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The Texan People Trust – Ron Paul In His Own Words

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The ONLY Pro-Constitution Antiwar candidate in his own words (I sent this piece to a couple of sites early this morning):

Updated version (6/1) – I altered this so as to make it less of a political endorsement:

The Texan People Trust: The Only PRO-CONSTITUTION ANTIWAR Candidate
In His Own Words

What’s behind the recent swell of support for Congressman Ron Paul?
Supporters point out a number of refreshing differences in the maverick Texan, who has the blogs a-buzz. In no particular order, they are –

20. NOT A CHICKEN HAWK. Unlike Dick Cheney, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, Paul served in Vietnam for duty…not booty. He knows the costs – when they’re worth paying and when they’re not. That alone makes him credible to many people as an antiwar candidate.
“As an Air Force officer serving from 1963-1968, I heard the same agonizing pleas from the American people. These pleas were met with the same excuses about why we could not change a deeply flawed policy and rethink the war in Vietnam. That bloody conflict, also undeclared and unconstitutional, seems to have taught us little despite the horrific costs.”

— “We Just Marched In (So We Can Just March Out),” April 17, 2007

“Why is it that those who never wore a uniform and are confident that they won’t have to personally fight this war are more anxious for this war than our generals?”

— “Questions That Won’t Be Asked About Iraq,” September 10, 2002

19. HAS FOUGHT FOR SOMETHING – for human life. As a medical doctor, he can actually do something besides shuffle paper and grease palms, which makes him an all but extinct species in the Beltway jungle. And while his training puts him squarely in the science-based community, he’s also a genuinely religious man who has the trust of social conservatives. Many people would rather hear hard science from a principled individual like Ron Paul than soft twaddle from front men for vested interests. They see him as both a strong libertarian and a social conservative and wonder if he just might be the person to shape the issues in a way that’s rational and sensitive to rights.
“The bottom line is that mental health issues are a matter for parents, children, and their doctors, not government…..It is important to understand that powerful interests, namely federal bureaucrats and pharmaceutical lobbies, are behind the push for mental health screening in schools. There is no end to the bureaucratic appetite to run our lives, and the pharmaceutical industry is eager to sell psychotropic drugs to millions of new customers in American schools. Only tremendous public opposition will suffice to overcome the lobbying and bureaucratic power behind the president’s New Freedom Commission.”

— “Don’t Let Congress Fund Orwellian Psychiatric Screening of Kids,” January 31, 2005


18. KNOWS OPEN BORDERS DON’T MIX WITH WARFARE-WELFARE
Supporters claim that Paul is no ideologue who lets doctrinaire libertarianism trump considerations of law and ethics. His position on immigration, for instance, is not the usual “open borders” mantra of many soi-disant free traders:

“We’re often told that immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do, and sometimes this is true. But in many instances illegal immigrants simply increase the supply of labor in a community, which lowers wages.”

“The Immigration Question,” April 4, 2006.

“… immigration may be the sleeper issue that decides the 2008 presidential election.”

“More importantly, we should expect immigrants to learn about and respect our political and legal traditions, which are rooted in liberty and constitutionally limited government.

Our most important task is to focus on effectively patrolling our borders. With our virtually unguarded borders, almost any determined individual – including a potential terrorist – can enter the United States. Unfortunately, the federal government seems more intent upon guarding the borders of other nations than our own. We are still patrolling Korea’s border after some 50 years, yet ours are more porous than ever.”

— “Immigration and the Welfare Stare,” August 9, 2005.
This is not xenophobia – it’s common sense in most countries in the world.

17. UNDERSTANDS THE NEED TO REIGN IN THE EXECUTIVE. Critics of our out-of-control Caesar can take heart from Paul. He is very clear on the importance of the separation of powers and the need for checks and balances in the government and he’s spoken out time and again for strengthening the power of Congress.

“…why not try something novel, like having Congress act as an independent and equal branch of government? Restore the principle of the separation of powers, so that we can perform our duty to provide checks and balances on an executive branch (and an accommodating judiciary) that spies on Americans, glorifies the welfare state, fights undeclared wars, and enormously increases the national debt. Congress was not meant to be a rubber stamp. It’s time for a new direction.”

— “Searching For a New Direction,” January 19, 2006.

He’s also stood up against corrupt federal programs like the “war on drugs”:

“We have promoted a foolish and very expensive domestic war on drugs for more than 30 years. It has done no good whatsoever. I doubt our Republic can survive a 30-year period of trying to figure out how to win this guerilla war against terrorism.”

“The drug war encourages violence. Government violence against nonviolent users is notorious and has led to the unnecessary prison overpopulation. Innocent taxpayers are forced to pay for all this so-called justice. Our eradication project through spraying around the world, from Colombia to Afghanistan, breeds resentment because normal crops and good land can be severely damaged. Local populations perceive that the efforts and the profiteering remain somehow beneficial to our own agenda in these various countries.”

— “War on Terror? It’s as Bad as the War on Drugs,” October 30, 2001.

16. GETS VOLUNTARY SELF DEFENSE not only in the constitution but in Anglo-American political history. Ron Paul, say supporters, really understands what some eastern elites don’t – how central the second amendment is to the notion of a self -reliant, vigilant population. Especially now, the right to arms may be the only safeguard for citizens who don’t trust the police to protect them. That includes minorities who’ve been on the receiving end of police brutality.

“Gun control historically serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government.”

— “The D.C. Gun Ban,” March 12, 2007

In the same spirit Paul also opposes the draft, which allows the privileged and powerful to forcibly deploy less privileged young men as cannon fodder.

“I believe wholeheartedly that an all-volunteer military is not only sufficient for national defense, but also preferable. It is time to abolish the Selective Service System and resign military conscription to the dustbin of American history. Five hundred million dollars have been wasted on Selective Service since 1979, money that could have been returned to taxpayers or spent to improve the lives of our nation’s veterans.”

— “Rethinking the Draft,” November 28, 2006

15. SUPPORTS DECENTRALIZATION CONSISTENTLY by supporting national sovereignty against transnational organizations manipulated by global elites. The same principle leads him to support the states against the Fed – and turns power back to local communities and people, instead of bureaucrats.

“The superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically connected interests.”

“This will require coordinated federal and state eminent domain actions on an unprecedented scale, as literally millions of people and businesses could be displaced. The loss of whole communities is almost certain, as planners cannot wind the highway around every quaint town, historic building, or senior citizen apartment for thousands of miles.”

“The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union — complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether . . .”

— “The NAFTA Superhighway,” October 30, 2006.

“All federal aid for Katrina should have been distributed as directly as possible to local communities, rather than through wasteful middlemen like FEMA and Homeland Security.”

— “Katrina Relief Six Months Later,” February 21, 2006.
That’s also why Paul is against a national ID:

“This legislation imposes federal standards in a federal bill, and it creates a federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is still stamped with the name of your state. It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane. Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free republics.”

— “The Worst Way to Fight Terror,” October 9, 2004.

To more and more people, increased decentralization is beginning to look like the only way to allow less central but polarizing social issues to take a back seat to the two-headed monster we face today — war and economic recession.

And, contrary to the way a largely hostile media has painted it, Paul’s pro-life position is only opposed to Federal funding of abortions and stem-cell research. Nothing stops the states or private entities from funding either. That’s a constitutionally sound argument that allows different points of view to flourish without allowing any of them to tyrannize the others.

