BOVARD

Friday 3rd February 2012

C-SPAN Booknotes: Terrorism & Tyranny (2003 transcript)

1:26 pm | Ron Paul | Terrorism | Uncategorized | Comments: 1

I came across this transcript this morning and figured it was worth sending around the track one more time. You can watch the video from this interview here - Brian Lamb’s views come through more clearly on tape than in the transcript. One of my favorite comments he made: “Well, your sense of humor — and I`m not sure people viewing this would consider this a sense of humor, but it comes through in the book….”

Many folks perceived my views on the war on terrorism as cynical back then. The subsequent record hasn’t vindicated Leviathan.

I had forgotten that I had given a plug for Ron Paul in response to Lamb’s asking whether there were any politicians who I respected.

And the show concludes with a hearty plug for good ol’ Virginia Tech.

I touched up the transcript by deleting the endless “You know” comments I made during the interview. Otherwise, my verbal padding and hesitations remain.

C-SPAN Booknotes James Bovard: Terrorism and Tyranny

Program Air Date: November 2, 2003
For more information about this program, visit www.booknotes.org
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BRIAN LAMB:, HOST:: James Bovard, author of “Terrorism and Tyranny,” near the end of your book, on page 349, you say this. “Since 9/11, Bush often seems blinded by the glare of his own halo. The moral self-adulation at the heart of the war on terrorism is a danger to both America and the world.”

(CROSSTALK)
JAMES BOVARD, AUTHOR, “TERRORISM AND TYRANNY” : Well, George Bush, when he was campaigning in 2000, made some very good points about how America needed to be more humble. But after 9/11, Bush was put on a pedestal. He was portrayed not only as a national savior but as a world savior. And flattery rules more politicians than sex, and I think that Bush has been surrounded by flattery since 9/11, that he`s not been well informed, and that`s part of the reason why so many of his policies have been horrendous blunders, both for the U.S. and other parts of the world.

LAMB:: Did you vote for him?

BOVARD: No. Actually, I did not vote for him. I did do a book called “Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years,” that came out in September, 2000. I was very opposed to Mr. Gore. I was not in favor of Mr. Bush. Actually, 2000 was the first time in a long time I did not vote for any candidate.

LAMB:: Well, before we get into your theories and all on the terrorism thing, where are you coming from? Would you put a label on yourself?

BOVARD: I guess “moderate” wouldn`t work. (LAUGHTER)

BOVARD: , on some issues, I`m conservative, some I`m liberal. A lot of issues, I`m Libertarian. I`m more Libertarian than not on most issues, but — , I`m not lock-step Libertarian, so…

LAMB:: Give me an example of something that you`re liberal on.

BOVARD: Civil liberties, I`m very hard-core. I`m very opposed to the drug war. I`m opposed to the government`s — the notion the government needs to run people`s private lives. I`m opposed to the notion the government needs to run — to ride shepherd — to ride shotgun on people`s moral decisions. I`m opposed to the notion that government needs to add meaning to people`s lives.

LAMB:: Where are you conservative?

BOVARD: I`m in favor of strictly limited government power. I`m in favor of a — I guess, a strict interpretation of the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, putting very clear limits on government powers and government abuses. I`m a big fan of the 2nd Amendment. I think that that was put in the Constitution in order to provide one check for government, against abuses of government power, one check in the people`s hands. So that`s…

LAMB:: Can you remember a president that you liked?

BOVARD: Ronald Reagan in the campaign in 1980 and in his early part in his first term, I was impressed by. I especially liked some of his rhetoric. He was very honest. He would talk about how government is the problem, how government has far too much power. He had just wonderful images in a lot of his speeches. And, he seemed to have a clear vision of what the problem was and what had to be done in order to fix it. I also supported Reagan`s harsh anti-Soviet line because I think he was very perceptive on the danger the Soviets posed, unlike a lot of other people across the political spectrum.

LAMB:: Where are you Libertarian, and what does that mean?

BOVARD: Libertarian is basically — I guess, maybe the best thumbnail is a Thomas Jefferson quote, that “That government is best which governs least.” And I`m in favor of minimizing government power, minimizing government spending and minimizing government intrusions, basically because the government doesn`t know best, and the government does not own the American people. If you listen to some of the debates here in Washington, it`s almost as if the politicians are trying to decide how to use their chattel slaves, as far as, Well, let`s take $50 billion more from these people, and, let`s give $100 billion more to this country or that country, this project. It`s not the politicians` money. And that`s one of the most profound dangers in contemporary American democracy. I mean, the politicians often act like they have the right to dispose of the earnings of the American people, and they don`t.

LAMB:: Now, I know you`re from Iowa originally.

BOVARD: Well, I was born in Ames, Iowa. I moved out — well, my family moved out when I was about a year old, so I never got that amiable Midwest disposition, so…

LAMB:: I was just wondering because on page 41, you have a little reference where you say the secretary of state acted with less intelligence than a tourist from Muscatine, Iowa. And I wondered if you were from Muscatine.

BOVARD: No, I was born in Ames.

LAMB:: In what environment?

BOVARD: My father was in grad school out there. He was working on his doctorate in animal breeding and animal husbandry. And once he finished up (UNINTELLIGIBLE) work on that, the family moved to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where I lived until I was about 16 or 17.

LAMB:: Where did you go to college, and what did you study there?

BOVARD: I went to Virginia Tech off and on for about two years. I decided I wanted to become a freelance writer. I figured I didn`t need a college degree to do that, so I dropped out and started writing articles. Eventually, they started to sell, so I kept writing.

LAMB:: So you don`t have a degree?

BOVARD: No, I don`t.

LAMB:: And if we found you on a normal day, doing your work, where would we locate you?

BOVARD: Probably on the ground floor of my house, just sitting there with my feet propped up, smoking a cheap cigar and just kind of whittling.

LAMB:: What book is this?

BOVARD: This is book number seven.

LAMB:: And does anybody else pay your bills? In other words, do you work — I know you`ve had some attachment to the Cato Institute. Do you still… (CROSSTALK)

BOVARD: Well, I haven`t written for them for many years. I`ve got paper affiliations with a number of think tanks. I do do a monthly column for the Future of Freedom Foundation, which is a think tank out in Fairfax, Virginia. It`s probably the only think tank that would actually — shares my view across the board on the war on terrorism. I mean, other think tanks I`m affiliated with probably would not want to be associated with some of my views.

LAMB:: Why?

BOVARD: Oh, , some of my views might be controversial. I don`t know.

LAMB:: In what way, do you think?

BOVARD: Well, I mean, some people think that it`s wrong to talk about politicians telling lies, that it`s either bad protocol or bad manners, that we have to treat them with dignity — always treat them with dignity and respect, no matter how brazen their misstatements are. And I think that`s a great mistake because it`s important to have a level playing field between the citizens and the government and the politicians, and if the politicians are allowed to tell one tall tale after another and not be labeled for what they`re doing, then that gives them a huge advantage and it makes it much easier for them to snow the American public.

LAMB:: Why don`t more people do what you do?

BOVARD: As far as?

LAMB:: Being strongly critical and accusing politicians of lying, when you think they are. Why don`t more people in the writing business — why are they not more direct than they are?

BOVARD: That`s a good question. I don`t know. I mean, I think partly — one thing I did in writing this book is I read — tried to read almost all of Bush`s speeches and interview transcripts after 9/11, as well as before, when he became president. And just walking through statement after statement after statement, and it becomes clear that in some areas, there was just patterns of, , brazen misstatements, if not intentional duplicity. The same for Attorney General John Ashcroft. Reading his testimony, reading his speeches, , more than once that I burst out laughing because I felt like, here`s a man who should hire some fact checkers. But they don`t.

LAMB:: Page 322 — “Bush`s rhetoric on America as a force for freedom is impossible to understand without considering his assertions on America as the greatest force for goodness in the world.” Isn`t America the greatest force for goodness in the world?

BOVARD: I`m very proud to be an American citizen. There`s a lot of great people serving in the federal government, a lot of great soldiers in the U.S. military, and some fine members of Congress and some good people in the Bush administration. But to constantly be telling people how wonderful the U.S. is and portraying the U.S. as a force for practically absolute goodness, I think it`s very dangerous because it tends to inspire blind righteousness. And I think that`s a lot of trouble with the Bush war on terrorism.

I mean, Bush has — likes this phrase, You`re either with us or you`re for the terrorists, all these either/or contrasts, and I think that`s nonsense because, for instance, there`s a lot of people in Western Europe who don`t support George Bush but are not pro-Muslim terrorists. And yet there are all these — there`s a series of false dichotomies that have made a mockery of trying to get clear thinking about these subjects.

LAMB:: You quote George Bush a lot in the book, but here, from February the 28th, 2003, which is this year, “There is no doubt in my mind that this nation will prevail in this war against terror because we are the greatest nation, full of the finest people on the face of this earth.”

