American Policy Center » 2002 » December
- Pombo for House Resources Chairman!
- What Is the Meaning of New Year's?
- The United Nations: It's Time to End the Farce
December 24, 2002
SITUATION: Committee chairmanships in the House of Representatives will be decided on by a group called the Republican Steering Committee, which consists of twenty-eight GOP House members (see list below).
TIME LINE: The Steering Committee will formally meet to vote on committee chairmen on January 9 or 10, 2003. HOWEVER, votes are informally being tallied now, and the lobbying is intense. Most observers predict that Steering Committee members will make up their minds between now and Christmas, with a few stragglers making their decisions between Christmas and New Years. So crunch time is RIGHT NOW.
STATUS: Advocates of private property rights must push for our people to be in leadership positions in this Congress, or else the GOP will support land grabs just as the Democrats frequently do.
The Resources Committee oversees many of the issues most important to private property rights and federal lands, including the Endangered Species Act, energy and mineral exploration, recreational access to federal lands, international environmental treaties, forest health, water rights, national parks and wildlife refuges and the Bureau of Land Management.
Congressman Richard Pombo has announced he is running for the Resources Committee chairmanship. Others are seeking this influential post also, but Pombo is the best of the bunch. Richard Pombo has been our very best advocate in Congress since the day he was sworn in to the House of Representatives ten years ago, and has earned our support in his bid to become chairman.
Within a few weeks after taking office back in 1993, Pombo established the Congressional Task Force on Private Property Rights (a later version of which became the Western Caucus). He then began challenging land acquisition funding, the National Biological Survey and other programs, which had been unquestioned sacred cows of the environmental movement.
Starting in 1995 and every year since, Pombo has held field hearings across the country and had over one hundred citizens testify to expose the scams and failures of the Endangered Species Act. He did battle with the Clinton Administration and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on many issues, from challenging the authority of United Nations land use designations to the National Heritage Rivers land grab proposal.
Pombo has been a consistent voice in support of compensating property owners when the government proposes to regulate land out of any reasonable use. Earlier in 2002, he stopped the National Heritage Area federal zoning bill dead in its tracks by insisting that property owners be notified when they fall into a proposed heritage area.
He has attended the last three international conferences that the animal rights and international enviro outfits use to promote their agenda, called the “CITES” conference. He successfully lobbied for resumption of trade in ivory and hides so that African countries can use their elephants and other animals as resources, and fought against restrictions in trade of well-managed tree harvests, circuses, and hunting.
Pombo has gained approval from the Resources Committee for two excellent bills to improve the Endangered Species Act. One would compensate property owners when the government takes away use of land for allegedly endangered species, and the other requires that solid scientific data be shown before a species can be listed. Pombo currently serves as a senior member of the Resources Committee and as Chairman of the Western Caucus. He can be counted on to lead the fight on our most important issues of concern to private property rights and multiple use of federal lands.
ACTION ITEM:
Listed below are the members of the Republican Steering Committee, who will vote on who will be chairman of the very important Resources Committee. CONTACT THEM and tell them, using the information above and anything else you would like to add, that Richard Pombo should be Chairman! If there are congressmen listed below from your home state, please make an EXTRA EFFORT to email, call and fax them!
Denny Hastert, Illinois, (202) 225-2976
Tom DeLay, Texas, (202) 225-5951
Roy Blunt, Missouri, (202) 225-6536
Eric Cantor, Virginia, (202) 225-2815
Deborah Pryce, Ohio, (202) 225-2015
Chris Cox, California, (202) 225-5611
Jack Kingston, Georgia, (202) 225-5831
John Doolittle, California, (202) 225-2511
Tom Reynolds, New York, (202) 225-5265
Tom Davis, Virginia, (202) 225-1492
Bill Young, Florida, (202) 225-5961
Billy Tauzin, Louisiana, (202) 225-4031
David Dreier, California, (202) 225-2305
Bill Thomas, California, (202) 225-2915
Adam Putnam, Florida, (202) 225-1252
Doc Hastings, Washington, (202) 225-5816
John Shaddeg, Arizona, (202) 225-3361
Joe Barton, Texas, (202) 225-2002
Tom Latham, Iowa, (202) 225-5476
Dave Camp, Michigan, (202) 225-3561
John McHugh, New York, (202) 225-4611
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania, (202) 225-2011
Ralph Regula, Ohio, (202) 225-3876
Hal Rogers, Kentucky, (202) 225-4601
Mac Collins, Georgia, (202) 225-5901
Don Young, Alaska, (202) 225-5765
John Culberson, Texas, (202) 225-2571
Let’s get 2003 off to a great start with a Resources Committee chairman who will listen to us! PLEASE act now!