In response, critics of Paul argue that federal funding alone allows science and research to develop and cite the Internet as an example. They’re wrong. It was not at the Defense Department but at a European research organization that Tim Berners-Lee created his browser-editor. And aside from that factual inaccuracy, the argument itself is illogical. Because some innovations have come out of government funding, it doesn’t follow that all research could only have come out of it. In fact, the opposite might be true. The Internet could as well have developed sooner and better at the state level and with private backing. Dollar for dollar, federal funding for all sorts of things – from NASA to cancer research – has been shown to be either grossly ineffectual or not needed.

14. KNOWS THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM IS BROKEN and supports opening up the electoral process to more candidates from the grass roots:

“The two items I will be introducing on Tuesday embrace rather than disgrace the first amendment. The first is called the Voter Freedom Act of 1997. It will prohibit states from erecting excessive ballot access barriers to candidates for federal office. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to control federal elections, and I firmly believe that the more voices participating, the more likely it is that the entrenched, out-of-touch, Washington establishment will be swept to the side.”

“Another part of this vital process is opening the debates. So the second piece of legislation I am putting forward is the Debate Freedom Act of 1997……My legislation simply requires that if a candidate accepts the federal funding for his or her election, then that candidate can only participate in debates to which all candidates who qualify for federal funding – whether they take it or not – are invited to participate.”

— “If someone accepts federal cash, then they must follow rules taxpayers set and deserve,” September 15, 1997

13. WILL DECREASE TAXES and eliminate the bureaucracy strangling small businesses that create jobs and wealth. Supporters point out that in Paul’s lexicon wealth doesn’t mean the paper-jive of money-sharpers on Wall Street. It’s hard work, innovation and savings.

They also find hope in Paul’s sensitivity to the privacy issues involved with the IRS. He has publicly stated his concerns about the IRS using strong-arm tactics with citizens – and elected representatives – for political reasons.

“Imagine that you have taken a position contrary to the official dictates of the government in your nation. Instead of simply facing criticism from opposing political sides, you find your life turned upside-down; every aspect of your life is closely scrutinized. Without warning, your life savings are seized, your personal, private records divulged far and wide.
Suddenly, how willing are you to continue holding your views?”

“The answer is not to simply revise the code, or to make the IRS more independent, or to have an added layer of judicial review, the answer is to fundamentally change the way we collect taxes in this nation. The nonsensical body of law which governs the IRS is too far removed from sanity to be saved. And the graduated income tax system is neither fair, economically sound, moral nor useful.

“In my mind, the jury is still out on whether a flat tax or a national sales tax is the absolute best way to go (my main goal is for lower taxes, across-the-board), but both will go a long way toward eliminating the politically powerful weapon known as the IRS.”

— “Fear of IRS misplaced, the real problem is the system,” April 20, 1997.

12. BACKS SOUND MONEY Unlike other politicians with little sense of financial responsibility, Paul’s been speaking out for years against the destruction of the dollar. It’s one reason he’s popular. He’s been one of the very few who’ve spoken out again the cheap credit destroying savings and retirement money, pushing up the cost of living and devastating US standing in the international economy.

” I must diagnose an illness before I can treat a patient. In the current instance the diagnoses indicates that the squeeze of the middle class is caused not by low wages, but rather by increased costs resulting from central planning. And the key pillars of our current central-planning regime can be found in tax and monetary policies.

The fact that government creates money out of thin air must be addressed, because it is the entire reason why costs of living increase and standards of living decline….. Again, there is only one reason why prices are rising instead of falling. Because the government, through its credit-creation mechanism, is engaged in a sort of price controls, it is in fact following a policy that eventuates in price inflation as well as recession. Plus, this credit creation is at the heart of recent instability in the markets, thus threatening retirement security.”

— “Answering the Middle Class Squeeze,” March 27, 2000

“The biggest rip-off of all – the paper money system that is morally and economically equivalent to counterfeiting – is never questioned. It is the deceptive tool for transferring billions from the unsuspecting poor and middle-class to the special interest rich. And in the process, the deficit-propelled budget process supports the spending demands of all the special interests – left and right, welfare and warfare – while delaying payment to another day and sometimes even to another generation.”

—— “Searching for a New Direction,” January 19, 2006.
11 UNDERSTANDS THE REAL REASON WHY THE POOR ARE BEING SQUEEZED.

His supporters also think that Paul is the only one willing to tackle the real reason low-wage earners are taking it in the neck. Instead of pandering with price and wage controls, he strikes at the root:

“Our tax burden is at its highest peacetime levels. This means wage earners are being squeezed by the cost of government as well as the cost of living. Had Congress not stopped the Clinton-Gore tax on BTU’s, (which they called an economic stimulus package), fuel prices would be significantly higher than they are right now. This points to why government is not the answer.

Increases in costs of living are a real problem, especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale. Those costs will continue to rise if we allow central planning to continue, but the solution to central planning is freedom, not grant further control over wages to government.”

— “Answering the Middle Class Squeeze,” March 27, 2000

10. STANDS UP FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND PRIVACY.

“The Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act also contains a blanket prohibition on the use of identifiers to “investigate, monitor, oversee, or otherwise regulate” American citizens. Mr. Chairman, prohibiting the Federal Government from using standard identifiers will ensure that American liberty is protected from the “surveillance state.” Allowing the federal government to use standard identifiers to oversee private transactions present tremendous potential for abuse of civil liberties by unscrupulous government officials.

I am sure I need not remind the members of this Committee of the sad history of government officials of both parties using personal information contained in IRS or FBI files against their political enemies. Imagine the potential for abuse if an unscrupulous government official is able to access one’s complete medical, credit, and employment history by simply typing the citizens’ “uniform identifier” into a database.”

— Statement of Ron Paul on the Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act (HR 220), May 18, 2000

“This legislation gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand required information on driver’s licenses, potentially including such biometric information as retina scans, finger prints, DNA information, and even Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) radio tracking technology. Including such technology as RFID would mean that the federal government, as well as the governments of Canada and Mexico, would know where Americans are at all time of the day and night.

There are no limits on what happens to the database of sensitive information on Americans once it leaves the United States for Canada and Mexico – or perhaps other countries. Who is to stop a corrupt foreign government official from selling or giving this information to human traffickers or even terrorists? Will this uncertainty make us feel safer?”

— HR 418- A National ID Bill Masquerading as Immigration Reform, February 9, 2005


9. KNOWS CURRENT ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS ARE BANKRUPT and has the technical savvy to deal with healthcare, where government interference has already created a disaster.

“Those future obligations (of entitlements) put our real debt figure at roughly fifty trillion dollars- a staggering sum that is about as large as the total household net worth of the entire United States. Your share of this fifty trillion amounts to about $175,000.
….. If present trends continue, by 2040 the entire federal budget will be consumed by Social Security and Medicare alone. The only options for balancing the budget would be cutting total federal spending by about 60%, or doubling federal taxes. To close the long-term entitlement gap, the U.S. economy would have to grow by double digits every year for the next 75 years.”

— “The Coming Entitlement Meltdown,” March 5, 2007

The problems with our health-care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market.”

“As a greater amount of government and corporate money has been used to pay medical bills, costs have risen artificially out of the range of most individuals. Only true competition assures that the consumer gets the best deal at the best price possible by putting pressure on the providers. Patients are better served by having options and choices, not new federal bureaucracies and limitations on legal remedies.”