BOVARD: Well, , even if we are the greatest nation, full of the finest people, it doesn`t mean that George Bush`s policies are good for America or that the U.S. is going to win the — what Bush calls the war on terrorism.

LAMB:: Why do you think he speaks that way?

BOVARD: It is an old trick for politicians to flatter those who they want to control, and I think that`s the core of a lot of Bush`s rhetoric, in the same way it was the core of a lot of Clinton`s rhetoric. I mean, I`ve been surprised, following Bush closely over the last couple of years, how the parallels between he and Bill Clinton become clearer and clearer, in the same way the parallels between John Ashcroft and Janet Reno are clearer and clearer, so…

LAMB:: And those are?

BOVARD: Both — I mean, Clinton was often a demagogue. He would often, pull the heartstrings. He would often do the lip-biting routine. George Bush is not quite as overt. Bush is not as good of a speaker as Clinton is, or Clinton was, but Bush is hitting the flag-waving so hard, hitting the patriotic buttons. And , Americans have got a lot of reasons to be proud of America. There`s a lot of great things this country has done.

But — for instance, Bush`s national security strategy, which he announced last September, a year ago, basically announced that the U.S. had the right to do preemptive attacks on any country the U.S. considered to be a threat. And this concept was so expansive that they even talked of being — as foreign military spending as a potential threat against the U.S. that might justify U.S. retaliation.

I mean, this is not how the average American views the world. The average American is not hungry to go over and, , whack a long list of foreign countries, and the average American is not interested in sending their son or their husband or their wife or their father on these foreign escapades.

LAMB:: This book is called “Terrorism and Tyranny.” When did you get the idea to write it?

BOVARD: Shortly after 9/11. George Bush — when he got back to the White House on the evening of 9/11, Bush gave a televised address, and he effectively stated that the reason that the terrorists had attacked America was because America was the most free country, was a symbol of freedom for the entire world. And it was curious to me that Bush knew what the motives of the attackers were even before the CIA and FBI knew who the attackers` names were. And yet Bush raced to frame the entire war on terrorism as a fight for freedom, and I think that was a — that was a bait and switch.

Bush`s comments shortly after 9/11, in which he talked about leading a crusade to rid the world of evil, went down real poorly with me. I mean, the U.S. was attacked by al Qaeda. The U.S. is obliged — was obliged and is obliged to go after al Qaeda, put them out of business once and for all. I mean, we have every right to go after al Qaeda with everything we have. But to talk about ridding the world of evil is just kind of — that`s sort of like throwing a bunch of dust in the air, I think.

LAMB:: Let me just check you on something right now.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: Would any Democrat running for president right now be better than George Bush, in your opinion?

BOVARD: I haven`t followed the Democrats that closely. I mean, some of them — I mean, Senator Graham of Florida said some very good things about the cover-up the Bush administration has done on what the government knew before 9/11. He`s made some very good comments about the ongoing secrecy of the Bush administration. Some of Governor Dean`s comments on Iraq have been on point. But as far as whether these guys overall would be better, I don`t know.

But part of the trouble is, is that the federal government now has so much power that it really doesn`t matter who`s president, they`re probably going to do a lousy job. I mean, there were a lot of people who thought in the year 2000, when George Bush won the presidency, that — , saw him as a knight riding in on a white horse, and simply because Clinton was leaving power, the government would all of a sudden become moral and it would serve the American people. That was nonsense. I mean, even if a president did have a perfect, stellar character and was a great leader, there are so many things the federal government is messing up at this point that no single person is going to be able to fix it.

LAMB:: What does the federal government do that you like?

BOVARD: Good question. Well, I`m a big fan of the General Accounting Office. They`ve done a lot of good reports. It`s necessary to have a strong national defense. That`s something that the Founding Fathers envisioned as a role for the federal government. It`s something which the government needs to do to protect Americans. I mean, that`s a primary purpose of the federal government. So I`m in favor of a strong national defense. But…

LAMB:: Anything else?

BOVARD: There are some other government programs which probably do — which are of some benefit.

LAMB:: What do you think of the U.N. and America`s participation in it and the fact that we fund it 25 percent, at least?

BOVARD: The U.N. had some merit at the time it was conceived of. It`s sad to see how far in the wrong direction it`s gone. I mean — but at this point, I think the U.N. does — there`s a lot of things the U.N. does which I strongly oppose. I mean, they`ve — some of the work they`ve done on the worldwide convention on firearms, for instance — they`ve talked at times as if they`re in favor of banning private possession of firearms, which is absurd, because most of the governments of the world, especially in the third world, people need protection against their government.

At this point, I think it`s good that there`s a place where world leaders can talk and try to resolve some of the conflict, but for that, we certainly don`t need this giant U.N. empire, and I think most of the U.N. efforts overseas have worked out pretty badly, as have most of the U.S. efforts, as far as interventions.

LAMB:: On page 51, you write — this is early in the book — “Throughout the summer of 2001″ — this is prior to September, 2001 — “fears were rising about a pending terrorist catastrophe. In July, the CIA issued a confidential warning regarding Usama bin Laden” — quote — “based on a review of all source reporting over the last five months, we believe that UBL will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests.” Where did you find that? Who knew that?

BOVARD: A lot of people in the federal government knew that. I believe that was from the Joint Intelligence Committee report. I don`t recall the exact citation. There`s a few thousand citations in here. But I believe that was the source of — the House and Senate joint — the Intelligence Committees did some very nice reports on what the government knew before 9/11. And the thing that those reports show is the federal government had the information it needed before 9/11 to block the hijack conspiracy. There were a lot of warnings coming in from overseas, from different parts of the government, from savvy FBI agents in Phoenix and Minnesota. There were a lot of different parts of the puzzle, but the government never put them together. And what I found, I guess — it was surprising how the Bush administration insisted that it had no warning ahead much time, and they especially pushed that line very hard right after 9/11, and that was part of the reason that the trust in government in this country doubled in the weeks after 9/11 because people were not aware that 9/11 was the biggest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. But if people had seen it in a light of how — of the U.S. government`s failures instead of solely looking at it as the U.S. being blindsided, people would have been much less enthusiastic, I think, about things like the Patriot Act and things about giving so much deference to the federal government after 9/11.

LAMB:: You do something you don`t see very often. You spell out the Patriot Act and what it stands for — Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. Why did you go to such length to spell it out?

BOVARD: Well, it`s important for people to know what it actually stands for. I mean, it was a propaganda label. Congressman Bob Barr quipped that he hoped that the people in the Justice Department spent more time working on the bill than they did working on the acronym. But the Bush administration put this label under this bill right after 9/11, and basically used that to help intimidate potential opposition to the bill on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in the U.S. And it`s fascinating that only three months after 9/11, John — Attorney General Ashcroft goes up to the Senate Judiciary Committee and he tells them that those who try to frighten Americans with the phantoms of lost liberties are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and basically portrayed the critics of the administration`s policies as traitors. I mean, Ashcroft did not use that word, but with his phrasing of “giving aid and comfort to the enemies” and how he characterized critics of his civil liberties effects policies, I mean, it`s amazing to see an attorney general saying that in public. And it wasn`t a casual comment.

LAMB:: You list the votes on the Patriot Act, and they were 337 in the House to 79 and 96-to-1 in the Senate.

BOVARD: It was a real cliffhanger.

LAMB:: But didn`t you say that no text was provided in advance of the vote?

BOVARD: Right. Especially in the House. The October 12 vote, 2001, there were a lot of congressmen who complained about that, complained bitterly that they were being pressured by the House leadership to vote on this even before they could read it. I mean, here`s a sweeping bill that impacts dozens of parts of the federal statute book, has a profound impact on Americans` privacy, on government power, on the Internet, on other issues, and congressmen didn`t not even bother to read it.

Ashcroft, Bush and others did a lot to browbeat Congress, but the members of Congress had no excuse for defaulting on their oath of office. The members of Congress took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and by voting for the Patriot Act, they essentially absolved themselves of honoring that oath.

LAMB:: What`s in it that`s so bad?

BOVARD: Well, one example is the Patriot Act sanctifies Carnivore, which is an e-mail vacuum that the FBI uses. The FBI can get a search warrant to track the e-mail of a single person, and the FBI can take this black box, which the Carnivore system is contained in, go to the Internet service provider, compel them to attach that to the Internet service provider`s computer system, and then, if an FBI agent hits a single button on that box, the FBI can vacuum up, making copies of all the e-mail of all the customers of that Internet service provider.

It would be the equivalent if the FBI had a search warrant for one person`s house, they went to that house and then decided, to be safe, they`d search all the houses in a two-mile radius around that house. I mean, it makes a travesty of the 4th Amendment. But…

LAMB:: Well, let me stop you a second.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: Let`s say I have e-mail that they want to get to.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: The FBI first has to go to a court.

