Richard Mack is the former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, and long-time crusader for freedom and individual rights. For more information vist, www.sherrifmack.com.

The Great Green Land Grab

By Alan Caruba

All across America, various environmental organizations have been engaged in schemes to deter development such as housing, new energy plants, or the horror of a manufacturing facility that might actually employ people. In some states, the attack has been on farms and ranches, finding ways to punish their owners for improving their land in any fashion such as digging a drainage ditch.

Property rights were deemed so essential, so important to the economic future of America that the Founding Fathers wrote an Amendment to the Constitution to protect those rights, ensuring that private property could not be taken for public use “without just compensation.”

As far as environmentalists are concerned, private property rights are an impediment to the “protection” of what they always describe as “pristine” forests, deserts, or some horrid wilderness such as the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve.  ANWR is unfit for human habitation, but it does have countless thousands of caribou and several billion barrels of untapped oil beneath a “pristine” surface.

In a small State like New Jersey, land and its proper use has been a major concern from its earliest years. The State got its moniker, “the Garden State”, from the many farms in its southern half, although there are some in the north. One can drive up Route 78 through the northern portion and see horse farms and even cattle being raised.

Beyond its urban centers, there are large, verdant areas in which one can find small, picturesque suburbs and one of those areas is known as the Highlands. It is a 1,400- square-mile region, some 860,000 acres, extending from the northern border with New York and including land in Sussex, Warren, Passaic, Morris, and Hunterdon Counties.

The Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act was enacted in 2004 and signed into law by former Governor James McGreevey whose lamentable and mercifully abbreviated term in office was cut short when, in the wake of a scandal concerning a young man whom he had put on the state payroll, he announced he was a homosexual and resigned.

Put into motion in 2006, the State’s largest daily newspaper, The Star-Ledger, editorialized that “Development controls are so sweeping that perhaps less than 20 percent of land in the region is left available for construction, even in the half of the region lawmakers had targeted for future growth. That small amount of buildable acreage could be cut further when additional rules, such as new regulations for septic systems, are completed.”

The area in question is a watershed and the environmental claim was that any further construction or use of it posed a threat to water quality and that the area, home to abundant wildlife, needed to be subject to all manner of regulation and restrictions to protect it against the humans who had been living there since before the Revolution.

There never was a need for the Highlands Act. Existing environmental laws were and are sufficient, but the objective was to render the huge tract of land beyond any development, to reduce the value of its homes and other structures, and generally put it off limits. This kind of green gangsterism is part of the reason why, along with high taxation, and senseless spending, more people leave New Jersey than move here.

In 2007, northern New Jersey farmers and landowners affected by the Highlands Act made plans to contest it in court to protect their loss of equity and private property rights. Consider if you owned a home in this vast region and wanted to sell it. Who would buy it knowing that you could not add a porch, a swimming pool, or even some swings for kids to play on? If you were a farmer almost any normal act of tillage or harvest could be ruled a danger to the environment.

As a Star-Ledger columnist, Paul Mulshine, pointed out in July 2007, “The purpose of the plan was not to redistribute development, but to stop it entirely. And the way the law was written is positively Machiavellian. The Highlands law amounts to an ingenious effort by the state to grab as much land as possible without leaving the state open to a court challenge under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

I was reminded of this appalling piece of environmental chicanery when a story appeared in The Star-Ledger in late January. “A report by Gov. Chris Christie’s transition team calls the Highlands Council ‘a disaster on multiple levels’ and recommends cutting the water-protection agency’s powers over local zoning or eliminating it.”

It has taken six years of suffering by the many landowners of the affected area and frustration among the many local officials in towns affected by this hideous land grab to finally reach a point where something might begin to be done to repeal the act and return the legislatively stolen property rights.

All around America, similar actions have been occurring, spurred on by various environmental groups, and all intended to drive out farmers and ranchers, to kill any development of any kind, and to abrogate the Constitutional protection of private property in every way possible.

It is part of a vast matrix of efforts to destroy the nation’s economic growth and it is too often successful. Given their antipathy to all human activity, if the Greens had their way, they would put up signs everywhere that would say, “Keep Out!”

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

“My 14- year-old Daughter Pearl is a freshman at Ft. Myers High School and my 11-year-old daughter Lily is in 5^th grade at Three Oaks Elementary. Here are some of the things they have relayed to me concerning what they have been learning in our public schools:

1. Lily said, “I would rather just shoot myself in the head because it would be a less painful death that to suffer and die from global warming.”
2. Pearl has been studying the Watergate scandal for three weeks. She had to memorize the name of everyone involved (people I’ve never heard of) for a test.
3. Both girls have been taught to fear the extinction of the polar bears.
4. Both girls have had numerous lessons about various aspects of the Native Americans and the brutal treatment thereof.
5. Both girls have studied the Pueblo people and Mexican pottery.
6. Neither girl has spent much time studying our American forefathers. ——– Letter to the Editor from a parent in Fort Myers, Fl.

