Public Nuisances
Tyrrell, R. Emmett
Lord Protect Us From The Stimulators —WASHINGTON— For months the claim running through Washington and inspiring even hardened cynics is that the Democrats really learned a lot during the 1990s....
...At any rate now we are going ahead and either rescinding executive orders against assassination or at least fashioning means to bypass them...
...The economy has slowed...
...Tax cuts stimulate economic activity...
...The recently-passed House bill would attempt to stimulate the economy by returning money to people and corporations, in the hope that they would spend it and "get the economy going again...
...Grass-ley's plan would put them into effect this January...
...Committing High Deeds In The Lowest Places —WASHINGTON— We read about the tough measures that the President and Congress are taking to finish off the barbarians and bring others to justice...
...In reading historian David Kennedy's superb history of the United States from 1929 to 1945, Freedom From Fear, I was again reminded that both Republicans and Democrats in the 1930s actually believed that they could overcome the Depression by raising taxes...
...The debate over an economic stimulus package also suggests that the Democrats and even many House Republicans have learned very little from recent experience...
...Executive orders in 1976, 1978, and 1981 ended the American government's ability to engage in the use of assassination for national security purposes...
...State Department bureaucrats can decide...
...Church's florid description of the CIA 96 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2001 ISANCES YRRELL, JR...
...The press perceives government attempts at "censorship...
...That is not something that has always been known by policymakers...
...They are being sued by the relatives of a Chilean military commander who was killed in a "covert operation" allegedly ordered by Kissinger, Helms and others thirty-one years ago...
...The Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s, the Kennedy cuts in the early 1960s, and the Coolidge cuts in the 1920s took the tax burden off economic activity...
...There is one stimulus effort underway on Capitol Hill that reveals that at least some politicians have learned from experience— the package put together by Iowa's Senator Charles Grassley and his colleagues on the Finance committee...
...Economic experience does offer one proven policy for economic stimulus, tax cuts on the margin...
...All of this high-mindedness has limited our security forces from doing their jobs, jobs that would have prevented last week's vile acts...
...GDP fell by 0.4% in the third quarter...
...And does anyone doubt that the beard is a fake...
...He called it a "rogue elephant on the rampage...
...Senator Frank Church got the ball rolling with Congressional hearings in 1975 that betrayed CIA agents and operations...
...The airport security bill is being held up by the Democrats' and some Republicans' insistence that security will be best ensured by a federalized security force, not by private security forces competing to uphold security standards set by the federal government...
...It stated : "Nixon Officials Named in Suit...
...You might PUBLIC BY R . E M M E remember them...
...Unfortunately our present impasses over airport security and economic stimulus suggest that what was learned in the 1990s has been forgotten...
...WASHINGTON— Since the Korean War in the early 1950s, limited American military engagements such as the one we are now in usually follow the same course...
...It is obvious propaganda from Western intelligence...
...They even curtailed our agents from contact with foreign agents who might engage in such projects on behalf of their own countries...
...Workers eager for more long-lasting income worked harder and invested more...
...Some of us have actually studied the great military feats of the Islamic world...
...Supposedly Napoleon's presence on a battlefield was worth tens of thousands of seasoned troops...
...This pathetico filmed in his dressing gown is no Saladin...
...Will the Americans today vested with the heavy responsibility of protecting us face the prospect of appearing on some faraway tomorrow in a minor newspaper headline stating, "Bush Officials Named in Suit...
...The morally-acute continued their work...
...Experience has shown that cutting marginal taxes rates is the policy that leads to growth...
...Most Americans want their government to go after Osama bin Laden and his fellow murderers as well as the regimes that harbor them...
...More recently Senator Robert Torricelli has authored legislation limiting our authority to work with individuals or intelligence agencies accused of human rights violations...
...Actually the process is already beginning...
...certainly Roosevelt's reassuring presence in the White House inspired the nation...
...As security-conscious as the Israelis are, they rely on private security forces.The pols would have us think that a federalized airport security force would be designed to the standards of the Green Berets...
...And then comes the growing controversy within the media over the government's efforts to persuade the TV networks not to broadcast the Rev...
...He was applauded...
...Doubtless the niceties of Senator Torricelli and of Senator Leahy will be put aside as our military and intelligence operatives spread out into the lairs inhabited by terrorists and by the clansmen and intelligence agencies that might conspire in their arrest or death...
...The Carter Administration all but eliminated agents on the ground in intelligence gathering, relying on technology despite the protests of intelligence experts...
...The evidence of human rights violations need not be especially probative...
...Rescinding provisions that limit our military and intelligence from doing their unpleasant work is admirable and exigent.Yet among the many thoughts that rush in during this time of national emergency are those provoked by a small headline appearing recently at the bottom of the Washington Post's front page...
...Counter-Spy magazine listed the identities of American agents around the world...
...Some of this "high-mindedness" was surely well-intended...
...It looks like horsehair to me...
...The "Nixon officials" were Henry Kissinger and Richard Helms...
...President Franklin Roosevelt's first budget raised taxes and cut government...