BOVARD: Well, the FBI has to basically file notice with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is…

LAMB:: Which we don`t know about. We don`t — I mean, are they public?

BOVARD: It`s a secret court. It never meets in public. It was created, I believe, in 1978 to handle intelligence investigations, but its jurisdiction has expanded. The Justice Department, the FBI, have requested 14,000 wiretaps from this secret court. The secret court has approved every single one of them. It`s a…

LAMB:: They haven`t turned down any?

BOVARD: No. There was one or two that were — a few that were modified, but they`ve all been approved. So I mean it is a court in which only the government presents evidence. There`s never any defense lawyer. There`s never any kind of — never any balance of power.

LAMB:: Where is the court physically located?

BOVARD: It`s in the Justice Department building here in Washington.

LAMB:: And we don`t know who`s on it?

BOVARD: I believe that Chief Justice Rehnquist appoints 11 federal judges to do rotating terms on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

LAMB:: Can Congress find out who these requests are about? I mean, can they…

BOVARD: That`s a major part of trouble with the Patriot Act, that it has profoundly undermined balance of powers between the different parts of the federal government. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court made a ruling, I believe, in late 2000 or early 2001, before 9/11, in which it listed over 70 cases in which it felt the FBI had given it false information or misleading information on its search warrants for these foreign intelligence cases or how the information was being used.

Well, the Justice Department would not even give Congress a copy of that court decision, which the FBI was hitting very hard. The Justice Department felt that the members of Congress were not entitled to it. I mean, there`s just complete secrecy here. I believe the attorney general sends, like, a two-paragraph memo to Congress once or twice a year listing how many different wiretaps have been authorized by this surveillance court.

Senator Leahy of Vermont has a bill, I think called the Domestic Surveillance Oversight Act, in which he seeks to compel the Justice Department to inform Congress of how many Americans are being surveilled by this court.

LAMB:: Go back to the — let`s say that, for instance, they wanted my e-mails.

BOVARD: OK. OK.

LAMB:: Where would they take their little Carnivore box, that little black box, to get to my e-mails?

BOVARD: Well, OK. Say, for instance, if you`re using an Internet service provider based in Washington, D.C., and their headquarters was over on Wisconsin Avenue…

LAMB:: And they don`t have to tell me this?

BOVARD: By gosh, no! No. No, they tend to keep it to themselves, actually.

LAMB:: And then they can begin to look at every e-mail that I send.

BOVARD: Yes. There is — I mean, part of the problem — one of the frauds of the Patriot Act was that they labeled Carnivore as the equivalent of a pen register of a wiretap on a phone line, which only makes a record of the incoming and outcoming phone call number. And they were pretending that Carnivore only tracks the names and subject lines of the e-mail, but it doesn`t. I mean, this is simply not what this system`s power is. The system can copy all the e-mail of all the people who use that Internet service provider.

LAMB:: The entire Internet service provider?

BOVARD: Correct. Correct. So I mean, this is a sweeping violation of privacy. There was actually a case with the FBI, when they were doing surveillance — I believe their Usama bin Laden working group in early 2000 was using Carnivore. And a lawyer who was involved in that case insisted that some of the evidence that they had acquired not be used because they had used Carnivore and they had swept in the e-mail of a number of other people who had no involvement in the case but happened to be using the same Internet service provider. And the FBI lawyer was very concerned about that. Congress was not.

LAMB:: Why not? Why did Congress giving the Justice Department this lopsided win on the Patriot Act, if there`s so much wrong with it?

BOVARD: Congress was completely intimidated. I mean, John Ashcroft…

LAMB:: Why?

BOVARD: Many of the congressmen were afraid that if they did not quickly grant new power, and if there were a second round of terrorist attacks, that Congress would be blamed. And Ashcroft — well, a number of people implied that that would be the case. So terror of being criticized.

One of the other things about the Patriot Act — the Patriot Act was the biggest bait and switch in U.S. constitutional history. This was an act that was advertised as targeting terrorists, but there are new surveillance and confiscation powers that can be used for anybody accused of violating any of the 3,000 crimes in the federal statute book. And the Patriot Act is already being used against alot of other types of accused criminals.

There was a case in which the Justice Department invoked the Patriot Act to confiscate bank accounts of telemarketers who were accused of fraud because the confiscation powers under the Patriot Act are so broad and so difficult to challenge, and in many cases, don`t require criminal conviction.

LAMB:: Let me ask you — I get the impression from reading your book, this is the — I`m going to paint an image of where I — what I see you do and how you do your work.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: See what you think of it.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: You have a place where you work, and you read and read and read every document, every article, every Internet site you can get to. And you have a view of the world, and you find all those things out there that make — that — in every — and we`ll talk about some of the other subjects here — and you`re able to build a case against things that you don`t agree with.

BOVARD: That`s part of it. I mean, I don`t read everything I can find because, , I prefer to sleep at night, as well. But…

LAMB:: But you must realize…

BOVARD: Yes. Yes.

LAMB:: I mean, start with that.

BOVARD: Yes. Yes. I mean, there`s — it`s reading-intensive and, , it`s constantly looking for good insights, good leads and…

LAMB:: But where — give us — on a day-to-day basis, what are your sources of information you go to? Where do you learn the most?

BOVARD: Oh, God.

LAMB:: You got a lot of speech quotes in here from all different sources, a lot of testimony quotes and all that.

BOVARD: Yes. Well, I use Lexis-Nexis. There is a lot of good Web sites out there, , “Washington Post,” “New York Times,” “LA Times” have a lot of good stuff. Some of the other papers are helpful. antiwar.com is very helpful. It`s a good Web site. It`s a fine Web site. Some of the conservative and liberal political Web sites, Freerepublic one side, the Democratic Underground on the other. It`s interesting to look at both of them to see what’s making them percolate on any given day.

LAMB:: But how — I mean, this is — well, let me ask it this way. How angry are you?

BOVARD: Anger is not a healthy emotion, I don`t think, and people that stay angry for a long time, I think it`s bad for their soul, practically, because, , one thing I always look for is comic relief, and I`m grateful that there are so many elements of this war on terrorism that do have a lot of comic relief. And things I`ll be reading make me burst out laughing out loud, something that was just so absurd.

LAMB:: Well, your sense of humor — and I`m not sure people viewing this would consider this a sense of humor, but it comes through in the book — I marked this, and I wanted to ask you about it.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: “Bin laden determined to strike the United States in the U.S.” That was from August the 6th, 2001 — but the report Bush received on that day — headline — that was — do you remember that part of it?

BOVARD: Right. Yes. Yes.

LAMB:: “George Bush received a report headlined `bin laden determined to strike the United States in U.S. on August the 6th, 2001.” That`s a little more than a month before the actual strike. Who wrote that report?

BOVARD: Either the CIA or the National Security Council. I`ve forgotten.

LAMB:: How do that he got that?

BOVARD: I believe that that came out in a Joint Intelligence Committee report. I did not look at that site before the program, so I`m not entirely fresh on that. But it was — the sources on that are impeccable. , there was a lot of criticism of the U.S. government and of Bush that I did not use in this book, basically because it did not meet my standards of evidence.

LAMB:: Well, let me just read the next line. You say “Apparently, as long as the president was not pre-notified of the specific names and addresses of the hijackers and the dates and flight numbers of their intended attacks, the administration could claim it received no warning.”

BOVARD: This is…

LAMB:: I wouldn`t call it humor, but it seems — that`s kind of the way you dealt with these issues all the way through.

BOVARD: Well, there was such an effort by the administration to frame the issues in a way that I thought was profoundly deceptive. There were a lot of warnings, which came in, but the Bush folks, Condi Rice and others, seemed to imply that since they did not have the exact warnings of the act time that it`s unfair to say that they were warned.

LAMB:: Are they doing this on purpose?

BOVARD: Parts of it, yes.

LAMB:: Because why?

BOVARD: Well, Bush is a politician, and Bush wants to maintain support for his policies. He wants to maintain support for his presidency. He is looking to run — he hopes to have a second turn. And — I mean, there is profits. I think if the American people had known how much warnings — how many, , signals the U.S. had ahead of time of this potential hijack conspiracy, there would have been far less of Iraq`s and rally around the fly, and far more criticism of the president. And, , a lot of commentators thought it was great in the weeks after 9-11 that the trust in government skyrocketed. My sense is, excessive trust in government can be subversive of democracy. People need to keep their minds open. People need to keep skeptical and critical.

LAMB:: And most people do that?

BOVARD: No.

LAMB:: Why not?

BOVARD: We have attention deficit democracy in this country. People just — people are poorly informed. People are complacent. There are a lot of exceptions, and perhaps the Internet is encouraging people to look at more alternative news sources and better analysis, but most people are very poorly informed in most political issues. And politicians exploit that ignorance to increase their power and further burden the American people.

LAMB:: Is there a politician out there today that you like?

BOVARD: Yeah, sure. I like Congressman Ron Paul of Texas.