Mike Hardiman is one of the most knowledgeable and effective lobbyists in Washington, on property rights and resource use issues. He can be reached at hardimanmike@aol.com
New Year’s makes the attainment of happiness more real and possible.
December 23, 2002
By Scott McConnell
The meaning of most holidays is clear: Valentine’s Day celebrates romance; July Fourth, independence; Thanksgiving, productivity; Christmas, good will toward men. The meaning of New Year’s Day—the world’s most celebrated holiday—is not so clear. On this day, many people remember last year’s achievements and failures and look forward to the promise of a new year, of a new beginning. But this celebration and reflection is the result of more than an accident of the calendar. New Year’s has a deeper significance. What is it?
On New Year’s Day, when the singing, fireworks and champagne toasts are over, many of us become more serious about life. We take stock and plan new courses of action to better our lives. This is best seen in one of the most popular customs and the key to the meaning of New Year’s: making resolutions.
On average each American makes 1.8 New Year’s resolutions. When the rest of the world is taken into account, the number of people making resolutions skyrockets to hundreds of millions. From New York to Paris to Sydney, interesting similarities arise as shown in two very common resolutions: people wanting to be more attractive by losing weight, and to be healthier by exercising more and smoking less. They want to do things better, become better people.
New Year’s Day is the most active-minded holiday, because it is the one where people evaluate their lives and plan and resolve to take action. One dramatic example of taking resolutions seriously is the old European custom of: “What one does on this day one will do for the rest of the year.” What unites this custom and the more common type of resolutions is that on the first day of the year people take their values more seriously.
Values are not only physical and external. They also can be psychological. Many New Year’s resolutions reveal that people want to better themselves by improving psychologically. For example, look at your own resolutions over the years. Haven’t they included such vows as: be more patient with your children, improve your self-esteem, be more emotionally open with your wife? Such resolutions express the moral ambitiousness of a person wanting to improve his self and life.
What then is the philosophic meaning of New Year’s resolutions? Every resolution you make on this day implies that you are in control of your self, that you are not a victim fated by circumstance, controlled by stars, owned by luck, but that you are an individual who can make choices to change your life. You can learn statistics, ask for that promotion, fight your shyness, search for that marriage partner. Your life is in your own hands.
But what is the purpose of making such goals and resolutions? Why bother? Making New Year’s resolutions (and doing so even after failing last year’s) stresses that people want to be happy. On New Year’s Day many people accept, often more implicitly than explicitly, that happiness comes from the achievement of values. That is why you resolve to be healthier, more ambitious, more confident. You want to enjoy that sense of purpose, accomplishment and pleasure that one feels when achieving values. It is happiness that is the motor and purpose of one’s life. It is New Year’s, more than any other day, that makes the attainment of happiness more real and possible. This is the meaning of New Year’s Day and why it is so psychologically important and significant to people throughout the world.
If people were to apply the value-achievement meaning of New Year’s Day explicitly and consistently 365 days each year, they would be happier.
So every day, fill your champagne glass of life to the brim with values—and drink deep to your life and the joy that it can and should be.
Happy New Year. Happy life.
Scott McConnell is director of communications of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
December 16, 2002
By Tom DeWeese
The world is in chaos and, quite frankly, it’s the United Nations’ fault. It gives validity to zealots and petty bigots. It helps to keep tyrannical dictators in power. It provides money and aid to international terrorists. And it sets itself up as the international economic and environmentalstandard which all nations are to mirror. The United Nations is the root cause of international trouble, not the answer.
