Yearly Archives: 2008

Billionaire Peter G. Peterson is going to spend one of his billions promoting the idea that the federal government needs to take serious steps to address the unfunded liabilities problem for Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Peterson says, “You can buy a lot of airtime with $1 billion. People are going to hear from us.”

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Mr. Peterson is doing what we want to do. He’s going to make this issue visible to everyone, everywhere, every day. Even better, he’s going to do it on one of the major issues Downsize DC has been pushing.

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Meanwhile, another billionaire, Ross Perot, is back in action working on the same issue as Mr. Peterson. He has a new website full of his famous deficit charts: PerotCharts.com

Quote of the Day: “The bigger they are the harder they fall.”
:::– conventional wisdom
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:::Subject: How things get too big to fail, and what to do about it
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:::When the politicians created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac they claimed that these institutions would provide stability to the housing market. But neither the housing market nor Fannie and Freddie are stable. Instead, Fannie and Freddie have brought us fear, risk, and uncertainty to the tune of $5.3 trillion.
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:::Only the monopoly we call the federal government has the power to create a $5.3 TRILLION risk.
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:::In a true free market the business of secondary mortgages would’ve been handled by hundreds or thousands of competing entities. It would’ve been very unlikely that all these firms would have made the same mistakes at the same time. But our government created a situation where::::::

Quote of the Day:
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:::”The new DownsizeDC.org website is ready to launch.”
:::- Robert O’Gwynn, Programmer
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:::Subject: A New Website for Our Anniversary
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:::We have a special surprise today. And it seems fitting to do something special today because . . .
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:::Yesterday, July 14, 2008, was the fourth anniversary of the launch of DownsizeDC.org’s Electronic Lobbyist System. During those four years Americans have sent more than 1,214,000 messages, primarily to Congress, through our website. 
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:::* We started with only 11,800 subscribers to the Downsizer-Dispatch. In those early days, a good month meant 4,000 Messages-to-Congress sent.
:::* Today, we have 23,400 members of our Downsize DC Army, and these members are much more intense — we sent more than 70,000 Messages-to-Congress in June alone.
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:::That amazes us. Our little website was built to test an idea; that educating Congress could be a recruitment tool for building an Army so large that Congress could not ignore it.
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:::Within months of launching we realized the limitations of our little site. We had built a Yugo to run a Grand Prix race. Our supporters wanted us to do various things. We wanted to do yet more. But our “little site that would” just couldn’t.
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:::I’m pleased to announce that those limits are gone. Last night, on our anniversary, we launched a brand new website at DownsizeDC.org. I want to encourage you to check it out.

I receive a regular compendium of news reports about Iran through the good offices of our coalition partner Carah Ong. The news from Iran is very confusing. On the one hand you have the Iranian Foreign Minister making conciliatory sounds, while on the other Iran is trying to convince the world that it has the ability to hit Israel with missiles. What does Iran want, peace or confrontation?

Are government economic statistics accurate? John Williams at Shadow Statistics says they are not, because the government has changed its measurement criteria over the years. Mr. Williams shows us what the government’s statistics would have been had the criteria not changed. Does this mean the “shadow stats” are correct, and the government’s current measurements are wrong?

In this message, you’ll learn what we’ll be talking about on today’s Downsize DC Conference Call — my two hour radio show, heard live starting at 3:06 PM Eastern (2:06 PM Central, 1:06 PM Mountain, and 12:06 PM Pacific).
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:::Quote of the Day:
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:::”Ridicule is the compliment lively intelligence pays to jackassery.”
:::- R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
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:::Subject: Can you predict the Administration’s “Iran policy”
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:::We’ve been manipulated into war before.
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:::Is it about to happen again? What do you think?
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:::Personally, I can’t even take the gang in DC seriously anymore. It’d be comical, if the consequences weren’t so serious. But they are.
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:::Here’s a simple taxonomy of Methods to Manipulate a Nation Into War.
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:::1) Provocation – A government boxes their opponents in so that, in desperation, the opponent does something that provides a bloody shirt to wave. Blockcades are an effective tool.
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:::2) War by Proxy – A government allied with another government, is drawn into war by virtue of their alliance, regardless of the behavior evidenced by the ally. So, let’s say, our ally bombs an unfriendly country, and then, we’re “on the hook.” This is, in large part, how America got into World War I.
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:::3) False Flag – A government attacks some part of its own country and blames the enemy. The Reichstag Fire of 1933 was an example of this process. And although it was never carried out, the Lemnitzer memo, better known as Operation Northwoods, is also an example.
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:::4) Wag the Dog — The title of a feature film that describes a phony incident used to distract attention from the truth: Like Orwell’s “1984” — “We were always at war with Oceania.” The Gulf of Tonkin is the ideal example.
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:::Which method of manipulation do you think it will be? Or maybe you think this list is missing a method?