LAMB:: The man ran as a libertarian for president once.

BOVARD: Right, 1988, and he managed to get David Letterman`s vote. So it`s important people not forget that. He is good. I mean, Butch Otter of Idaho has done some good staff. Senator Grassley of Iowa has done some great work on the FBI. Senator Feingold has done some good work challenging the Justice Department, things like that. There is a lot of individual politicians I like on individual issues. I mean, there is — there is some good politicians out there.

LAMB:: Have you ever been a member of a party?

BOVARD: I don`t think so. I`m trying to recall this, — no. I don`t think I have been.

LAMB:: Have you ever thought you kind of tilted toward one party or the other?

BOVARD: Yeah. Well, back when Reagan was early in his first term I was certainly leaning much more toward the GOP.

LAMB:: Have you ever worked for a politician?

BOVARD: No. I — I passed out flyers in 1976, but that was about it.

LAMB:: I guess, what I am getting at — are you a lone ranger?

BOVARD: A lone ranger?

LAMB:: I mean, do you operate — you write books, and is that how you make your money?

BOVARD: Yeah, yeah, I mean, that`s the primary source of income, so…

LAMB:: Does it work? You have a family? You are married?

BOVARD: I am married, yes. It works. I mean, I haven`t had to spend a lot of time looking for tax write-offs, but, , it`s fun. It`s great to be able making a living doing what I love, and I`ve been able to do that, and I`m grateful for it.

LAMB:: Just a rough idea. These seven books you have already written, because on the back cover there is a lot of praise for you from places like “The World Street Journal” and “The Orange County Register,” which is a Libertarian newspaper, and “The Los Angeles Times,” a chilly indictment of U.S. government for “Freedom and Change.” “Freedom and Change” was a book?

BOVARD: Yeah. It came out in 1999.

LAMB:: What`s kind of the thrust to those seven books? What have you been writing about?

BOVARD: Most of the books have sought to awaken Americans to the abuses of government power, to government waste, fraud and abuse, and how the government’s power is far more dangerous than what most people perceive it to be. To try to wake people up from their slumber in many cases, to try to make it perfectly clear for folks how the government power is growing, and how that`s a threat to most of their rights and liberties, and to their prosperity eventually.

LAMB:: When you walk up in an airport to the security part of the airport where you are going through to have everything checked out, what is your first thought?

BOVARD: Well, there was a new regulation they came out I believe in early this year, which basically says that if someone raises their voice to one of these new TSA screeners, one of these federal agents who do the screening now, if you simply raise the voice, or say a single harsh word, it`s easy to be arrested by them. There have been over 1,000 people arrested at airport checkpoints for, , speaking harsh words or other things to these federal agents who were at the screening, so — the thing I think is, curb my wit, just trying, let`s just get through this, and, …

LAMB:: Are we better off today with the federal government running the screening process than we were before, and how were we before?

BOVARD: Well, people forget that before it was the Federal Aviation Administration that had responsibility for those screening process. The FAA set the standards, the FAA was supposed to monitor to make sure that the airports were doing a sound job of protecting the American people. The FAA failed completely.

We`re probably marginally a little bit better as far as airport safety right now, but the Transportation Security Administration is one of biggest jokes of the post-9-11 world. There were so many cases in which they would — airports were evacuated due to TSA glitches and follies. And the news that came out early this summer about how the TSA had failed to screen its screeners, and you had hundreds of these new screeners who had — never had a criminal background check and they had criminals — had felonies on their records, had serious thefts, or other major felonies. And these were the people who we were trusting to safeguard the airports. That`s rather ironic.

LAMB:: So when you go through that check out point, you don`t feel any safer?

BOVARD: No. I don`t feel any safer. I mean, the chance of me getting arrested are a lot higher than they were before 9-11.

LAMB:: Because?

BOVARD: Well, I mean — once again, because if you say a single harsh word to some of these screeners, who are pawing through your socks and your carry-on bag and stuff like that and asking sometimes foolish questions. , you are supposed to sit there and act like you are, , a peasant standing in front of the king, and that`s, — that`s not a role I do well.

LAMB:: You call the Transportation Security Administration a joke.

BOVARD: Yeah.

LAMB:: That`s a lot of people.

BOVARD: Well, again, there are some fine people there, there are some fine people trying to do good work, but there have been so many cases in which they`ve been involved. For instance, the TSA made a big deal about the mandate to have new bomb detection machines to screen all the luggage, all the carry-on luggage at the airports — that go through the airports. Not just a carry-on, but also the checked luggage. And it turns out that they spent billons of dollars on these new machines knowing that these machines have got a very high failure rate, a failure rate of about 30 percent.

And it doesn`t mean that, , that 30 percent of the ones that they claim to have a bomb don`t have a bomb. That means 30 percent of all the luggage is identified as having a bomb, because, as one FAA agent said, these machines could not tell the difference between a bar of chocolate and a bowel movement. They`re so inaccurate. So because of that you have these TSA agents now doing searches, manual searches of vast amounts of the luggage that is going through the airports. And because of that, the TSA now tells people to leave their luggage unlocked.

This has resulted in thousands of complaints of theft of luggage, theft from luggage. Many of it — much of it at a time when it was under a TSA jurisdiction. And — so, , you have a policy that — to try and make people safer, but if someone is a photographer who has to travel with valuable equipment, I mean, it`s an absolute nightmare for them, because they have no idea what`s going to be in their luggage that they hate to leave unlocked once they get to their destination.

LAMB:: I want to do this again.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: If the Democrats were in power right now, would it be run any better?

BOVARD: I don`t know. I don`t know. But, one thing that we would have if the Democrats were in power is an intelligent, probably effective Republican opposition. And it`s sad to see so many congressmen and others who recognized very clearly in Clinton`s final years the dangers of the precedents that Clinton was setting, and the dangers of the power grabs of Janet Reno, and all of a sudden you have Bush, Ashcroft and others come and take power, and we`re supposed to pretend that there`s no danger anymore in federal power. That federal power is our friend, and anybody who doubts it is a traitor.

LAMB:: Why are they doing it?

BOVARD: I think a lot of it is simply a “us versus them” mind-set. I mean, it`s liberals versus conservatives, and liberals were always wrong. I mean, it`s the same way many liberals view conservatives as always being wrong. But, both liberals and conservatives both have their merits, but as there`s been a low caliber of debate in this town on the merits to allow the Bush policies.

LAMB:S: I saw some figures in your book that I have never quite seen presented this way. That since, I suspect, 1948, in 2001 dollars America has spent $240 billion on Israel.

BOVARD: Right. I believe — yes, what?

LAMB:S: And on Egypt, since I think `79, it`s 117 billion. And on Jordan, 22 billion, and of course, there is other money that has gone to the Palestinians. Where did you get the idea to frame it in 2001 dollars instead of just adding up all the figures?

BOVARD: Oh, that was from the report done for the U.S. Army War College by I believe, economist Thomas Stauffer. And he walked through the cost of U.S. support of its allies and its friends of the Middle East.

LAMB:: Let me repeat those numbers.

BOVARD: OK.

LAMB:: $240 billion for Israel.

BOVARD: Right.

LAMB:: $117 billion for Egypt, and $22 billion for Jordan.

BOVARD: Right.

LAMB:: And why do you talk about this? What`s important?

BOVARD: Well, a major source of animosity from the terrorist groups and throughout much of the world is our involvement in the Middle East. We`ve been massively involved there for decades. We`ve plowed hundreds of billions of dollars in that area. We have sent boatloads of arms to there. Our efforts have not achieved peace or justice for the people there. And I feel that we need to exit the Middle East quagmire as a very important step to, , increase in our defenses against terrorism.

LAMB:: You kind of put your finger on Ariel Sharon as a problem. Right now.

BOVARD: Ariel Sharon is a big problem. Ariel Sharon is a huge problem, and it`s…

LAMB:: Did it all start with his march on the temple?

BOVARD: I think that that was the spark that set the powder keg of the second Al-Aqsa intifadah. I mean, but there is a lot of blame on both sides, and I`m also critical of Yasser Arafat on here, of the Palestinian Authority. And I am very critical of Hamas and their suicide bombings, but I think U.S. policy has tended to be very tilted in this area.

Part of the trouble is the U.S. definition of terrorism. The U.S. government defines terrorism as effectively a private activity by private groups or private entities or private individuals. Governments cannot be terrorists. But if you look at a lot of the allies who were financing, , Bush says that the U.S. will not have any — oh, I`ve forgotten, there`s a good phrase which I forget — but if you look at a lot of the governments that we`re financing right now, Uzbekistan, Nepal, Turkmenistan, Georgia — these are governments that are terrorizing their own people, and — and George Bush is forcing Americans to pay for foreign torture and things like that.

