UN Schemes to Tax Americans
UNESCO — The Model To Say Goodbye
A trigger provision buried in U.S. laws since 1990 quietly took effect at the end of October. The U.S. taxpayers’ annual donation of 22% of UNESCO’s budget was summarily terminated when UNESCO voted 107 to 14 (with 52 abstentions) to approve full membership for Palestine.
The cutoff of U.S. handouts includes not only our major annual gift to UNESCO of $80 million but also some extra-budgetary donations of $2 million and $3 million a year for special projects, mostly in Iraq. The Palestinians can now request admission to three other UN agencies and, if accepted, U.S. law will require us to terminate our handouts to those agencies, too.
The idea of an automatic cutoff of U.S. spending when a recipient takes anti-American actions is a splendid idea. I can think of lots of appropriations where a rule like this would save us money, so let’s start with the United Nations itself.
For example, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in Bangladesh on November 14, urged world leaders to finalize financing for a multibillion-dollar fund to fight the effects of climate change. He is urging the UN climate-change conference that opened November 28 in Durban, South Africa, to raise $100 billion a year for a Green Climate Fund to help poor countries cope with global warming. Americans should recognize this language as UN gobbledegook to transfer U.S. wealth to foreign countries run by corrupt dictators. The 190 countries expected to attend the Durban conference would probably think that is a nifty idea.
Ban Ki-moon started his drive for a huge UN climate change fund by making a tear-jerking plea, about a melting North Pole glacier, at the Copenhagen UN conference in December 2009. But despite President Obama’s attendance, designed to encourage UN wishful thinking, Copenhagen results were zero.
Following the failed Copenhagen conference, Ban Ki-moon assembled a 20-member High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing to make recommendations to the Green Climate Fund. Members included (surprise, surprise) George Soros.
The U.S. Senate never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed by Bill Clinton, but in 1992 our Senate ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed by President George H.W. Bush. This UNFCCC created a committee charged with designing a Green Climate Fund, which is supposed to raise $100 billion a year.
The Cancun Agreements, adopted at the UN Climate Talks in December 2010, established the Green Climate Fund, and also set up a committee to make recommendations to the Durban conference in November.
Of course, nobody knows what these international bureaucrats (spending other nations’ money) will finally decide is the cost to “go green.” Some estimates use the figure $600 billion annually, and others estimate $1.9 trillion annually for the next 40 years.
The committee hasn’t yet made progress with the plan to get guarantees from developed countries (i.e., the U.S.) to take action domestically and collectively to pledge the money. The poor countries will use the Durban, South Africa conference to demand that the developed countries ante up $100 billion annually by 2020.
The most scary part is how the committee, consisting of representatives of 40 nations, plans to get the $100 billion a year. The committee is hoping to impose UN taxes on carbon, international travel and shipping, international financial trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives and currency, and a wire tax for producing electricity, plus eliminating individual-country subsidies to fossil fuels and diverting that money to the Green Climate Fund.
The strategy behind this potpourri of special taxes is, first, to bypass Congress, realizing that even our big-spending politicians are not stupid enough to vote for a UN appropriation of such magnitude. Second, the amount of money that could be raised by these special taxes paid by individuals and corporations could reach or even exceed the extravagant goals of the Green Climate Fund.
We should use the UNESCO model and pass a law specifying that if the UN imposes any taxes to be paid by individuals or corporations, that’s the day we terminate all U.S. appropriations to the UN.
Maybe these UN tax-hungry globalists will get some help from the Occupy Wall Street bunch for the plan to tax individuals instead of relying on congressional appropriations. One OWS leader just demanded “a 1 percent Robin Hood tax on all financial transactions and currency trades.” Don’t laugh. A financial transaction tax was endorsed by Bill Gates and by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who lobbied President Obama at the G-20 Summit in Cannes to join him.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa opening on November 28, called COP-17, is one of a series of UN meetings working toward a specific goal. Advertising for this meeting featured a long list of invited celebrities including Angelina Jolie, U2’s Bono, Ted Turner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore, and Michael Bloomberg.