“This is not a church. It’s a school and it’s a public school. I have to do things that include every child. So what we do is celebrate winter.” Principal Erik Brown, Walsh Elementary in Waterbury, Connecticut discussing the schools “Winter celebration” where even Santa Clause and Christmas trees are banned.

“By first grade I was sexually active with many friends. In fact, a small group of us regularly met in the grammar school lavatory to perform fellatio on one another.” From a book entitled “Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A story about growing up Gay,” by Aaron Fricke. Just one of the books included on a list issued for school use to promote homosexuality. The organization behind the list is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) founded by Kevin Jennings – now Obama’s Czar for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

“How may citizenship change in the Nation’s Third Century?” Question in the New Civics textbook entitled “We the People.” The book is published by the Center for Civics Education (CCE) and was funded by the federal government. CCE received over $110 million in federal grants to produce the textbook which is now widely used in classrooms across the nation.

The answer to the above question on citizenship, according to “We the People” appears on page 202:

• The achievements of modern technology are turning the world into a global village.”
• “National corporations are becoming international.”
• The culture we live in is becoming cosmopolitan, that is, belonging to the whole world.”
• The issues confronting American citizens are increasingly international.”
• Issue of economic competition, the environment, and the movement of peoples around the world require an awareness of political associations that are larger in scope than the nation-state.”

Do you see any room in that answer for learning about the strengths and virtues of national sovereignty? What conclusions will a child take from such indoctrination? As I said, the curriculum is about behavior modification to prepare the children to be global citizens – the Republic and all of its marvels – be hanged.  —— Tom DeWeese

In addition, Obama intends to change the very root of American thinking to create a compliant society to go along with his “change.” Using the same tactics, ignoring the Constitutional lawmakers (Congress), Obama is now setting his sights on the public education system, enforcing a federal classroom curriculum that will eliminate American history and the Founders ideals of limited government – replacing them with forced allegiance to the United Nations. Again, Obama is using tactics that enforce this change in policy without the consent or oversight of Congress. Worse, governors, state legislators and members of Congress are signing on to help him do it.

For all the details, read the following, shocking article by education expert Karen Effrem. She is the Director of Government Relations with the very effective Education watchdog group EdWatch, good friends and allies of The DeWeese Report.  ——— Tom DeWeese

RACE TO THE TOP

Federal Control of Education On Steroids

By Karen R. Effrem, MD – EdWatch Director of Government Relations

Origins and Implication of Race to the Top

Without the slightest bit of legislative discussion in either chamber, the Obama administration quietly slipped $4.35 billion of education funding into the stimulus (“porkulus”) bill passed last year for a program called Race to the Top (RTTT).

With the nearly one trillion dollars spent for the stimulus as well as the trillions spent or proposed for the federal budget, health care, and cap and trade legislation one might reasonably wonder why a few billion dollars for more federal education spending is any big deal.  The answer is that federal government is using this program to bribe states to accept even more federal control of education, a constitutionally and traditionally state function.  This dangerous trend of more federal control of education was greatly accelerated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. However because of the intense opposition engendered by NCLB from all points on the political spectrum and the difficulty that the Obama administration has run into trying to implement its expansive and statist domestic agenda, RTTT is accomplishing more of that same federal control without having to go through the messy process of reauthorizing the controversial NCLB.

Components of Race to the Top

Race to the Top has several components, but there are several that are extremely dangerous for state sovereignty in education, parental rights to control the raising and education of our children, and privacy, respectively:

1. Education Reform that Requires National Standards - The absolute requirement of RTTT is that states must adopt national standards.  Forty-eight of the fifty states, with Alaska and Texas being the only exceptions, have signed on to the Common Core Standards Initiative.  This initiative is funded and promoted by the National Governors’ Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).  They are developing common core standards in math and English that are “internationally benchmarked.”

Although touted as “state-led” and “voluntary,” all of these severely cash-strapped states (41 as of the January 19^th deadline) that hope to receive RTTT funds MUST adopt these standards (national curriculum).  Part of the competitive application process requires states to show the largest number of school districts agreeing to take on these national/international standards. That is not voluntary.  Rather, depending on one’s point of view, it is either bribery or economic and ideological blackmail.

It is also important to note that these same two ostensibly state government-associated groups (NGA and CCSSO) developing RTTT also produced America 2000 under the Bush 41 administration that morphed into Goals 2000 in 1994 under President Clinton.  Goals 2000 and that year’s reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act combined for the first time to require that states and school districts comply with federal standards listed in Goals 2000 in order to receive federal education dollars.  Those standards include expanding government schooling into the preschool years and a much greater emphasis on the mental health or social and emotional aspects. Many would rightly deem this psychosocial meddling indoctrination, instead of what parents want and expect as the traditional academic aspects of education – reading, math, history and civics.