And this is an outrage. And there is — it`s a core concept. , the terrorist threat is real, and we have to focus on al Qaeda, but the State Department did some — as according to State Department records, international terrorists in 1980s and `90s killed about 8,000 people around the world. In the same period, governments killed over 10 million people. Governments are a far greater danger to people and to peace than are terrorists.

LAMB:: What is — and I lost my place — operation — you`ll be able to tell me — Green…

BOVARD: Green Merchant or green something or other? Green Quest?

LAMB:: Green Quest, yeah.

BOVARD: OK, operation Green Quest is a crackdown on the terrorists — well, it`s labeled as a crackdown on terrorist money laundering, but it`s much more expansive. There was a Supreme Court decision in 1998 written by Clarence Thomas. It said that the Customs Service can no longer confiscate the money of people, travelers going into or out of the country simply because they failed to fill out a federal form, informing the government they were taking out or bringing in more than $10,000. Clarence Thomas ruled — wrote that that was a violation of the Eighth Amendment, excessive fines clause and other things.

In the PATRIOT Act, Congress basically overturned that Supreme Court decision, and now there`s a new crime called bulk cash smuggling, and if someone tries to leave the country with more than $10,000 in cash or currency it`s on them, and doesn`t fill out a form notifying the government, then the government can confiscate all that person`s money and also send them to prison for a few years. This is being labeled as a victory against terrorism. It`s not. Most of the people who are being hit by this have nothing to do with terrorism, and, instead, they`re just guilty of the paperwork violation.

LAMB:: In all these issues you talk about, how often do you find yourself upset with something and almost nobody else? All right…

BOVARD: Yeah.

LAMB:: … I mean, you are always finding somebody that`s carrying the banner for the other side?

BOVARD: No, no, no. I mean, there are folks who I know and who are, , on the same wavelength with me on most issues, and very few actually, but many of these issues it feels at times, like , like one is barking at the moon, but it`s encouraging how public opinion — how people — more people could learn about something as time goes on, and all of a sudden the blind faith or the first pure — and almost a submissive reaction dissipates over time, such as with Waco. I mean, in the days after the FBI`s final assault of Waco, you had 80 or 90 percent of the American people who supported what the government did. Two years later, those numbers those poll numbers were much lower as people had gotten some distance and looked at — and some of the intense emotions of that period had dissipated.

LAMB:: Do you recognize these problems right away when they happen — when a major event happens? Do you not rush in and make a decision?

BOVARD: Oh…

LAMB:: Is it your nature to stick back and wait?

BOVARD: I guess neither. I mean, sometimes it seems something would look pretty clear, other times not, and, I`m just always looking to try to better understand things, and, trying to get a better grip, kind of, , tighten my own grip on understanding these issues, because some of them are very difficult, very complex, and I always figure that I owe it to the reader to try to make it as clear and concrete as possible, so…

LAMB:: Did you ever get a feeling that it`s gotten completely away from us, we can`t control this anymore? We lost control of the government, all these issues that you are bringing up? Nobody is watching.

BOVARD: Some people are watching. Some people are watching, some people are doing some great work trying to expose and in some ways checks on these abuses, but it`s certainly a grim scenario as far as the future, as far as Americans being able to reassert control over their government. But it`s — it could happen.

LAMB:: What`s it going to take?

BOVARD: Oh, I don`t know. I don`t know. I mean, people need to read more and get better informed. I think it`s unfortunate that so many people get so much of their so-called news from broadcast television. Because, the broadcast news and TV is, what, 20 minutes, 22 minutes, and much of that`s fluff or, stuff that`s really not there, and — so I — the governments can become a lot more powerful at the same time the people are becoming comparatively more ignorant as far as the actual workings of the government. And that`s a very dangerous mix.

LAMB:: You also write a lot about drugs and terrorism.

BOVARD: Uh-huh.

LAMB:: What`s the thesis?

BOVARD: Well, it`s curious. Bush was emphatic in the months after 9-11 that no CIA or FBI agent or official could be blamed for 9-11, but Bush did find 28 million culprits. Bush effectively labeled any American drug user as a terrorist financier. He said that if someone buys illicit drugs, chances are some of the money goes to help terrorism.

This was complete nonsense. I mean, most illicit drug users in this country use marijuana. There is no role in marijuana financing terrorism anywhere, of which I`m aware of, and there are elements of the cocaine and heroin from South America which do finance some of the terrorist groups there, but those are not threats to the U.S., , those are groups involved in civil war, and the governments which we finance in that part of the world are also terrorizing their people at times, so.

And it`s interesting. Bush, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan going after al Qaeda and the Taliban, Bush talked, at one point, he said that the U.S. will make sure that heroin never again finances terrorist groups there or the evil people in Afghanistan. Well, Afghanistan is experiencing the Bush opium boom. Opium production has increased 2,000 percent, over 20-fold since the U.S. took over Afghanistan. Because the Taliban had effectively exterminated the opium production, but when the U.S. came in, all of a sudden it`s a boom time for opium production. It`s kind of — it`s a paradox.

LAMB:: What about what goes on in Colombia and Peru and places like that?

BOVARD: Well, if you see what the governments in those countries have done, they`ve been very — I mean, OK, as far as in Bogotá , as far as that situation, it`s a civil war. It`s a civil war that`s been going on for decades. A lot of the guerrilla forces have done horrendous atrocities, but so have the government there, and the government`s paramilitary allies, who are now labeled by the U.S. as a terrorist group but they are still working closely with the government there, which is U.S.-financed. So U.S. funding there is indirectly aiding — probably aiding a group that the U.S. labels a terrorist group.

LAMB:: Back to what we were talking about earlier about war. When is America justified to use its military?

BOVARD: Well, the U.S. was justified to go after al Qaeda, because al Qaeda attacked the U.S., and…

LAMB:: Go anywhere and do exactly what they did, go to Afghanistan and…

BOVARD: …

LAMB:: How far can a country go?

BOVARD: It`s a difficult question. I don`t have a good answer. I think the U.S. was absolutely justified in going after the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Overthrowing the Taliban and taking control of the country, that`s a different story. I think it`s becoming another quagmire. Certainly the U.S. should work in cahoots with foreign governments to go — put the squeeze on al Qaeda, to shut them down, to do what`s necessary. Military intervention is almost always counterproductive in these things, and it`s sad to see how Bush has exploded the gullibility on the 9-11 link to justify its war with Iraq.

LAMB:: You don`t think he was justified?

BOVARD: Oh, no. Absolutely no. I mean, there was — , Saddam Hussein was a brutal torturer that relied heavily on torture. He killed a lot of his own people, but he was no threat to the U.S. And there were so many false statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others before the war, and one of the things that really — a lot of people say, well, that Bush may have just been misinformed. Well, there was a speech that he gave early this year, and he kept using this case, he said if war is forced upon us — again and again, if war is forced upon us, then America will fight.

Well, that was nonsense. War was never forced upon the American people, at least not by the foreign government. Bush sought to convince Americans that the U.S. was somehow a victim of Saddam Hussein, and that was a complete scam. And Bush, — Bush needs to come clean with the American people on these things.

LAMB:: By the way, if he were here right now and this is a private conversation, he might say, he will, , it is really nice that you had all these great theories, but I had the responsibility and I did something.

BOVARD: Yeah, well, I mean, it`s true that he had the responsibility, but that does not give him justification for launching an unprovoked war against a foreign country that posed no real threat to the U.S.

LAMB:: What if his philosophy is — and maybe you heard him say this — that by going into Iraq, that is making a statement that will affect the entire area, democratize the country, impact the rest of the Arab countries, and in fact begin a process that has to start somewhere? What would you say to that plan if that were his plan?

BOVARD: Well, I guess I might wonder if they`re doing drug testing in the White House, because they had a lot of information ahead of the war that this rosy scenario would be a joke. I mean, there was a lot of evidence that there would be fierce resistance, that the Iraqi people would not greet Americans with, , flowers and hugs, and that, overthrowing Saddam would not create this domino effect of democracy in the Middle East. And yet, Bush went ahead and basically — the Federal Trade Commission sets standards for false advertising for corporate practices. I`d be curious to know how Bush sold the Iraqi war to the American people, what qualifies as a fraud by the federal government`s own definitions.

LAMB:: Wait, Americans believed it and they followed it, and they endorsed it.

BOVARD: Yeah. And that doesn`t mean that he`s right. And it doesn`t mean that he was honest or that his facts were accurate. I mean, if you see how Bush sought to portray Saddam Hussein as the 20th hijacker on 9-11, if Bush constantly linked Saddam and 9-11 in his speeches, in his interviews, in his off the cuff comments that were televised, and as the Bush administration recently admitted, as Bush recently admitted that there is no evidence of a link. And if , it`s sort of — all the false statements on weapons of mass destruction. I mean, to try to put it in concrete context. Say, for instance, that I`m living in a place, and I have suspicion that the house next door, a group house, that the people there might have these terrible weapons. And so I call up the FBI and I tell them that these people have got these terrible weapons and they`re going to attack the elementary school nearby.