The UN goal is to move the United States into global government by environmental regulations and a vast network of taxes. These newly-imposed taxes will give the UN a tremendous stream of money in addition to U.S. dues and congressional appropriations.
The plan for taxes was launched at the 1992 UN meeting in Rio de Janeiro, known as the Earth Summit, where Conference Secretary General Maurice Strong produced a 300-page document with 40 proposals called Agenda 21. The tax-seeking route then proceeded through UN meetings in Cancun in 2010, in Durban this November, and will be finalized next year at what is called Rio+20 (i.e., Rio de Janeiro after 20 years).
Agenda 21 is a comprehensive master plan to reshape and control the U.S. and lock us into the clutches of the UN under the innocuous phrase Sustainable Development. Along with 178 countries, President George H.W. Bush accepted Agenda 21 as “soft law” adopted by a new tactic called collaborative consensus building, instead of by treaty.
Bush popularized the term New World Order, but left it for others to define. Mikhail Gorbachev said the threat of an environmental crisis will be the international key to unlock the New World Order, and President Bill Clinton issued an Executive Order in 1993 creating the President’s Council on Sustainable Development.
Advocates of Agenda 21 talk about the three E’s of Sustainable Development: Economy, Equity, and Environment. Equity means replacing our American constitutional system with central planning and “social justice,” which is a code word for redistribution of wealth, abolition of private property rights, and giving favored corporations tax breaks, grants, and use of Eminent Domain.
Economy means shifting from a private enterprise system to government-private-corporation-partnerships. That would be a giant step toward total government and UN control of our economy, with the ability to redistribute our goods and services to foreign countries.
Environment means giving animals and plants more rights or at least equal rights with humans. It also promotes worship of nature and Mother Earth.
To talk about Agenda 21, you will have to get used to a new vocabulary: green jobs, green building codes, going green, regional planning, smart growth, biodiversity, sustainable farming, growth management, resilient cities, sustainable communities, redistribution, urban growth boundaries, redevelopment districts, and consensus.
Agenda 21 wants to herd people into crowded communities, with limited housing space and limited parking spaces. This will promote the green goal of reducing our use of automobiles, allowing only electric cars that can’t go very fast or very far, so people will have to walk and use bicycles and mass transit.
Agenda 21 supports the Wildlands Project, which seeks to re-wild 50% of our nation and turn it into a pre-Columbian wilderness where animals roam freely and humans are crowded into limited spaces. Already, we find that rural roads are not being repaired or maintained.
Agenda 21 has started its attacks on rural and small-town property rights. Six hundred U.S. cities and counties have signed on to ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, pronounced ik-lay), putting themselves indirectly under supervision of UN regulations and restrictions.
Advocates of Agenda 21 believe the earth is overcrowded. They demand an 85% reduction in human population.
It’s a major goal of Agenda 21 to lower the U.S. standard of living by cutting our use of energy. Agenda 21 plans to use smart meters, smart grids, and smart growth so that our nation’s use of electricity can be controlled, limited, and redistributed.
Schools and universities are important to Agenda 21’s goals. The plan is to make them indoctrination institutions, where kids are taught “green” propaganda, as well as global education to make them citizens of the world.
When you get down to the nitty-gritty, what these UN climate conferences are all about is getting the UN to impose taxes that will give the UN an immense flow of money so it doesn’t have to worry about Congress cutting off appropriations.
This UN plan means imposing UN taxes on currency transfers, fossil energy production including oil, natural gas and coal, the commercial use of oceans, international airplane tickets, and all foreign exchange transactions.
Taxes of this magnitude would give the UN so much power that it would become a de facto world government. Tell your Members of Congress to pledge that the day the UN adopts this extravagant anti-American nonsense will be the day we say goodbye to the UN.
The TV presidential candidate debates have included little or no mention of what is widely conceded to be the number-one issue: jobs. The unemployment figures remain unacceptably high, and the figures for young people are truly shocking. The general unemployment rate has been 9% or higher for the past 2-1/2 years. But in the second quarter of 2011, the unemployment rate for U.S.-born young adults (18 to 29) who have completed high school was double that: 18.2%.