— “Diagnosing Our Health Care Woes,” September 25, 2006.


8. OPPOSES CORPORATE SUBSIDIES that distort the market and burden tax payers, like the bailout of international speculators with tax payer money in the Mexican and Asian crises in the 1990s.

“But many investors today are eager to embrace the philosophy of free-market economics when it comes to making money and keeping their profits, but at the first sign of those investments going sour, they want the government to socialize their losses at the expense of the taxpayers.

And since these investors have also heavily “invested” in American politics, it is easy for the politicians to use your money to help them out. After all, it is very easy to be generous with other people’s money.”

“President opts to use taxpayer fund to bail out wealthy investors,” December 29, 1997

“For a long time I have advocated getting rid of the Export-Import Bank. It is unconstitutional for the federal government, using your money, to be subsidizing the risky business ventures of corporations. And often, these ventures involve giving large sums of money and aid to oppressive foreign governments, like China……..Subsidizing big corporations is unconstitutional and violative of the laws of free-market economics, no matter what Congress calls the mechanism. Those who are addicted to corporate welfare have no need to worry; USEX will be doing the same thing as Ex-Im.”

— “US shouldn’t cast stones with Religious Persecution,” October 6, 1997

7. OPPOSES THE NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIST AGENDA and the charade of aid that funds foreign dictators. He also understands the dangers of national armies in the service of global international bodies, a position firmly rooted in the ideas of Madison and Jefferson — and firmly contrary to the delusional “liberventionism” of today’s humanitarian bombers who fancy themselves global Supermen.

“Neither, of course, does the Constitution allow us to subsidize foreign governments through such taxpayer-supported entities as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, OPIC, Ex-Im/USEX or any number of other vehicles through which the U.S. Congress sends foreign aid to a large number of countries (including those who engage in religious persecution). It is time we stopped both policing the world, and funding the totalitarian thugs of planet.”

” It is ironic that the same federal government which killed innocent children at Waco for their parents “odd” religious beliefs, now proclaims itself ready to judge the world’s nations on their religious tolerance.”

— “US shouldn’t cast stones with religious persecution,” October 6, 1997

6. WILLING TO LOOK FOR OIL IN OTHER PLACES besides the Middle East. Fans point out that he’s not a crony capitalist, either. Paul isn’t piped at the umbilicus to energy companies or in bed with oil executives, unlike our current crop of carbon-dating fossils.

“Yes, we need Middle Eastern oil, but we can reduce our need by exploring domestic sources. We should rid ourselves of the notion that we are at the mercy of the oil-producing countries- as the world’s largest oil consumer, their wealth depends on our business.”

— “Our Incoherent Foreign Policy Fuels Middle East Turmoil,” December 3, 2002 l

5. BELIEVES THE US GOVERNMENT SHOULD GOVERN THE US, not the World. Wow. What a revolutionary idea.

“We should stop the endless game of playing faction against faction, and recognize that buying allies doesn’t work. We should curtail the heavy militarization of the area by ending our disastrous foreign aid payments. We should stop propping up dictators and putting band-aids on festering problems. We should understand that our political and military involvement in the region creates far more problems that it solves. All Americans will benefit, both in terms of their safety and their pocketbooks, if we pursue a coherent, neutral foreign policy of non-interventionism, free trade, and self-determination in the Middle East.”

— “Our Incoherent Foreign Policy Fuels Middle East Turmoil,” December 3, 2002

“The best reason to oppose interventionism is that people die, needlessly, on both sides. We have suffered over 20,000 American casualties in Iraq already, and Iraq civilian deaths probably number over 100,000 by all reasonable accounts. The next best reason is that the rule of law is undermined, especially when military interventions are carried out without a declaration of war. Whenever a war is ongoing, civil liberties are under attack at home. The current war in Iraq and the misnamed war on terror have created an environment here at home that affords little constitutional protection of our citizen’s rights. Extreme nationalism is common during wars. Signs of this are now apparent.”

—“Iran: The Next Neo-Con Target,” April 5, 2006

4. STANDS UP TO BIG BROTHER.

Another reason for civil libertarians to cheer Ron Paul is his position on legislation like the Hate Crimes Bill. For opposing it, he’s been tarred by zealots as a closet bigot. But Paul – unlike his opponents – seems to be long-sighted enough to understand that the danger of creating a category of thought-crimes far outweighs any extra protection it might seem to afford the vulnerable in the short-term. Eventually, hate crime laws are frighteningly liable to be misused and only end up making political protest or the expression of religious conscience impossible.

“It’s also disconcerting to hear the subtle or not-so-subtle threats against free speech. Since the FCC regulates airwaves and grants broadcast licenses, we’re told it’s proper for government to forbid certain kinds of insulting or offensive speech in the name of racial and social tolerance. Never mind the 1st Amendment, which states unequivocally that, “Congress shall make NO law.”

— “Government and Racism,” April 16, 2007

Paul’s also made it clear that he’s against regulation of the Internet, one of the last remaining forums for free speech, especially on political matters, and one of the few places you can get independent news. People are rightly afraid of what would happen if that freedom disappeared too.

“I trust the Internet a lot more, and I trust the freedom of expression. And that’s why we should never interfere with the Internet. That’s why I’ve never voted to regulate the Internet.”

— “California Republican debate transcript,” May 7, 2007

3. IS RIGHT ABOUT TERRORISM:

Unlike most of our reps, Paul look like he actually reads what US intelligence (and just about every other intelligence service in the world) has been saying about terrorism for years:

“Consider Saudi Arabia, the native home of most of the September 11th hijackers. The Saudis, unlike the Iraqis, have proven connections to al Qaeda. Saudi charities have funneled money to Islamic terrorist groups. Yet the administration insists on calling Saudi Arabia a “good partner in the war on terror.” Why? Because the U.S. has a long standing relationship with the Saudi royal family, and a long history of commercial interests relating to Saudi oil. So successive administrations continue to treat the Saudis as something they are not: a reliable and honest friend in the Middle East.

The same is true of Pakistan, where General Musharaf seized power by force in a 1999 coup. The Clinton administration quickly accepted his new leadership as legitimate, to the dismay of India and many Muslim Pakistanis. Since 9/11, we have showered Pakistan with millions in foreign aid, ostensibly in exchange for Musharaf’s allegiance against al Qaeda. Yet has our new ally rewarded our support? Hardly. The Pakistanis almost certainly have harbored bin Laden in their remote mountains, and show little interest in pursuing him or allowing anyone else to pursue him. Pakistan has signed peace agreements with Taliban leaders, and by some accounts bin Laden is a folk hero to many Pakistanis.”

— “Hypocrisy in the Middle East,” Feb 26, 2007

2. IS RIGHT ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR

There’s a refreshing moral clarity about the man, say his supporters. Horses go before carts, he insists, in his revolutionary way.

“What is the moral argument for attacking a nation that has not initiated aggression against us, and could not if it wanted?”
“Why are we taking precious military and intelligence resources away from tracking down those who did attack the United States- and who may again attack the United States- and using them to invade countries that have not attacked the United States?”
“Was former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro wrong when he recently said there is no confirmed evidence of Iraq’s links to terrorism?”
“Is it not true that the CIA has concluded there is no evidence that a Prague meeting between 9/11 hijacker Atta and Iraqi intelligence took place?”
“Where does the Constitution grant us permission to wage war for any reason other than self-defense?”
” Is it not true that a war against Iraq rejects the sentiments of the time-honored Treaty of Westphalia, nearly 400 years ago, that countries should never go into another for the purpose of regime change?”
” Is it not true that the more civilized a society is, the less likely disagreements will be settled by war?”
” Is it not true that since World War II Congress has not declared war and- not coincidentally- we have not since then had a clear-cut victory?”