Change the political environment. Recruit more DC Downsizers. Share this message with others.
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:::Subject: Evidence that the 2006 election was a failure
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:::The Republicans used to claim they wanted smaller government. They also claimed that they couldn’t really deliver this until they controlled both the Congress and the White House. In 2000 temporarily, and again in 2002, they gained that control, but they didn’t deliver smaller government. Instead, they increased government by gargantuan amounts.
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:::In 2006 the electorate punished the Republicans. Voters gave the Democrats majorities in the House and Senate. Polls showed several reasons for this. Voters objected to Republican spending, Republican corruption, Republican lawlessness, and a reckless Republican foreign policy.
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:::Democrats were elected to change these Republican policies. Now, two years later, all the Republican’s Big Government policies remain in place. Indeed, the Democrats have actually expanded those policies.
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:::Partisan electoral politics has failed us again.
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:::The latest evidence of this failure came yesterday, when a large number of Democrats joined with Republicans to give President Bush expanded powers to spy on Americans without a warrant. They did this by passing the “FISA Amendments Act.”
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:::The Democrat controlled Congress also sent a strong message of toleration for government sanctioned lawbreaking. They did this by immunizing the tele-communications companies that had collaborated with President Bush to illegally spy on American citizens.
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:::So what will the voters do now?

The Worst of All Worlds

Quote of the Day:
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:::HEDRICK SMITH: A more fundamental question confronts all of us. The 4th Amendment protects us against unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause. So does the strategy of (terrorist) prevention collide with the Constitution? When the government is doing this kind of data mining, has it moved from individualized suspicion, getting an individual warrant, to generalized suspicion, to check everybody to find out who are the bad guys?
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:::PETER SWIRE (White House Privacy Counsel, 1999-01): Yeah. Check everybody. Everybody’s a suspect. Everybody’s phone records, everybody’s email is subject to government scrutiny. And if you’re good, we won’t bother you, and if you look a little strange, then you might get on a watch list.
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:::HEDRICK SMITH: Isn’t that a huge change in Anglo-Saxon law? I mean, Anglo-Saxon law is based on “Get a warrant.” The 4th Amendment is based on individual suspicion.
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:::PETER SWIRE: Right. General warrants was part of the reason for the American Revolution. It was that the king’s agent could go in and search a house everywhere, search a whole neighborhood with one warrant. And the Boston people said, “We don’t like that. We’ll have a tea party. We’ll fight you.” We said no.
:::– from FRONTLINE
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:::Subject: Dangerous votes pending
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:::Two dangerous votes are pending this week. You know about the “FISA Amendments Act.” We’ve been hammering on it for weeks now, and you’ve been hammering Congress. The other dangerous pending vote is a resolution that’s a virtual declaration of war on Iran.
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:::House Concurrent Resolution 362 urges the President to blockade Iran, stopping all sea traffic in and out of the country. It has 220 co-sponsors. The Senate version is Senate Resolution 580. It has 32 co-sponsors.

Quote of the Day:
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:::”The government already has “the authority to collect the intelligence it needs to protect the American people.” That authority is called FISA, which already allows the Government extremely broad authority to spy on any suspected terrorists. The current law results in virtually no denials of any spying requests. So how can Obama — echoing the Bush administration — claim a new law is needed to provide “the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people” when the current FISA law already provides that?”
:::– Glenn Greenwald
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:::Subject: Obama’s response
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:::Will Senators Feingold and Dodd really filibuster the “FISA Amendments Act?” What will Senator Obama do? We’re about to find out.
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:::Senator Obama has been hammered, not just by us, but also by his own supporters. He has had to issue a response to his critics. Those of you who sent him a message probably received this response. It was very disappointing. It could have been written by any hack politician. Much of it could have been written by a neo-conservative.
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:::But Senator Obama’s response isn’t necessarily the end of the story. The revolt among his supporters continues. His justifications and excuses for supporting the “FISA Amendments Act” are being picked apart on the web. Senator Obama may yet be forced to oppose the “FISA Amendments Act.”
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:::Meanwhile, what Senators Feingold and Dodd do will depend on whether they have enough votes in the Senate to sustain a filibuster. This question will likely be decided this week, so you’re running out of time to persuade your Senators to support a filibuster and to oppose the “FISA Amendments Act.” Please send another message now, using our old campaign against the “Protect America Act.”