It’s a real example of media bias that the Mainstream Media news reports on young adults’ unemployment fail to mention the fact that an estimated seven to eight million illegal aliens are holding jobs in the United States. And Obama recently announced a decision to add many more to this total, which will put them in direct competition with unemployed or underemployed young Americans.
The Obama Administration is reviewing the cases of 300,000 illegal aliens currently in deportation proceedings. “Reviewing” means that they will not be deported, but instead will be invited to apply for work authorization, an Obama euphemism for amnesty.
I’m waiting to hear from our presidential candidates their analysis of why we are suffering these unemployment rates and what are their plans to remedy the problem. I’m waiting to hear any discussion of the relationship between the unemployment of young non-college-educated Americans, especially minorities, and our wide-open immigration which is admitting young foreigners of limited schooling to fill those very jobs that Americans desperately need.
I’d like to hear our presidential candidates address the disaster of the U.S. establishment’s goal to push us into an open-borders global economy. Let’s hear them discuss the idiocy of the globalists’ propaganda of recent years, namely, that we should look to the European Union, and its common currency the euro, as a model for a North American Union and perhaps even a common currency called the amero.
I’m eager to hear our presidential candidates discuss the colossal failure of the doctrine of free trade and how it enables protectionist countries, especially Communist China, to play the U.S. for a sucker while using the tremendous profits China makes on sales to the U.S. to build an awesome and threatening military. For those without blinders on their eyes, it’s apparent that Communist China is using our adherence to the failed doctrine of free trade to cheat us coming and going, steal our patents and intellectual property, and sell us fake and dangerous merchandise, all the way from computer chips to ingredients in our prescription drugs.
I want to hear the presidential candidates show some empathy for the nearly three million Americans who have lost manufacturing jobs that went overseas. Those were well-paid blue-collar jobs that enabled men to join the Middle Class, support a full-time homemaker, and buy a house. Republican presidential candidates will lose if they brush off all those good Americans as John McCain did campaigning in Detroit in 2008, saying, those jobs are “not coming back” so laid off workers should go to a community college.
Let’s hear the presidential candidates address the political shenanigan that put us into the World Trade Organization in a Lame Duck Session, enabling a bunch of anti-American bureaucrats in Geneva to dictate our foreign trade policies. The power “to regulate trade with foreign nations” is one of the explicit powers given to Congress and no part of that power should be given away.
I’d like to hear our presidential candidates answer the question, Do you support a global economy in which Americans must compete with foreigners who are paid 50 cents an hour, working long hours with no benefits, and living in a company dormitory? That’s the bottom line of all those exotic terms that were bandied about during the administrations of Bill Clinton and both Bushes: globalism, New World Order, North American Union, Free Trade Area of the Americas, global governance, interdependence, Security and Prosperity Partnership, NAFTA Superhighway, and the free movement of people and goods across borders.
We have seen the future; it’s called the European Union. And we don’t want it. Immigration and socialism have destroyed Europe, financially and culturally.
Let’s hear our presidential candidates tell us how they will rebuild our exceptional nation, with military superiority that can defend our people against all evil dictators, and with respect for the U.S. Constitution that rejects laws and practices of other countries and the presumptuous dictates of United Nations treaties.
For example, how about ending taxes on corporate profits produced by U.S. workers and taxing only corporate profits squeezed out of cheap foreign labor?
After years of negative votes in Congress and the opposition of the American people, on October 21 Barack Obama allowed the first Mexican truck to cross the border at Laredo, Texas and head north to deliver door-to-door service of its load of industrial equipment. This implemented an agreement quietly signed by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in Mexico City on July 6 with Mexico’s secretary of Communications and Transportation.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) calls this deal a major anti-jobs program, saying: “We’re literally taking good jobs here in America and passing them over the line to Mexico.” Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Independent Drivers Association, a non-union trade association, said 100,000 trucking jobs will be lost.
The Mexican company that won the distinction of being first in line to cross the border was Transportes Olympic. FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) immediately granted it “Permanent Operating Authority,” instead of making the company abide by the specified 18-month waiting period, which means Transportes’ trucks will not have to be inspected at the border every time they cross.