— “Questions That Won’t Be Asked About Iraq,” September 10, 2002

1. IS RIGHT ABOUT THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Ron Paul’s appeal may ultimately lie in his vision of the country. His America is a modest, self-limiting Constitutional Republic that tends its own garden– not the jack-booted empire of the neo-conservatives. And in search of that vision, he’s consistently defended the Bill of Rights against an arrogant executive and supine Congress who’ve sold them out to jack up their own power at home and abroad:

“It is with the complicity of Congress that we have become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrolled spying on the American people. Fighting over there has nothing to do with preserving freedoms here at home.”

— “Getting Iraq War Funding Wrong Again,” May 1, 2007

“It is clear, however, that the Patriot Act expands the government’s ability to monitor us. The Act eases federal rules for search warrants in some cases; allows expanded wiretaps and Internet monitoring; allows secret “sneak and peek” searches; and even permits federal agents to examine library and bookstore records. On these grounds alone it should be soundly rejected.”

— “Trust Us, We’re the Government,” August 26, 2003.
“We shuld remember that Iran, like Iraq, is a third-world nation without a significant military. Nothing in history hints that she is likely to invade a neighboring country, let alone do anything to America or Israel. I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.”

— “The Irrelevance of Military Victory,” January 16, 2007.

Psychologists helped frame US torture techniques

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Details of the declassified Inspector General’s Report on how the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was taught through a program that was framed in league with the psychology profession, in this article by psychologist and activist, Stephen Soldz:

“As part of the SERE program, trainees are subjected to abuse, including sleep deprivation, sexual and cultural humiliation, and, in some instances, waterboarding, described by one SERE graduate thus:
“[Y]ou are strapped to a board, a washcloth or other article covers your face, and water is continuously poured, depriving you of air, and suffocating you until it is removed, and/or inducing you to ingest water. We were carefully monitored (although how they determined these limits is beyond me), but it was a most unpleasant experience, and its threat alone was sufficient to induce compliance, unless one was so deprived of water that it would be an unintentional means to nourishment.”

More at his blog, “Psyche, Science and Society,” which has plenty of information on how the mind sciences are deployed in the services of the state. Put that next to the information we have about programs like TeenScreen and TMAP, and it should be clear that the sciences are not immune to the temptations of power and money.

We know we liive in a propaganda state. Now we know the extent to which the state is willing to employ science against any population, even its own. Several of the tortured detainees were American whistle-blowers who had alerted authorities to corruption in the military.

The end of the classless society: Eloi and Morlocks…

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Excerpt from a thoughtful commentary by Martin Hutchinson at Prudent Bear (reposting this piece, as I had some trouble with the old post):

“H.G. Wells postulated in his 1895 “Time Machine” the ultimate destination of a Latin American–style social system. In his future 800,000 years hence the human race has divided into two species, the eloi, who do no work and live only for trivial aesthetic pleasures and the morlocks, sub-men who work underground keeping the mechanical civilization running. Wells’s fantasy seemed far-fetched after 1920, as equality increased and the working classes became both educated and comfortably off. However the fantasy looks a lot closer to reality in 2007 than it did in 1957, when the movie was made.

 

In the United States, one would expect political activity to begin showing Latin American characteristics, including a breakdown in social cohesion, as Gini rises towards Latin American levels. This appears to be happening. One example is the doubling since 2000 of the number of Washington lobbyists, whose objective is primarily to divert public resources to private uses. A second is the growth of earmarking in legislation, up 10-fold in the decade to 2005; earmarks are generally inserted in order to benefit some private interest at the expense of the general good. U.S. politics has always been corrupt, and was especially so during the 1870-96 Gilded Age, the previous high point for inequality, but the increase in the proportion of Gross Domestic Product spent on lobbyists, the proportion of GDP spent on corrupt government spending and indeed the proportion of GDP spent on elections themselves suggests that systemic corruption is rapidly increasing.

 

The new immigration bill is above all an example of class legislation. The choice between a low or a moderate level of immigration depends primarily on non-economic factors — a voter’s interest or otherwise in increasing the diversity of the society, and the recognition that the global economy may work better and produce more wealth for all if there is a certain amount of migratory lubrication between different societies. However, the effect of more than modest immigration on inequality and therefore on class structure is highly significant. The Immigration Act of 1924, which largely restricted immigration to the richer countries of northwest Europe, produced the greatest social leveling the United States has ever seen, with the Gini coefficient declining by around 10 points between 1920 and 1965, the years of its salience (the 1924 Act replaced previous restrictions introduced during World War I.)

 

After 1965, immigration policy was reversed, to encourage a larger flow of immigrants, primarily from developing countries. Initially, this had only a modest economic effect. Then the 1986 amnesty encouraged low skill immigrants, allegedly now numbering 12 million, to try their luck with the overstretched immigration bureaucracy. Even large companies, knowing that immigration laws would not be enforced, seized the chance for some cheap labor.

 

Whatever the economic effect of moderate amounts of skilled immigrant labor, almost certainly positive, the economic effect of large amounts of unskilled immigrant labor is very clear: it drives wage rates down to rock bottom levels, particularly in personal service sectors where training is minimal and employment informal. That’s why a haircut costs less in real terms now than it did 30 years ago, it’s why even modest middle class households now have a cleaner and a gardener, which they usually didn’t 30 years ago and it’s why enormous numbers of dubiously constructed houses appeared when finance became available in 2002-06.”

More at the Bear’s Lair.

Sovereign Immunity and V-Tech

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A comment on my V-Tech posts from Equitas – a human rights organization:

Eq Nunc | eqnunc@yahoo.com | eqrolc.ca/vatech.html | IP: 24.122.48.168

Good R&D LR. Take a look at this EQ Gateway and see what you can dig out of it. Pertinent links and legalogistics to wit! Perhaps some answers may be provided there too:

http://www.eqrolc.ca/vatech.html

Happy Researching!
The EQ Team.

I looked through their site and found this article from last month on FindLaw by Professor Anthony Sebok of Brooklyn Law School.

I wish I had come across it earlier, as it answers some questions I’ve had about why the shooting was being framed by the school a certain way. But it substantially agrees with what I earlier (based on a conversation with a well-known attorney, who had pressed victims’ claims in a previous school shooting case) that gross negligence would have to be the standard here.

From Sebok’s article:

“Let’s suppose Cho had, in fact, gone to counseling, and that his therapist, concerned about his threats about certain students, warned those students about the threats. To fulfill its duty to take reasonable care, would the university have to assign security officers to follow those students – or Cho himself – around? And what if the threats were more general, or to an entire class full of students? Would the university have the duty to expel Cho and remove him from campus?”And more:
“The Second Key Question: Does It Matter that Virginia Tech Is a Public University?

Let’s suppose for a moment that the wounded victims and the families of the deceased victims can, in fact, prove that Virginia Tech failed to take adequate steps to protect its students. Unfortunately, their case would still fail – for the doctrine of sovereign immunity makes it almost impossible for the plaintiffs to collect significant damages even if they can prove negligence.