So the FBI sends her SWAT team in, attacks the house. A couple of FBI agents get killed, they kill everybody inside the house. It turns out they have no weapons. Well — have no serious weapons. OK. This is not a harmless error. And this is equivalent to what Bush has done by sending the U.S. to war against Iraq. There are thousands of Iraqis who have been killed in this war, hundreds of Americans have died, more are going to be dying. And for Bush — Bush is strutting on this. This is so off-putting. For Bush to say, bring them on, , as he did in July as far as the Iraqi attacks on the American people, it`s a national disgrace.

LAMB:: You sound like you really don`t like George Bush. Is there anything about him you like?

BOVARD: Oh, that`s a good question. I mean, some of his efforts in the Office of Management and Budget. Some of the efforts to cut back things here, or cut back things there. I mean, Bush is — there are a few things he is doing that I would — I`m not in opposition to.

LAMB:: You said you didn`t vote in 2000.

BOVARD: That`s right.

LAMB:: Is that the first time that`s ever happened?

BOVARD: No, it`s not the first time, but I most often vote — well, it`s frustrating not having a choice of candidates one could affirmatively support. But there were things in Bush`s record which I had lots of doubts about in 2000, both his personal record as far as — and as well as his stand on government, so…

LAMB:: What would you think if this book turns out to be a great tool for all of 10 Democrats that are running against him?

BOVARD: My hope is that people will look at the facts and the issues, and, , I`m sure that some people would like some things in this book and might try to use them in a way that I would disagree with or I would not approve of, but this is what happens when you write. And what I have tried to do so far in this book is to lay out the facts and walk people through, what the government did, case after case after case, example to example. And to try to make people not forget some of their rhetoric that has surrounded these things, because it is with the rhetoric of Bush and others which we have to keep in mind in judging them.

LAMB:: You think you could do better if you were in the government?

BOVARD: Do better what?

LAMB:: Accomplishing what you want to accomplish.

BOVARD: Well, if I was in the government, I would probably try — well, the first thing I would do is to say that it`s to recognize the things which the government is incompetent at, and try to stop doing those. I mean, it`s a major concern I have about this war on terrorism. Nothing happened on 9-11 to make the federal government more competent. And yet we are Bush`s — we have a very aggressive foreign policy. Bush is probably creating more terrorists than he is vanquishing at this point, especially in places like Iraq. And there is almost like this fantasy that we`ve had these reforms at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere, and now they`re going to be able to protect us.

LAMB:: Earlier you mentioned that you went to Virginia Tech. For two years?

BOVARD: Off and on for two years.

LAMB:: And didn`t graduate?

BOVARD: No.

LAMB:: And have no college degree?

BOVARD: Correct.

LAMB:: So what does this all say? You`ve made a living off of writing. This is your seventh book.

BOVARD: Yeah.

LAMB:: No college degree. Does it say something about college, not worth it?

BOVARD: Well, maybe it says that the professors at Virginia Tech were so great I only needed a year and a half, two years. I don`t know. I mean, it was a great benefit the time I did spend in college. I have appreciated it, I`ve been able to find editors I can work with.

LAMB:: Where did you learn how to do this?

BOVARD: Learn how to do?

LAMB:: Write books, think, study, learn.

BOVARD: I have always enjoyed research. I`ve always enjoyed learning things and trying to figure things out as far as policies and stuff like that. I was fascinated — I`ve always had a love of reading, and I tried to read good books that would kind of perhaps hopefully improve my writing style. When I did go to college, I took a lot of courses on writing and a lot of independent studies with some very generous professors to try to help me upgrade my writing style, my essay style and, I`ve been doing it for a long time, and, , it`s just — , it`s fun, it`s fun.

LAMB:: Any reason why you didn`t dedicate your book to someone?

BOVARD: I thought about dedicating it to — I thought about that a couple of things, and I decided not to, so…

LAMB:: You normally dedicate your books?

BOVARD: No, no.

LAMB:: Is there a reason?

BOVARD: I don`t know. , I`m just kind of — I don`t know. It`s just — it`s not my style, so.

LAMB:: What`s your next book?

BOVARD: I am thinking I`ll probably do something on the Bush administration, looking at the — , “Feeling Your Pain,” the book I did in 2000 walked people through a lot of some of the more arcane Clinton policies, and I might do that with the Bush administration for next year.

LAMB:: James Bovard is our author. Here is the cover of the book: “Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil.” Thank you very much.

BOVARD: Thanks so much.

END
Copyright National Cable Satellite Corporation 2003. Personal, noncommercial use of this transcript is permitted. No commercial, political or other use may be made of this transcript without the express permission of National Cable Satellite C

Thursday 2nd February 2012

EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering

1:21 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

The Future of Freedom Foundation posted online today this article from the November issue of Freedom Daily -

The EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering

by James Bovard

Few federal agencies have a more brazen history of trampling due process and basic fairness than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the time the EEOC was created in 1965, it has continually stretched its power and sought to win by legal intimidation. Its latest shenanigans need to be judged in light of its early bureaucratic racketeering.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act explicitly banned racial quotas and specifically required that an employer have shown an intent to discriminate in order to be found guilty. However, by the late 1960s, the EEOC had intentionally subverted the law by establishing a definition of discrimination that was the opposite of the one that Congress had specified. EEOC chairman Clifford Alexander announced in 1968, “We … here at EEOC believe in numbers…. Our most valid standard is in numbers…. The only accomplishment is when we look at all those numbers and see a vast improvement in the picture.”

The government created numerous administrative tests to give it power to cajole, intimidate, leverage, and pressure private companies to do what government officials wanted. In 1970 the EEOC issued regulations to severely restrict the use of testing for hiring and promotion. The agency had no authority to issue such restrictive regulations, which clearly contradicted the actual wording of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Herman Belz, author of Equality Transformed, noted, “Achievement of identical rejection rates for minority and nonminority job applicants was expressly stated as a policy objective…. Yet the guidelines did not stipulate a concern with qualified minority applicants.”

The EEOC strove to enforce a “know-nothing egalitarianism” on company hiring policies. It routinely presumed that businessmen who seek to hire workers with more than minimal qualifications were acting unfairly towards less-qualified workers. Much of its routine work consisted of punishing corporations because their standards were too high. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specified that a company could discriminate among job applications on the basis of “business necessity” or Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications (BFOQ). But, with its interpretation of BFOQ, EEOC officials effectively appointed themselves czars over how competent American workers needed to be. The EEOC almost always intervened against competence — in support of the notion that workers do not need to be as intelligent, as literate, or as capable as an employer demands.

Race norming and adverse impact

In 1973, the EEOC compelled AT&T to sign a consent decree to increase its hiring of minorities and women. As Belz noted, “There was a pioneering wrinkle in the decree: the ‘affirmative action override.’ To meet its goals, the company could promote a ‘basically qualified’ person rather than the ‘best qualified’ or ‘most senior.’” That was a radical change in the meaning of the law. Equal opportunity went from requiring that the best man or the best woman be given the job to a demand that jobs be distributed to minimally qualified applicants, or even to applicants who could be made qualified at sufficient expense to the company. The CEO of AT&T publicly accused the EEOC of trying to force the company to lower its hiring standards and denounced the agency’s policy as “a misguided form of paternalism.”

The EEOC routinely effectively punished employers if minority job applicants gave the wrong answers to test questions. William Gorman, a Civil Service Commission staff psychologist, noted, “Based upon an untested hypothesis, tests were presumed guilty of being anti–equal employment opportunity until proven innocent.” The EEOC assumed that a fair test would automatically provide equal scores among all racial groups of test-takers, although it had no evidence for that assumption — only a surfeit of moral self-righteousness and legal authority.

Race norming was a result of the EEOC’s attack on private tests. Race norming is the covert manipulation of people’s test scores to produce an equal number of winners in each race. With race norming, each citizen has an equal opportunity to have his job test scores secretly raised or lowered in response to government manipulation or intimidation.

The EEOC continually sought to further slant employment law in favor of plaintiffs by creating new definitions of discrimination. In 1978 it revealed that a private company could be presumed guilty of discrimination if its employees represented less than 80 percent of the racial groups in its surrounding area. In its Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, the EEOC officially defined “adverse impact” as “a substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions which works to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex, or ethnic group.” The EEOC then defined “unfairness of selection procedure” as “a condition in which members of one race, sex, or ethnic group characteristically obtain lower scores on a selection procedure than members of another group, and the differences are not reflected in differences in measures of job performance.”

The EEOC revealed, “Disparate treatment occurs where members of a race, sex, or ethnic group have been denied the same employment, promotion, membership, or other employment opportunities as have been available to other employees or applicants.” Thus, almost any instance where EEOC officials felt that an employer should have more blacks, women, or Hispanics on the payroll could allow a lawsuit on disparate treatment. The EEOC declared regarding affirmative action plans, “Goals and timetables should be reasonably related to … the availability of basically qualified or qualifiable applicants.”