Saddam Hussein is in power, able to threaten world peace today, because theUnited States allowed the United Nations to dictate the terms for the finish to the Gulf War after an American-organized coalition all but annihilated Iraq as a war machine. In the intervening decade, Iraq has time and again broken the terms of that treaty. The UN’s response has been to pass 17 toothless resolutions to demand that Iraq behave itself.
Delay. Negotiate. Recommend. Study. Reconsider. Do nothing. This is the game the UN has played in nearly every international crisis.
It is the reason North Korea remains a threat and its violent dictator’s son remains in power. It’s the reason why Zimbabwe’s murderous dictator, Robert Mugabe, is able to steal his election and then steal the land of white property owners and still have a voice at the UN’s Sustainable Development Conference. It’s the reason why the Communist Chinese are able to ignore any UN rules not to their liking while growing as an international military and economic threat. It’s the reason why a terrorist nation like Syria can be given a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council.
The United States must share some of the blame for this situation because we allow this circus on the East River to exist. The only credibility the UN possesses comes from recognition by the United States. The only financial security the UN enjoys comes from funds provided by U.S. taxpayers. The only military punch the UN has comes from American military power. The United Nations is a house of cards, but it’s a very dangerous house of cards.
The UN is dangerous because its most vocal membership stands in opposition of the American values of representative government, justice, free enterprise, privacy of individuals and private property rights. Most of the UN’s members are nations controlled either by communist regimes, kingdoms or mad dictators where American values are either unknown or viewed as a threat.
Those same UN members are busy working to implement plans for UN global governance. Already, the UN’s International Criminal Court is in place. The UN has held an international meeting to discuss the possibilities and methods of implementing global taxes. More plans are under consideration to establish a UN global army or police force.
Most member states participating in these planning sessions are from brutal dictatorships like China and Cuba and brutal fundamental Islamic states like Syria and Iran. Can any clear thinking American honestly believe that the ideas coming out of this group would have a possibility of favoring ideals readily accepted as rights in the United States? Or expressed in the UN’s Charter?
Many Americans simply do not believe that the United States would voluntarily give up its sovereignty to the United Nations. They say our people would never stand for it. It is happening incrementally with innocent-sounding policies, treaties and protocols.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was sold as simply a way for American producers to broaden their markets to the international level. Instead, many have found that details of the treaty dictate rules and regulations, particularly of the environmental kind, that tilt the playing field to other nations. As a result, American markets are flooded with foreign goods as American businesses and jobs head out of the country. As a result of NAFTA, the American sheep industry has all but disappeared. Other industries may soon follow as the United States continues to cling to this discredited policy.
The European Union was originally sold as another NAFTA through which nations could join together to compete with the United States in the international market. Now, once-proud nations have given up their national sovereignty, ancient currencies like the Italian Lira and the French Franc have disappeared in place of the Euro. Would the citizens of France, Italy or Greece ever have agreed to such a move had the whole plan been put on a ballot? Now there is discussion of an African Union, a South American Union and a North American Union in which the United States would meld its borders with Canada and Mexico. The move will be easy since NAFTA has already set the precedent.
How long will it be after the establishment of all of these geographical unions before the world moves towards one international union? Imagine a world run by the justice of China, with the economics of Cuba and the military might of the United States. Such is the world of the future under the United Nations. The United States holds all of the cards, but it has only one vote in this cesspool of Socialism.
The United States can end it all now if it wishes. The carefully calculated idea that the UN is a benevolent institution must be changed. President Bush has proven that we don’t need the United Nations to grant us permission to protect our national interests. The United States can and will fight its own war on terrorism. It can and will organize its own coalition of allies, use its own money, its own weapons, and its own troops to defeat an enemy who threatens us.
When the 108th Congress opens in January, Congressman Ron Paul will once again introduce H.R. 1146, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act. His bill calls for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. It also calls for the United Nations to remove its headquarters from our shores. H.R. 1146 would relieve the United States from participating in UNESCO and UN environmental policies that endanger our economy and property rights. It would end U.S. participation in UN peacekeeping missions, meaning we would no longer be helping to prop up criminal governments and enemies who seek our demise.
As the UN’s irrelevance becomes clearer to Americans; as it drags its feet, delays and passes yet anther meaningless resolution, the time has never been better to change the national mindset to say, “Get us out of the UN.” That time is now.