Sovereign immunity literally means that the government cannot be sued for its torts, even if it acts negligently (or worse). Originating in England before the American revolution, the doctrine has been largely abandoned in the U.K. and Europe. But it is alive and well – though partially waived by both the federal government and the states — in the United States.

Virginia’s waiver of sovereign immunity is pretty typical: The Virginia Tort Claims Act, Code §§ 8.01-195.1 through -195.9, states that “the Commonwealth shall be liable for claims for money . . . on account of . . . personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee while acting within the scope of his employment under circumstances where the Commonwealth . . ., if a private person, would be liable to the claimant for such . . . injury or death.”

You might think that Virginia Tech could be sued under this waiver. But you would be wrong. As the Virginia Supreme Court noted in the 2004 case of Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va. v. Carter, only the Commonwealth of Virginia has waived its sovereign immunity, but the Commonwealth’s agencies – such as the University and its various schools — have not.

Thus, in that case, Tina Carter’s medical malpractice suit against the University of Virginia Medical School was dismissed — although she, in theory, could have then refiled the suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia, if it was not barred by the statute of limitations. That’s because the Commonwealth of Virginia can be sued for the actions of its agents under a theory of vicarious liability.

Couldn’t the Virginia Tech plaintiffs just sue the Commonwealth, then? Yes, but here is where the final indignity comes in: The same Act limits the liability of the Commonwealth to $100,000 per tort. This amount, while not insignificant, is dwarfed by the amount of damages that might be won in a wrongful death claim brought on behalf of a college student or her surviving family. (By comparison, the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, which I have discussed in earlier columns such as this one, provided a minimum of $250,000 to the victims’ families, and in the case of young people who would have looked forward to long and lucrative careers, often much more.)

The Best Potential Basis for Suit: Evidence of Gross Negligence, If It Arises

In the end, the only realistic way for the plaintiffs to receive anything like the amount of the damages they have actually suffered, is to show that Virginia Tech acted with gross negligence.

As a Virginia-based federal court held in the 1995 case of Coppage v. Mann, sovereign immunity does not protect doctors employed by the state from tort suits if they acted with gross negligence. So too, the doctrine would presumably not protect university administrators and other employees if they acted with gross negligence. Nor would it protect their employer, even if it were an agent of the state.
In sum, if an investigation reveals negligence by Virginia Tech, and it can plausibly be argued to be gross negligence, then perhaps the wounded victims and the families of the deceased will be able to recover for the damages they actually incurred. But the law – thanks to the archaic sovereign immunity doctrine – sets the bar too high. Proof of negligence, even short of gross negligence, should be enough.”

President Cheney Approves Israeli Plans to Strike Iran

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“There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy,” writes Washington insider Steven C. Clemens on his Washington Note blog. “On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney’s team and acolytes — who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.” This is “worrisome” because the “person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney.”Clemens cites a Cheney aide as indicating “that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake” by supporting the diplomatic approach to Iran apparently favored by the State Department. So Cheney plans to deploy an “end run strategy” around the president (who’s more swayed at present by Condi Rice’s “realists” than Cheney’s neocons) if his flank doesn’t prevail and Bush resists the demand of the neocons and the AIPAC lobby for a bloody showdown.

“The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles This strategycould be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulfas to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.”

This is the most frightening piece I’ve read some time, along with Justin Raimondo’s latest column on antiwar.com that draws upon it. Raimondo citing a recent CNN interview with Seymour Hersh links Cheney and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams (the most powerful neocon presently in the administration) to U.S. support for the Sunni Fatah al Islam militia in Lebanon as a means to weaken Hizbollah. “George W. Bush,” he declares, “is totally out of the loop” in what Raimondo calls “the Cheney administration.”

More from Gary Leupp.

The politics of anti-politics

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I offer this to a reader who criticized me for not examining the good parts of the immigration bill more closely.

It’s true that some good may come out of the thing. That may not really be relevant. Some good might also result if I parked myself on my neighbor’s lawn, on anarchical principles, until I acquired squatter rights. We can’t judge actions by outcomes alone. [This is simply an analogy – there is a distinction obviously between priavte property and the state; still, it’s not entirely dissimilar because immigrants also use public services – from roads to schools – that are paid for by taxes. That some illegal immigrants pay taxes is true, but not all do. And what they pay in is, from the latest Heritage report, less than what they take out. The Cato institute disputes that research, but even those who are pro-immigration suggest that the costs are higher than we have been prone to believe].

Not that I dispute the existence of squatter rights. Or claim that migrant workers don’t theoretically have every right to move to find work wherever they wished.

Actually, I fervently wish that there were no borders and no laws about migration anywhere in the globe. I personally don’t feel the state has any right to curtail commerce and migration.

But my wishes and my rights under the law as it is constituted are two different things. And since nowadays, law is the only language in which we can meaningfully converse about rights — especially with people different from us in their beliefs and culture, I want to stick to it.

Migrants are free to move, but they aren’t equally free to be subsidized by the state or to violate its laws.

Ex-post facto legislation that subsidises migrants is, I think, practically unviable. But even if it were viable, I don’t think it can be justified under laws easily.

But, you will argue, what about all those other people who break the law in other areas and are then absolved of the consequences? Why pick on vulnerable people on this issue?

I don’t disagree here. Certainly, it’s not migrant workers who have dismantled habeas corpus or undone privacy laws or circumvented the ban on torture.

But the correct response to the objection is that every extension and intrusion of government power needs to be attacked constitutionally and limited – if not entirely dismantled. It’s no defense of a wrong-headed position in one instance to point to other instances where it has prevailed.

And, to my mind, the laws governing citizenship should be observed – at least theoretically – with more zeal than others, especially in times like these, when they are vulnerable to being diluted. And that is a danger that haunts us increasingly.

I may be wrong, of course. But, we can’t justly claim the protection of the law to save us from being stripped arbitrarily of our rights as citizens, if at the same time we trivialize the law by arbitrarily investing people with those rights.

My practical position is this: the matter can be dealt with at the local level by the communities involved. There doesn’t need to be a power grab by the federal government. A small fine (not the huge one in this new bill) can be imposed on people who’ve entered illegally, but it should be proportionate to their means and not harsh. It shouldn’t be so large that it creates a perverse incentive for corruption among the government agents who would be in charge of collecting it. Legal immigrants from the same communities could help in sending back those who’ve come here illegally to prevent any abuse. The “illegals” needn’t be barred from re-entering lawfully, but I think they should re-enter the process, after those who’ve followed the law. That’s only fair.

And maybe the government could make the legal entry simpler and quicker, so that people wouldn’t be motivated to break the law in the first place.

Those are my thoughts, for now, so far as I’ve studied the matter. It boils down to this – don’t have a law and then not follow it.

As I said, I could be wrong….

B’nai Brith Shuts Down Peace Activists in Canada

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My earlier post, reworked as an article at Dissident Voice:
Chris Cook of the University of Victoria Gorilla Radio (GO-rilla, as in, our furry friends… or cousins…..or descendants, depending on your evolutionary perspective and level of optimism about the human race) writes:

“For American readers who value and feel protected by the 1st Amendment (right to free speech), it may seem strange that a country would enshrine in law the opposite condition; but Hate Crime legislation in this country is widely supported. Canada is an ethnically, and politically diverse country, consisting of minority populations from the world over, and it was deemed fair-minded to ensure all are protected from the “tyranny of the majority.” But it’s a double-edged sword, making possible an abuse of the statutes, allowing an equally odious tyranny, the stifling of dissent and criticism by a dedicated minority.”

