ANALYSIS: Financial crisis belies myth of U.S. independence

One of George Bush's major mistakes was that his administration did not educate the public on his, or Republican, much less conservative concepts. One thing Clinton did well was have the same group of people — Podesta, Davis, Emanuel, Rubin, Carville, etc — out in front teaching and preaching the Democrat positions every day. You couldn't turn on a Sunday news show without seeing several of them, all with the same message, week after week. Who has been out there the same way for the last eight years for Bush? It looks unlikely that McCain will win. But EVEN if he does, and more importantly if he doesn't, Republicans MUST get a core group of teachers in front of the media to educate the public about their principles and to debate the Democrats positions. Bush did not do this. Obviously you can't wait for the press to do it's job anymore. It is costing the country dearly.

Mr. Goldberg's article solicits the dismantling the Constitution for global governance based on the current economic crisis. The Kyoto Treaty was a direct path to global governance. “For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance, one that should find a place within the World Environmental Organisation which France and the European Union would like to see established. “ – Jacques Chirac, The Hague, November 20th. The science behind it is proving to be completely political in all aspects and consensus science. The ICC is simply an attempt to control U.S. primacy through legal jurisdiction. U.S. law is mandated in the Constitution and not a part of the global governance. The legal paradigms of the world are too ambiguous and regionally corrupt to allow social conscience of the ICC to dictate the U.S. legal, economic and political policy. If John McCain is parroting those policies of independence then he has my vote. There is only one law in the United States, the Constitution. Within that context, decisions on global governance remain the citizens right, not a group of social elites. We are U.S. citizens first, NOT citizens of the world first. Multilateralism has not yet achieved the mechanism to overcome regional interests, prejudice and corruption. The U.N. and Global Warming are the fundamental proof.

hear, hear, soxconn. (I had intended to write my own rebuttal but then read soxconn's; I see no reason to try to repeat what has been so well written, other than to echo, ditto). Economic interdependence does not necessitate the subjugation of the American people and its government to the unelected elitist bureaucrats in New York, Geneva, and the Hague, no matter how many times, day and night, Goldberg stamps his little feet and writes testy little pamphlets.

If the federal government wasn't up to its eyeballs in debt, our country would have much more independence of global financial events. With each passing day, our dependence grows upon other governments and foreign financial institutions buying up our debt, allowing our government to continue in its foolish, spendthrift ways. Eventually, like all excesses, this WILL run its course with a lot of possible adverse outcomes: 1) Foreign investors will eventually reach a point at which they no longer will buy our debt unless the Treasury offers a higher interest rate, driving up interest rates even in times when the national economy can't handle it. 2) In an effort to pay off all these bonds, the government simply prints more money, triggering severe inflation, perhaps even hyperinflation --- a devastation that this nation has never yet had to deal with. 3)Foreign governments, investment houses, the IMF, and other financial heavy weights reach a point at which they determine that the United States either will not or cannot set its financial house in order, and hold OPEC-like summits in which they dictate to us on how to manage our finances, and what to spend money on or else they will cease buying our treasury securities. If it gets to that point, we will realize as a nation just how much independence we've lost, and American exceptionalism will be a bad joke. 4) The long neglect of dealing with the upcoming insolvency of our entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, comes to a head. Future American leaders are forced into a situation where there is no right answer or best option ---- either let these programs die a slow death, leaving millions of Americans dependent on these programs to suffer poverty and disease, or raise taxes to crushing levels on all levels of society in a losing effort to keep them going, only to utterly destroy what's left of the faltering economy.