...Finally, our security forces would know that America is with them today and will be with them all days...
...The episode was but one of many in the late Cold War...
...Is He A Fire Breathing Terrorist Or A CIA Plant...
...Here I would counsel the networks to employ the utmost circumspection...
...with gratitude and protection from frivolous lawsuits and the whims of an ever-changing political climate...
...Once Western audiences get hooked on him he will be feeding the world disinformation and shaming terrorists everywhere...
...People put the windfall in the bank or use it to pay off debt...
...NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2001 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 97...
...Congressional opportunists would be denied chances to interfere with the pursuit of these barbarians...
...Spy satellites cannot be sued for misbehavior...
...Hollywood and the media churn out such stories for the entertainment of general audiences, combining fiction with fact while smearing members of government and the military...
...At a time of economic slow-down, that is not what we need...
...Senator Patrick Leahy has authored similar legislation limiting our government from working with or supporting foreign military forces that may be accused of human rights violations...
...Some of it was political exploitation of others' good intentions...
...My guess is that giving airtime to the alleged bin Laden is precisely what the White House and 10 Downing Street want...
...Yet storming an enemy citadel is vastly different from standing vigilantly at commercial airports eyeing thousands of peaceful citizens for eight or more hours a day...
...Most Americans correctly see government services as slow, unresponsive, and incompetent...
...The Chilean's death is the kind of shadowy tale that enflames those of a left-wing inclination...
...Then the star spangled national facade suffers fissures, usually created by the extreme left, later widened by the pained scrupling of bien pensant liberals.The process could take place even in this conflict where we are facing not such a plausible foe as the avuncular Ho Chi Minh or good old Mao Tse-tung but a villainous crank who would send sneaks into civilian airplanes to commandeer them from the defenseless and slam them into buildings that, for all he knew, contained many of his co-religionists...
...But how effective will our forces be knowing that on some faraway day they might make headlines as an aggrieved relative or simple crank takes advantage of high-minded laws...
...For three decades some American politicians and their supposedly liberal constituents have been passing legislation and regulations that hamper the ability of government to maintain American security against the kind of atrocities committed last week...
...Both President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have supposedly importuned their respective networks to keep the clever terrorists' performances from unsuspecting viewers...
...Then New York Times columnists Bill Keller and Frank Rich came forward to depict any criticism of the likes of Sontag-Chomsky as alarming signs of America's totalitarian impulse...
...The President would be granted maximum flexibility and have all restraints removed in pursuing this war...
...But, at the moment, the lawsuit and the tendentious stories of alleged misdeeds committed by American officials pursuing national security have a more pressing importance...
...We remember Saladin who swept up from Egypt and captured Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century, the Turk forces of yore, and more recently T. E. Lawrence's colleagues in the Desert Wars...
...Have you noticed the peculiarly blank look in the eyes of this fellow whom our leaders insist is the fire-breathing terrorist, Osama bin Laden...
...It is also why Congress ought to pass Congressman Bob Barr's declaration of war against international terrorists and against those who assist them...
...American resolve would be affirmed...
...Until the stimulus debate began on Capitol Hill, I thought most Democrats had learned that...
...First there is the patriotic effulgence...
...As Bruce Bartlett writes in the Wall Street Journal, rebates on the state and federal level since the 1970s have repeatedly failed to raise consumer spending significantly or to jolt a sleeping economy to action...
...Osama bin Laden's dirges from the rock pile he calls home or the cave or the ant castle...
...Know-it-alls such as Susan Sontag, the literary egotist, and Professor Noam Chomsky, a linguist, have explained that the atrocities in New York and Washington are perfectly understandable given America's controversial history (All this could have been avoided had Henry Wallace won the Democratic presidential nomination back in 1948...
...I have no doubt that he is a CIA plant, dreamed up to induce snickers throughout Islam and embarrassment among the angry galoots who have been trained to bomb Westerners' skyscrapers, old peoples' homes, and perhaps put anthrax on the seats of merry-go-rounds...
...reveals the mood of the era...
...They are no longer the smug statists, the prodigal Keynesians.They now believe in the private sector and in markets...
...With the hits the economy has taken since September 11 the fourth quarter will be slower still...
...Have you noticed that he is wearing a Timex Ironman Triathlon wrist watch and camouflage clothes that are either Army surplus or right out of the National Rifle Association catalogue...
...Yet economic experience proves this fond hope to be unwarranted...
...There are leaders whose presence inspired their followers to great feats...
...Taxes impede economic activity...
...Nor do they engage in rough stuff...
...That is why the United States has been right in giving the cold shoulder to the movement behind the International Criminal Court...
...The federal government took in a surplus of $127 billion this past fiscal year...
...It would advance the implementation of lower marginal income tax rates that were passed this summer but are not to take effect until 2004 and 2006...
...The economy grew more prosperous...
...Doing so only slowed the economy more...
...On the other hand there are leaders who inspire revulsion or derision...
...The consequence is the kind of frivolous lawsuit that these distinguished elderly citizens now face...
...Why would a federalized airport security force be any different...
Vol. 34 • November 2001 • No. 8