The history of the EEOC exemplifies how government agencies can achieve near-absolute power simply by issuing incomprehensible regulations. When the EEOC issued the Uniform Guidelines, the regulations were widely denounced for their vagueness and complexity. The General Accounting Office noted that one study of the regulations concluded that “their reading difficulty level is at about grade 23 — that is, beyond the Doctor of Philosophy education level.” The GAO noted, “An EEOC official told us that the Guidelines were not meant for use by laymen but, rather, by lawyers and psychologists. However … the reading difficulty of the Guidelines … was probably beyond that of most personnel managers, lawyers and psychologists.”

The EEOC official’s comment captures the arrogance of the equalizers: the rules for pursuing or imposing equality are so complex that commoners need not understand them. The EEOC’s official statement vivifies the EEOC’s disdain for the organizations that it regulates: the regulated businesses do not need to understand the law, as long as they comply with the EEOC’s wishes.

The purpose of the guidelines was not to enable employers to make a good-faith effort to comply with federal regulations but rather to provide a slew of pretexts for individuals to sue or threaten to sue companies. The vagueness of EEOC regulations provided a huge advantage to plaintiffs in court cases, since it was unclear what was legal or illegal. The only sure way employers could comply was by imposing affirmative-action programs.

Felons and minorities

The EEOC has long been one of felons’ best friends. In the 1970s the EEOC began suing companies that refused to hire people with criminal records. It argued that “discrimination” against ex-convicts is simply an illegal pretext for discriminating against minorities.

In 1989, the EEOC sued Carolina Freight Carrier of Hollywood, Florida, for refusing to hire as truck drivers people who had been convicted of felonies (especially larceny) and who had served prison time. Carolina Freight truckers carried “high risk” freight, such as computers, munitions, and drugs. The company’s average loss from a theft exceeded $100,000 and the company attributed 85 percent of the thefts to employee misconduct. Since drivers were largely unsupervised, the company believed them to be the primary sources of theft losses.

The EEOC sued on behalf of a Hispanic man who had twice been arrested and who had served 18 months in prison for larceny. It asserted that since Hispanics have a higher rate of felony convictions than do whites, the company’s policy violated Title VII because of its disparate impact on Hispanics. It argued that the only legitimate qualification for the job was the ability to operate a tractor-trailer.

The EEOC had bad luck in the federal judge who was selected for the case. The judge — Jose Gonzalez Jr. — was outraged at the EEOC’s condescending attitude towards Hispanics: “EEOC’s position that minorities should be held to lower standards is an insult to millions of honest Hispanics. Obviously a rule refusing honest employment to convicted applicants is going to have a disparate impact upon thieves.” The judge fumed that “to say that an applicant’s honest character is irrelevant to an employer’s hiring decision is ludicrous…. To hold otherwise is to stigmatize minorities by saying, in effect, your group is not as honest as other groups.”

The EEOC declared that it would not follow Judge Gonzalez’s decision outside of his judicial district in southern Florida. In 1992, it sued Continental Air Transport, claiming that its policy of not hiring people with arrest records violated federal civil-rights law. EEOC attorney Elaine Chaney explained that the law was discriminatory because “blacks and Hispanics are far more likely than whites to have arrest records.”

It is ironic that the government penalized a private company for relying on a person’s criminal record, since both the federal and state governments suspend many of a person’s civil and constitutional rights once he is convicted of a felony. Convicted felons are prohibited, for example, from owning guns or voting in most states. The government declares that a convicted felon cannot be trusted to pull a lever in a voting booth, yet it sought to penalize private companies who felt that he also cannot be trusted with $100,000 in private property.

The government launched a noble-sounding crusade to equalize opportunities between blacks and whites and soon began suing private companies to force them to provide equal opportunities to ex-convicts and law-abiding citizens, to more-literate and less-literate people, and to highly qualified and minimally qualifiable applicants. Equal-opportunity policy degenerated to pursuing almost everything except equality.

Federal civil-rights policy presumes that politicians should be the ultimate judges of which opportunities each group of citizens should receive — that politicians and bureaucrats should have practically unlimited power to tilt the economic playing field in the direction of preferred players. Rather than creating equal opportunity, this process simply led to a general political confiscation and redistribution of opportunity. As federal judge Alex Kozinski observed, “No one has yet proposed a satisfactory rule that distinguishes proper racial classifications — permissible exercises of the government’s power to classify people for the common good — from those based on hatred, prejudice or a desire to help one’s own at the expense of others.” We are long overdue for a separate of Race and State.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Fed is Wrecking Our Economy

1:19 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

My two cents on the latest humbug from Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke:

In an interview with Press TV on Thursday, James Bovard, a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation explained that U.S. Federal Reserve policies are further hurting the U.S. economy rather than improving it.

“The Federal Reserve itself has done so much to undermine the American economy and throttle its recovery. The Federal Reserve has held interest rates far too low for far too long that have destroyed Americans’ incentive to save.”

He added, “A major reason why the U.S economy has not bounced back strong is because businesses and lot of others are fearful of what kind of stupid policy Washington might do next.”

You can listen to the short monologue by clicking on or downloading the following: james-bovard-final

Tuesday 31st January 2012

Next Week: FFF/Hornberger on Civil Liberties College Tour

10:29 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

The Young Americans for Liberty and the Future of Freedom Foundation will be putting on a college tour next week on “The War on Terrorism, Civil Liberties, and the Constitution.”

FFF president Jacob Hornberger will be joined by best-selling author Glenn Greenwald and former Reagan Justice Department official Bruce Fein for a series of panels at four colleges. (listed below). All of the panelists are excellent speakers, and it should be a fine presentation.

Monday Feb 06 2012
Columbia University
Roone Arledge Auditorium
Doors at 7:30 p.m. - Panel 8:00 to 10:00 p.m.
New York, NY

Tuesday Feb 07 2012
Indiana University/Purdue University
Campus Center, Room 450C
Doors at 5:30 p.m. - Panel from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Indianapolis, IN

Wednesday Feb 08 2012
Middle Tennessee State University
State Farm Room, Business and Aerospace Building
Doors at 6:30 p.m. - Panel from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Murfreesboro, TN

Thursday Feb 09 2012
Ohio State University
Conference Theater in The Ohio Union
Doors at 7:00 p.m. - Panel from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Columbus, OH

If you aren’t in that neck of the woods, you can watch the presentations live online by clicking here.

Karen Kwiatkowski for Congress - Go Virginia!

4:20 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 2

Karen Kwiatkowski, an author and retired Air Force Lt. Col., is running for Congress in Virginia’s Sixth District. Beginning in 2003, Kwiatkowski exposed the shenanigans she had seen in the Pentagon leading up to the invasion of Iraq. She has shown more courage than an entire 747 full of laptop bombardiers.

Karen is an avid supporter of civil liberties and favors slashing the size of the federal government.
She is also a big supporter of Ron Paul. If Karen gets elected to Congress, she will have the gumption and the fire in the belly to fight the power grabs of whoever is president.

She is running for the Republican nomination, going up against ten-termer Bob Goodlatte. The Sixth District stretches from Roanoke way up the Valley of Virginia. If I was still living on the mountainside where I was raised in Warren County, I would have the chance to vote for a congressional candidate who I actually supported, as opposed to merely loathed-less-than-the-other-candidate.

Karen’s campaign website is here.

A Wikipedia page on Karen is here

You can follow her campaign & postings on Twitter at karen4the6th

Saturday 14th January 2012

Epigrams from My Sordid Past

10:14 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 6

Dipping into my books, I plucked out some of my favorite lines. FWIW:

From The Farm Fiasco (ICS Press, 1989)

* For sixty years, politicians have driven American farmers out of world markets and onto the government dole.

*Nineteenth-century reformers built their utopias on the expectation of an imminent change in human nature. Twentieth-century reformers have built Leviathans and then awaited a change in politicians’ nature.

* Reform is the opiate of the welfare state.

*The only solution to the “farm problem” is to depoliticize agriculture.

From The Fair Trade Fraud (St. Martin’s Press, 1991)

• Government cannot make trade more fair by making it less free.

• “Fair trade” is a moral delusion that could be leading to an economic catastrophe.

• The U.S. government has created a trade lynch law that can convict foreign companies almost regardless of how they operate.

• It should not be a federal crime to charge low prices to American consumers.

From Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin’s Press, 1994)

*America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.

*The key to contemporary American political thinking is the neutering of the State — the idea that modern government has been defanged, domesticated, tamed.

*A law is simply a reflection of the momentary perception of self-interest by a majority of a legislative body.

*The federal tax system is turning individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives.

*Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin’s Press, 1999)

• Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power.

• The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States – governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of politicians.