FMCSA has announced that all Mexican trucks participating in this project will be given Electronic On-Board Recorders (EOBR) equipped with global positioning capabilities and paid for by the U.S. taxpayers. FMCSA also announced that U.S. trucks must install similar equipment at their own expense.
U.S. taxpayers are also being required to pick up the cost of replacing old mufflers on dozens of Mexican trucks at a cost of $1,600 each, while U.S. truckers must buy their own mufflers. The excuse is that this will improve air quality on our highways.
But EOBRs and mufflers are only part of the expensive regulations hitting U.S. truckers. Obama has imposed new fuel-efficiency regulations, new emissions targets, and new safety regulations. The large trucking firms may be able to absorb the cost, but independent truckers will be hit hard. If they can’t afford to buy compliant rigs, they will have to cease operation.
It’s apparently Obama’s conscious policy to disfavor small trucking firms by regulatory favoritism. It’s also Obama’s conscious policy to favor Mexican trucks with U.S. taxpayer handouts.
The chatter in Washington is about creating jobs for Americans and cutting spending. However, Todd Spencer says “this program does exactly the opposite for both” and will “jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands of U.S.-based small-business truckers” as well as “undermine the standard of living for the rest of the driver community.”
Americans who drive daily on U.S. highways are very concerned about safety when Mexican trucks are added to U.S. trucks already on our roads. The U.S-Mexico agreement requires us to accept Mexican commercial driver licenses, but Mexico has no real system of driver licensing, training, drug testing, or physical requirements, or truck safety inspection or brake standards that match U.S. rules.
Mexico cannot produce records of drivers’ accidents or drug or alcohol use, or a truck’s record of brake safety or emissions. Also, Mexico is a country where bribes are the customary method of bypassing regulations.
George W. Bush’s Transportation Secretary Mary Peters admitted at a Senate hearing that the U.S. regularly checks “proficient in English” when Mexican drivers answer questions and explain U.S. traffic signs in Spanish. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) was so incredulous at this reply that he had her repeat it, which she did.
Even though Obama is a big advocate of clean air and green jobs, there is no mention in the agreement that Mexican trucks should adhere to the environmental standards imposed on American trucks. Juan Carlos Munoz, president of Mexico’s National Chamber of Motor Transport of Freight, said that Mexican companies “do not have sufficient capacity to supply the diesel suitable for these new technologies,” and that, if held to these requirements, Mexican truckers would be unable to “ever enter the United States, at least not for the next 20 years.”
The reciprocal promise to allow U.S. trucks to drive into Mexico doesn’t pass the laugh test. A U.S. trucker would be taking his life into his hands if he drives his truck into northern Mexico where he would become a target to be robbed and killed by the Mexican drug cartels.
Despite the large quantity of press coverage about next year’s presidential election and attention to TV debates, the polls show that no candidate in either party is reaching 50% public support. Meanwhile, the NBC News/WallStreetJournal poll, conducted jointly by Democrats and Republicans, reports that 74% of Americans think our government is taking us in the wrong direction, and only 17% think we are on the right track.
I recommend that every presidential candidate read three books to understand why they don’t get it. First, they should read the best book about Barack Obama, Radical-in-Chief, by Stanley Kurtz, which explains how he became a Socialist while attending Columbia University.
The presidential candidates should then read a book that explains in depressing detail why grassroots Americans are convinced that our government is taking us in the wrong direction and over a cliff before our children and grandchildren will ever achieve the American dream: Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? by Patrick J. Buchanan.
He explains how the liberals have carried on a war against our Judeo-Christian faith, traditional marriage, and our patriotic belief that America is exceptional and should be militarily superior. They have trashed and tried to abolish symbols we cherish such as the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments. They are replacing e pluribus unum with what Theodore Roosevelt warned against: unrestrained immigration that will make us “a polyglot boarding house for the world.”
The third book, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon by Mark Steyn, delivers the same message, but in Steyn’s uniquely different and delightful style. Steyn puts it to us bluntly: “if you want a happy ending, it’s up to you. Your call, America.”