Cook’s problem is that one edge of this sword just fell on a web-site he edits, the Peace, Earth & Justice News (PEJ.org), “a non-profit, all-volunteer, non-hierarchical media organization” based in Victoria whose mission (as described in its Constitution) is to report on “climate change and other environmental issues, war and peace in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and human rights and other matters of social justice.”

PEJ has been operating since 1996 and is owned by the small (annual budget of a few hundred dollars and volunteer staff), non-profit Prometheus Institute, British Columbia, where Cook was a senior editor until February this year.

On May 17 PEJ publisher Alan Rycroft received a letter from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, signed by the deputy secretary general Richard Tardiff, claiming that PEJ had violated Canadian law by posting anti-Semitic material, according to a complaint filed with its legal department by Harry Abrams, a Victoria businessman and British Columbia representative for the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith, Canada, which joins him in the complaint.

PEJ publishes materials from activists around the world, including some who have published on American websites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Lew Rockwell. It is an alternative paper that by definition carries news not covered in the mainstream press and those stories are naturally controversial, often criticizing the actions of powerful entities, including governments. Naturally, that includes the Canadian government. And naturally, also, the Israeli government.

As soon as PEJ received the letter, it removed from its web-site the eighteen articles that Harry Abrams alleges were anti-Semitic.

PEJ did this as a matter of courtesy to Abrams and to show goodwill, according to Joan Russow, one of the directors, pending the outcome of an inquiry by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. PEJ does not endorse articles or comments published on it, to begin with. But, PEJ is, in addition, expressly non-discriminatory. As Dr. Russow, said in a letter to Mr. Abrams on December 31, 2006:

“Anti-Semitism and other prejudicial materials are not allowed on our site – after all PEJ News exists to promote equality and freedom for all – we are the Peace, Earth & Justice News. To the best of our knowledge no anti-Semitic or hate material is on PEJ.org.”

Indeed, it was she who invited Mr. Abrams (in December 2006) to inspect the articles on the site and see if anything was anti-Semitic, including comments from the public.

The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) whose “General Expectations of Canada” (as posted on the web, “CJC Brief to DFAIT on UN Human Rights Commission,” Feb 19, 2004 ) is not nearly as objective or non-discriminatory.

The CJC tells Canada’s Jewish citizens to take “constructive interventions against resolutions or motions” made in Canada that:

1.blame only Israel and its policies for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

2. indict Israel’s legitimate counter-terrorism measures with no reference to or condemnation of Palestinian terrorism.

3. deny or undermine Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East (my emphasis).

4. employ existentially threatening language such as referring to Israel as a “racist” or “apartheid” state and apply terms such as [“genocide”(?)], or “ethnic cleansing” to the conflict.

5. are based upon inaccurate media information or Palestinian Authority propaganda.

6. predetermine the outcome of direct, bilateral negotiations in keeping with UN Resolution 242 and 338 or circumvent such a process.

At the same time, Canada’s delegates must support and encourage efforts at the UNCHR that:

1. will ensure a comprehensive accounting of international human rights situations such that grievous international human rights issues are not ignored or soft-pedalled [sic] as a result of a politicized, anti-Israel agenda.

2. highlight the crippling impact of continuing Palestinian terrorism – which has been explicitly legitimized in the CHR resolutions – on the peace process and on attempts to establish a true human rights regime in the Middle East.

3. draw attention to the deficiencies within the Palestinian Authority regarding human rights and the building of a viable civil society for the Palestinian people.”

And B’nai Brith’s positions are even more partisan than this.

Thus it is that Anita Bromberg, in-house legal counsel for B’nai Brith, Canada, has joined Mr. Abrams in the complaint against PEJ’s peace activism, because, she says, the articles “are virulently anti-Israel to the point that they meet the criteria of crossing the line of legitimate criticism of the state straight into anti-Semitism.”

What, according to the complaint, is anti-Semitic?

“The idea that Israel has no right to exist or that Israel is an apartheid state,” says Mr. Abrams. Also, any comparison of Zionists to Nazis.

Were there such articles? In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Lebanon, several pieces did compare Israeli policy with Nazi persecution of Jews. One, by Chris Cook, “We Should Nuke Israel,” for instance, was a parody of a column in The Toronto Sun proposing a tactical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Cook simply replaced the word “Iran” with “Israel,” “Amadinejad” with “Olmert,” “Muslim” with “Jew” and tagged the following paragraph at the end, ironically recommending that the article be acted upon by the Human Rights Commission:

“This amazingly ignorant, hateful, and frankly criminal article has been redacted. “Israel” appears where the murderous and racist author, Michael Coren originally wrote “Iran.” Likewise other slight alterations have been performed. There is, in what remains of this country Canada, hate crime legislation. Unlike Mr. Coren’s, and his Toronto Sun publisher’s heroes in the United States, Canadian media is expected to live up to certain standards. Promoting hatred and proposing the destruction of human life fail miserably to live up to the expected, and legislated, mandates for publishers. I recommend those offended by Mr. Coren’s modest proposal write the Sun, Coren, and the CRTC. Mr. Coren can be reached here”

Now, that’s strong language admittedly. But why, we wonder, does the Canadian Human Rights Commission not also write a letter to the columnist in Toronto Sun, which proposed a real nuclear hit on Iran with a straight face. Why instead attack a column written in transparent satire in response to the former? Are the human rights of Iranians – or of Palestinians – less worthy of attention than the human rights of Israelis?

By the way, in the US, words such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” have been applied to the torture at Abu Ghraib in academic and law journals, such as Gonzaga University 10 Gonz. J. Int’l L. 370 (2007). If torture of prisoners in Iraq can be described in this way without American human rights activists objecting, it’s hard to see why the killing and dispossession of the civilian population in Palestine shouldn’t be called ethnic cleansing or genocide.

And, would the CHRC also rush so zealously to investigate on behalf of an organization that claimed Canada – or the U.S. – was a Christian country?

After the letter was received at PEJ and the offending articles removed, Ingmar Lee, one of PEJ’s editors posted a piece by a scholar, Shaheed Alam, one that just appeared in Counter Punch and other sites, and makes a scholarly criticism of Jewish exceptionalism as “inseparable from Israeli exceptionalism and Israeli history” (“Chosenness and Israeli Exceptionalism”) in a manner no different from and more measured that any number of dissections of American exceptionalism and some forms of Christian fundamentalism, which PEJ has also published.

The fact that it has shows clearly that PEJ was, in this instance, simply following its mission of attacking injustice wherever it finds it and defending human rights, no matter whose. Its criticism of Israel as a race-based state was simply part of its universal secular defense of human rights.

But defending universal secular human rights, which by the way, is policy in the State Department, turns out now to be the promotion of “ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel,” for in his complaint, Harry Abrams and B’nai Brith state that Abrams has “reasonable grounds for believing that I have been discriminated against.”‘
The only trouble with that statement is that the criticism in the articles is directed at the policies of the state of Israel, not at Mr. Abrams personally.

Should we conclude that Mr. Abrams sees himself as indistinguishable from the Israeli government? Or that B’nai Brith’s interest in human rights is indistinguishable from the vested interests of the Israeli government?