In fact, as explained by Professor Allen Quist, the only comprehensive “internationally benchmarked” standards are those produced by the UN’s educational and cultural arm UNESCO and the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO).  These standards will promote the documents and principles of the United Nations over those of the United States:

American schools used to teach the fundamental values of the United States–including the inalienable, God-given rights of life, liberty and property, as guaranteed by our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Not any more. Now our students will be indoctrinated in the UN’s definition of human rights. As clarified by the UN’s UDHR [Universal Declaration of Human Rights], our rights now may not “be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations” (Art 29:3). Our children will be taught that they have only those rights the UN says they have.

The UNESCO standards also include the UN’s Earth Charter, which further defines internationally benchmarked standards. The Charter says these standards must entail what it calls “sustainability education” (Art 14:b). The Charter explains that “sustainability education” entails the “promotion of the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations” (Art. 10:a), nuclear disarmament (Art. 16:d), gay marriage (Art. 12:a), legalized abortion (Art. 7:e), adoption of an “international legally binding instrument on environment” (The way Forward), and indoctrination in pantheism (Art. 14d and Art. 16:f).

All of these harmful trends were accelerated under NCLB, but still there was the veneer of state developed and written standards and assessments. With RTTT, all veneer of state and local control of education will be gone.

This concern is echoed by Texas education analyst and activist Donna Garner in an Austin American Statesman blog:

The media has reported that 130 people have signed up to testify to the SBOE about the Social Studies standards. I ask you: “Just where would common, everyday people go to testify about national standards?”

“Just where would parents go to complain if their son or daughter came home from school after having been taught some outrageously biased and/or erroneous curricula built upon the national standards?”

2. Promoting Preschool - One of the “invitational” priorities of RTTT is “enhancing the quality of preschool programs.” The US Department of Education information states that there is particular priority on “practices that improve school readiness (including social, emotional, and cognitive)…” This shows the continued efforts of the federal government to implement Goals 2000 that promotes both preschool and the socioemotional (mental health) aspects of education as described above.

It is bad enough that the federal government is inserting itself into K-12 education outside of its constitutional purview, but subverting and supplanting the parental role in the care and education of young children in the name of making them “ready to learn” nanny state government principles before they even enter school is appalling.  This indoctrination includes using federal Head Start and state preschool standards to turn impressionable children into activists for the radical environmental and homosexual agendas to name just two.

There is no evidence of academic effectiveness of preschool or daycare.  The federal Head Start program just released the results of yet another taxpayer-funded study (of more than 600) showing that the 45-year-old program has no lasting results by the time enrollees reach the first grade.

Not only are these programs ineffective while being expensive, there is strong evidence of academic and emotional harm as manifested by lower test scores and emotional and behavioral problems compared to children raised at home.

3. Longitudinal Data System – Another “invitational” priority of RTTT is further developing, adapting, and integrating longitudinal data systems.  The federal Department of Education wants data on every aspect of a child’s school life beginning in preschool.  This includes:

“…special education programs, English language learner programs, early childhood programs, at-risk and dropout prevention programs, and school climate and culture programs, as well as information on student mobility, human resources (i.e., information on teachers, principals, and other staff), school finance, student health, postsecondary education, and other relevant areas…”

This has been opposed by the teachers unions who do not want to be accountable for the results of their teaching and by conservative groups and Republicans due to privacy and other concerns.

4. Cradle to College Control -This last priority integrates all of the concerns described so far.  It is the coordination and alignment of every program affecting every aspect of life and work for all citizens.  The federal government wants to control our children’s lives from “early childhood programs, K-12 schools, postsecondary institutions, workforce development organizations, and other State agencies and community partners (e.g., child welfare, juvenile justice, and criminal justice agencies) [so that the government] will coordinate to improve all parts of the education system and create a more seamless preschool-through-graduate school (P-20) route for students.”

Conclusion

Sadly, despite the many problems with RTTT, far too many otherwise constitutionally minded and levelheaded governors, state legislators, and members of Congress have blindly signed on to support this dangerous program.  This support is apparently due to the severe fiscal problems that most states are facing due to the recession and profligate deficit spending as well as the token nod to more conservative education ideas like charter schools.  Hopefully, with the public becoming increasingly and actively disenchanted with out of control government spending, regulation, and intrusion, officials from all points on the political spectrum will wake up and reject the statist education proposals in RTTT.  States need to assume the rightful place of control and authority over education policy and spending.  This assault on local control and state sovereignty as well as the indoctrination of our children in principles that are intrusive, harmful, and anti-American should be making opposition to RTTT an issue in every state legislative, gubernatorial and congressional election contest in the nation.