So far, Canada’s Globe and Mail, which published the story on May 24, has also published PEJ’s vigorous characterization of the charges as “calumnies.” But for how long?

Yesterday, Ingmar Lee was forced to resign as editor of PEJ for the bad judgment of publishing Alam’s article after the complaint was received, because the article is “slanderous to all Jews,” uses the word Zionist as a “slander,” like Nazi, and may be a “hate crime” under Canadian law (in the words of PEJ publisher, Rycroft).

A semantic question: Is it also a slander to refer to Nazis as “Nazis”?

The hare was shot by the hunter in the field: Nuremberg and innocence

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Just watching – intermittently – Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – with Montgomery Clift in the role of the mentally defective man questioned by Maximilian Schell (who won an Academy Award for his performance) about his sterilization under the Nazis. Clift is riveting in his scene but to my mind Schell is even better as counsel for the defense.

In the scene following, there is a dialogue about the culpability of ordinary people in the government’s actions. I don’t necessarily agree, given the power of the government to propagandize and coerce and its apparent immunity to criticism. But it still makes you think..

“There are no Nazis in Germany – the Eskimos invaded and took over the country. It wasn’t the fault of the Germans; it was the fault of those damn Eskimos…. ”

And in a later scene about the concentration camps:

“They say we killed millions of people..millions..how could it be possible? How?”

And the response:

“It’s not the killing that’s the problem..it’s the disposing of the bodies…”

And after Marlene Dietrich denies knowing anything about what was going on,

“As far as I can tell, there was no one who knew anything…”

A lot of interesting performers in the film – Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy, William Shatner and the son of the conductor Otto von Klemperer. (A friend writes to tell me that he is T.V.’s Colonel Klink (in Hogan’s Heroes). I’ll take his word for it… 

Other quotes stand out:

“Once again it was done for love of country..”

“Maybe we didn’t know the details. But if we didn’t know, maybe it was because we didn’t want to know….”

“But if he is to be found guilty, there are others who went along who also must be found guilty”

“Why did we succeed, your honor? What about the rest of the world? Did it not know the intentions of the Third Reich, did it not read the words of Mein Kampf? Where is the responsibility of the Soviet Union….where is the responsibility of the Vatican…….where is the responsibility of Winston Churchill? Where is the responsibilty of those American industrialists who helped Hitler?Is Germany alone guilty…

the whole world is as responsible for Hitler as Germany is.

Ernst Janning said he was guilty..if he was guilty, then his guilt was the world’s guilt no less, no more.. ”

More:

“What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights?”

And this, again, about the camps:
“Break the body, break the spirit, break the heart..”

But the best line may be at the end, when Burt Lancaster calls Spencer Tracy into his cell and says, “I never thought it would come to this,” and Spencer Tracy responds,

“The first time you convicted an innocent person you knew it would come to this.”

V-Tech – the psych time-line

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At least as important as the shooting time-line – some would say more – is the psychiatric time-line that preceded the V-Tech shooting:

Wyatt v. Aderhold (Arizona 5th circuit panel decision) in 1974 and later, O’Connor v. Donaldson (Supreme Court), were regarded as having jettisoned the parens patriae basis (the state as custodian for the mentally defective) and left only the police-powers basis (the state as defendant of the community’s safety) for the state’s interest in confining the mentally ill. Both decisions came after numerous exposes and sociological studies of the conditions of state mental hospitals and treatment had led to a trend toward de-institutionalizing mental health patients. That trend became stronger with the discovery of anti-psychotic medications in the 1950s that held out the hope for outpatient treatment for many patients.
Another step in the rise of the psychotropic drug industry came with the expansion of the definition of bipolar illness (manic-depression) in the DSM-IV Manual, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual, in 1994. Now, conditions less intense but presenting similar symptoms were included as abnormal variations requiring treatment. The result was an explosion of bipolar illness in children between 1996 and 2004. While some see this as a legitimate refinement in diagnosis, others see it is a result of the new, expanded definition. Then there are those who say there just isn’t enough known to conclude definitively one way or about how much bipolar disease there really is and whether children are being under or over medicated.

Simultaneously, the FDA backed off putting stronger warnings on the psychotropic drugs:

“The FDA held a hearing in September 1990 at which its Psychotropic Drugs Advisory Committee (most of whose members got funding from antidepressant manufacturers) considered whether SSRIs can induce violent and suicidal thoughts. They voted 9-0 not to recommend a more prominent warning and 6-3 not to recommend a warning in small type that would have read, “In a small number of patients, depressive symptoms have worsened during therapy, including the emergence of suicidal thoughts and attempts. Surveillance throughout treatment is recommended.” (Fred Gardner)

Next came the marketing plan:

“It all started in the mid-90s while George W. Bush was governor. TMAP was developed by what’s referred to as an “expert consensus” made up of a group of “experts” already known to have favorable opinions of certain drugs, chosen by drug company sponsors, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Astrazeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, Janssen-Ortho-McNeil, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Wyeth-Ayerst and Forrest Laboratories.

In 1997–98, with pharma funding, a panel was assembled to determine which drugs would be used in treating children and decided that the same drugs used on adults could be used on kids. There were no studies conducted to test the safety of giving the TMAP drugs to kids and most had never been FDA approved for use by children.” (Evelyn Pringle)

 

The next step was taken when Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a “comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system.” The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.

In April 2003 came the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health‘s radical recommendation is to screen the entire nation for mental illness, beginning with school children:

Schools, wrote the commission, are in a “key position” to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools. The commission also recommended “Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports” including “state-of-the-art treatments” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”
The NFC Report promoted two controversial programs the pharmaceutical industry loves : Columbia University’s TeenScreen and TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project), mental health prescribing guidelines formulated under Big Pharma’s sponsorship, including Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Janssen whose products were recommended through the algorithm).

As a Mother Jones article pointed out, while previously, drug companies had sold new products to doctors through ads and articles in journals or directly through television and magazine advertising, from the mid-1990s, they began to go through a handful of state officials who govern prescribing for large public systems like state mental hospitals, prisons, and government-funded clinics.

Furthermore, the focus moved away from anti-depressants – a very broad market – to the smaller but much more lucrative (since they cost about ten times as much) anti-psychotic drugs.

Meanwhile, in a glaring conflict of interest, NFC chairman, Dr. Michael Hogan, served on the advisory committee of Janssen Pharmaceutical, and serves on the advisory council of TeenScreen, the program singled out to promote in the NFL Report.

But research was mounting that SSRIs, especially, were a significant danger –

“Lilly and the other antidepressant manufacturers made more finite, begrudging concessions in the years ahead as evidence linking SSRIs to suicide kept mounting. A turning point came in April 2004, when the British Medical Journal reported that GlaxoSmithKline had concealed data showing that Paxil more than quadrupled suicidal ideation among teenagers. A few months later the FDA acknowledged a study showing that SSRI use induced suicidal thoughts in two out of 100 adolescents and ordered a black box warning. Prozac sales dipped as a result and Lilly et al commissioned the study that JAMA published April 18, showing that SSRI use induces suicidal ideation in only one in 100. Suicidal ideation,” “Suicide gesture,” “Suicide attempt,” and other such terms do not accurately characterize the extremely bizarre flip-outs induced by SSRIs. Carefully planning to annihilate the student body fits the profile. Biting your mother 57 times. Driving your car around in circles until you smash into a tree…”

More by Fred Gardner here at “Prozac Madness.” and at “Fuel for a Killer.”

The dangers were exacerbated by the rates at which psychotropic drugs were being recommended:

“That same issue of JAMA, April 18 [2004], contained a study showing that for-profit dialysis chains give patients much higher doses of Epogen than non-profit clinics. Epogen, made by Amgen Inc., is a synthetic version of a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells. During dialysis it is added to the blood as toxins are removed.

The for-profit dialysis chains get a quarter of their income from the sale of Epogen -plus rebates from Amgen based on how much product they move. Investigators from the Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute looked at 134,000 patients treated in 2004.

Some patients at for-profit clinics were found to be getting three times more Epogen than their counterparts at non-profits. “It’s clear there is a profit incentive,” says co-author Dennis Cotter.” (NOTE BELOW**) Industry payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose 6 fold from 2000-2005 while antipsychotics prescribed to children in the state medicaid program rose 9fold. The story focuses on Minnesota because it is the one state that requires disclosure of industry payments to psychiatrists.


The NY Times story went on: Psychiatrists who received $5000 or more from manufacturers of atypical antipsychotics on average wrote three times as many prescriptions for those drugs in children as those who received under that amount.

—Psychiatrists received a median of $1750 each from industry from 2000 to 2005, more than any other medical specialty in Minnesota.

—The cost to the state of antipsychotic drugs used in children increased 14-fold from 2000 to 2005, from $521,000 to $7.1 million.

The Times quotes Steven Hyman, former director of NIMH: “There’s an irony that psychiatrists ask patients to have insights into themselves, but we don’t connect the wires in our own lives about how money is affecting our profession and putting our patients at risk.”

The drug industry pushed to expand its market despite strong expert dissent:

Here is Dr. Stefan Kruszewski’s criticism of TeenScreen made in an interview with the British Medical Journal:

“We can manufacture enough diagnostic labels of normal variability of mood and thought that we can continually supply medication to you. The shameful part is that there’s enough mental illness that requires careful and judicious treatment that we don’t need to find variants of normal. But when it comes to manufacturing disease, nobody does it like psychiatry.”

And about TMAP, another expert, Dr. Grace Jackson, writes,

“the algorithms have arisen from ‘Evidence Based Medicine’—a statistically based approach to studying treatment effects in populations, rather than a reality based approach to discerning treatment effectiveness in each unique individual.”

In brief, TeenScreen amounts to a dangerous intervention in the lives of 50 million children and about 6 million adults in the schools.

That is the background against which one should look at the move to expand Virginia’s mental health laws that was already in the works in October 2006.

Its goal was to “modify the criteria for placing people in emergency care by eliminating a requirement that they pose an ‘imminent’ danger to themselves or others,” precisely what is now being demanded — as a result of the V-Tech shootings

Take, for instance, the case of 13 year old Aliah Gleason, one of 19, 404 Texas teens who underwent involuntary mental health treatement in a state funded program in July-August 2004.

Falsely labeled suicidal, she was given 12 drugs including 4 SSRI’s (Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro and Desyrel) 3 anti-psychotics (Geodon, Abilify, and Haldol) 2 anti-convulsants (Trileptal and Depakote), anti-anxiety (Ativan), anti-Parkinson’s (Cogentin). When discharged she was on 5 of them to which Risperdal was added.
In early 2005, the FDA issued a warning that antidepressants can cause both suicide and violence and mandated a black-box warning – the most serious – about side effects from panic attacks to hostility, impulsivity and mania. Further, abrupt withdrawal from antidepressants can produce suicide, aggression or psychosis.

But, with what’s at stake financially, the drug companies continue to look for ways to expand their markets.

Eli Lilly paid out $1.2 billion to 28,000 people who claimed injury by the drug Zyprexa in the ten years ( NYT, Jan. 5), but it made $4.2 billion in just one year selling the drug, taken by 20 million people world over since it was introduced in 1996. (statistics from Alliance for Human Research Protection).

That, perhaps, is the rationale for such events as the “colloquium” for national science and healthcare journalists –“Children and Mental Illness”– held at the Columbia University School of Journalism and sponsored by The Columbia University Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Carmel Hill Family Foundation which runs TeenScreen, which attracted plenty of media attention and was funded by Janssen Pharmaceutical Products, LP and McNeilConsumer and Specialty Pharmaceuticals.

In May 2007, the Texas Attorney General joined a whistleblower suit filed in 2004 against Pharma giant Johnson and Johnson that charged it with improprieties in marketing its psychotropic drug Rispertal as part of the TMAP program.

NOTE:

As this petition against TeenScreen points out, there are also broader socio-political implications for the program

“Whereas antipsychotic drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children; the FDA’s “black box warning” states antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders; and drug safety experts have recommended additional “black box” warnings be placed on ADHD drugs: for the increased risk of stroke and heart attack;

Whereas potential recruits are ineligible for military service if they have taken Ritalin and other stimulants to treat the unscientific “disorder” called ADHD in the previous year;

Whereas most states have laws restricting the purchase of firearms based on an adjudication of mental illnesses or disorders, and mass screening of all American children for mental disorders will increase the number of persons labeled with a mental disorder, directly infringing upon the citizenry’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the 2nd amendment;

“Whereas TeenScreen only partners with and seeks to immediately refer students to “mental illness” practitioners and does not refer students to medical disciplines that could test for underlying health problems such as allergies, nutrition, toxicities and physical illnesses;

Whereas child suicides are very rare and have been on a decline for years; and even according to former TeenScreen director Rob Caruano, “suicides are so rare that you’d have to screen the whole country to see a difference in mortality between screened and unscreened students………”

Ron Paul again

On May 18, U.S. House Rep. Ron Paul introduced a federal legislative bill – H.R.2387 – http://thomas.loc.gov ( “Paul, Ron” under “Browse Bills by Sponsor”).

The title is: “To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal mandatory mental health screening program”.

On May 23, a bill granting the FDA powers to monitor drug safety was pared back during private meetings. And efforts to curb conflicts of interest among FDA advisers and allow consumers to buy cheaper drugs
from other countries were defeated in close votes.

* A measure that blocked an effort to allow drug importation passed, 49-40. The 49 senators who voted against drug importation received about 5 million from industry executives and political action committees
since 2001 – nearly three quarters of the industry donations to current members of the Senate, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data compiled by two non-partisan groups, Center for Responsive Politics and
PoliticalMoneyLine.

* Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he demanded removal of language that would have allowed the FDA to ban advertising of high-risk drugs for two years because it would restrict free speech. Roberts has raised $18,000 from drug interests so far this year, records show, and $66,000 since 2001. His spokeswoman, Sarah Little, said he “takes great pains to keep fundraising and official actions separate.”

**Note : I wonder if it is simply the ‘for-profit’ motive on its own that is the cause. Without the state, would we have the incentives of third-party pay, for instance, which distort markets forces? I think not. A genuinely competitive market would also do away with unfair monopoly-like conditions preventing the entry of lower-cost and alternative providers — which would help correct the problem. For the same reason, although I personally think the ideal should be private regulatory bodies in a free market, the immense lobbying power of pharmaceutical companies at this point means that what few regulatory restraints remain cannot be abandoned but must be shored up.

What is undisputed, however, is the need to slowly bleed the Federal government of money, power and influence and return power and autonomy to local and state bodies as far as possible.