• So much of political philosophy throughout history has consisted of concocting reasons why people have a duty to be tame animals in politicians’ cages.

• The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.

• The growth of government is like the spread of a dense jungle, and the average citizen can hack through less of it every year.

• Trusting government nowadays means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives.

From Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (St. Martin’s Press, 2000)

*Clinton exploited and expanded the dictatorial potential of the U.S. presidency.

*For scores of millions of Americans, Clinton’s “caring” was more important than his lying.

*The principle of government supremacy is Clinton’s clearest legacy.

*The better that people understand what Clinton did in office, the greater the nation’s chances for political recovery.

From Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave, 2003)

• Nothing happened on 9/11 that made the federal government more trustworthy.

• The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a suspected terrorist and every federal agent like a proven angel.

• The worse government fails, the less privacy citizens supposedly deserve.

• There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.

• Killing foreigners is no substitute for protecting Americans.

• It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of freedom everywhere without also destroying freedom in the United States.

• A lie that is accepted by a sufficient number of ignorant voters becomes a political truth.

• Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.

• In the long run, people have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go, but power-hungry politicians will always be with us.

From The Bush Betrayal (Palgrave, 2004)

• Truth is a lagging indicator in politics.

• The arrogance of power is the best hope for the survival of freedom.

• We need a constitutional amendment to make the federal government obey the Constitution.

• There are no harmless political lies about a war. The more such lies citizens tolerate, the more wars they will get.

• People have been taught to expect far more from government than from freedom.

From Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006)

• Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.

• Instead of revealing the “will of the people,” election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.

• Bogus fears can produce real servitude.

• As long as rulers are above the law, citizens have the same type of freedom that slaves had on days when their masters chose not to beat them.

• Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.

• The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.

• Attention Deficit Democracy produces the attitudes, ignorance and arrogance that pave the way to political collapse.

++++
I welcome any suggestions. If there are lines that seem clunkish or lame, feel free to point them out - maybe the herd needs thinning out.

Unfortunately, since the list was already too long, I did not include any lines about the value of positive thinking.

James Bovard

Thursday 5th January 2012

Persian Gulf Folly Redux (1987)

11:07 am | Iran | Iraq | wool | Comments: 3

Following is a piece I wrote in 1987 on the Reagan administration’s idiotic intervention in the Persian Gulf. Versions of this piece appeared in USA Today and the Detroit News.

JUST ANOTHER AMERICAN SITTING DUCK
by James Bovard

Sentimentality now appears to be the soul of Reagan’s foreign policy. From charging into the Persian Gulf to wave the American flag - to sending cakes and Bibles and missiles to the Aytatollah’s regime - to rushing to negotiate an Arms control treaty with Soviets - our foreign policy is degenerating into a series of half-witted public relations schemes.

The plan to put U.S. flags on Kuwaiti oil tankers makes about as much sense as making Poland our 5lst state. The U.S. flagging of Kuwaiti ships is reminiscent of the U.S. putting Marines in Beirut - the same lack of clear goal, same lack of foresight, and same lack of strategy.

In Beirut, having our Marines standing tall - albeit with unloaded guns and a dozen other restrictions on their self-defense - was supposed to bring peace to Lebanon. As long as only a few Marines were killed each week, the absurdity was tolerable. But, after a truck bomb blew up the Marine barracks and killed over 200 Americans, the U.S. withdrew.

Freedom of the seas is a valuable principle - but it is a doubtful cause in the Gulf. We will be intervening to protect Kuwaiti ships - while Iraq continues its attacks on Iranian ships. Iraqi’s foreign minister, speaking on American TV on last week, implied that Iraq had no intention of stopping its bombing on Iranian shipping in the gulf.

Jumping into the middle of the Iran-Iraqi war is just one more example of our government’s habit of wandering into a barroom brawl and trying to fight while carefully holding one pinky up in the air.

Why take sides in a fight between two knaves? Iraq may be the lesser of two evils. But what difference does it make if one country’s leaders are destined for the seventh circle of hell, and the other’s are destined for the sixth circle of hell?

Kuwait is one of the richest nation in the world, and could afford to almost buy the the U.S. Seventh Fleet and provide its own protection. This is like the government providing free limo service to all the millionaires in New York City.

The Reagan Administration claims that since the Soviets are providing flag coverage for three Kuwait tankers, the U.S. is obliged to do the same. The Soviets are massacring millions of Afghans. Does that mean we should cross the Rio Grande and knock off a few million Mexicans?

Re-flagging Kuwaiti ships is based on the idea that we must match the Soviets point for point, move for move, in every arena in the world. But, this is both foolish and masochistic…

The key factor now in the Cold War - one little recognized by most commentators dazzled by Gorbachev’s speeches - is that the Soviet economy is slowly sinking. The Soviet Union is increasingly an “Upper Volta with missiles”, as the ECONOMIST termed it. The technological gap between East and West is widening by the month. No amount of minor tinkering will be able to overhaul an incredibly-badly built socialist engine. Soviet economic reforms are based on Hungarian so-called mixed economy - a miserable hodgepodge of measures that means deteriorating living standards in Budapest and soaring foreign debt for Hungary.

Time is on our side - as long as we don’t do something stupid like getting into a war with a bunch of wackos with Exocet missiles and F-15 jets. At the moment, Iran is more a pesky mosquito than a vital threat to our national interest. If Iran actually tries to close the Persian Gulf, then the U.S. and other western powers can conduct a surgical bombing run.

Our national interest requires more than mindless bellicosity in the Mideast, and mindless pacifism against the Soviets. If the best foreign policy is to run up the flag, let people shoot a few holes in it, proclaim victory and withdraw, re-flagging Kuwaiti flags is brilliant. At least for now, it is best to let Lloyd’s of London cover the risks of Persian Gulf shipping.

The Folly of Attacking Iran

10:14 am | Iran | Lying | wool | Comments: 4

Listening to the half-witted ratcheting up of hostilities by both the U.S. and Iranian governments reminded me of this piece I wrote for the Future of Freedom Foundation in the wake of George W. Bush’s Iraq victory speech. It is difficult to detect a learning curve in Washington in the subsequent 7+ years. Instead, the advocates of mass carnage continue to be hailed as if they were the true friends of humanity.

The Folly of Invading Iran
by James Bovard October 17, 2003

Some Bush administration officials and advisors are hankering for another war. To judge from the saber rattling and rumblings coming out of the White House, the next target could be Iran. But invading Iran would be an act of folly that would make the invasion of Iraq look almost prudent by comparison.

Almost no one alleges that Iran poses any threat to the security of the United States. There are no allegations that Iranian naval forces could seize Boston harbor, or that Iranian paratroopers could descend upon Miami, or that an Iranian army could surge across the Rio Grande. Instead, the case against Iran is based almost entirely on distant hypotheticals — and on the notion that the United States needs to completely dominate the Middle East.

Some Bush administration officials are clamoring for U.S. action against Iran. John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, declared on October 9, regarding an Iranian nuclear reactor, “The threat posed by Iran … has to be eliminated.”

But Bolton is a poor guide for the case for going war. For many months before the United States invaded Iraq, Bush administration officials assured Americans that Saddam Hussein had vast stores of weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to Americans. Since the U.S. army captured Baghdad in early April, no WMDs have been found. But Bolton offered a bizarre vindication for a war that killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and cost the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. In a May 24, 2003, speech sponsored by the National Defense University Foundation, Bolton revealed that the war was justified because of Iraqi “intellectual capacity” — because of “the continued existence of what Saddam Hussein called the ‘nuclear mujahadeen,’ the thousand or so scientists, technicians, people who have in their own heads and in their files the intellectual property necessary at an appropriate time … to recreate a nuclear weapons program.” With this all-inclusive standard, the U.S. government is now justified in attacking any potentially hostile nation that has a university with a good physics department.

Iran does have a nuclear program but Bush administration experts estimate that it could be six or seven years until they are able to have nuclear weapons — if that is what they seek to build. There are many other countries in the world that could also acquire nuclear weapons in that time period. And Israel has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. This is not a problem for the Bush administration, since pro-American governments are apparently entitled to unlimited numbers of WMDs.

The U.S. military might be able to defeat the Iranian military without too many American casualties — at least initially. However, Iran is a much larger country than Iraq and far more mountainous. Mountains are heaven-made for guerilla fighting.

Yet even if the United States can stop the current Iranian government, there is no reason to expect paradise to erupt in the aftermath. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Americans were told that the Iraqi people would greet American soldiers with hugs and flowers. More than 300 dead Americans later, it appears that Iraqi hatred of Americans is becoming more perilous every month.

One of the drawbacks of bombing a foreign country into submission is that the United States is often expected to rebuild what it destroyed afterwards. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, estimates that the cost of rebuilding Iraq could reach $200 billion — far beyond the Bush administration’s recent $87 billion budget request. This is money that the U.S. government does not have; as a result, Americans for decades to come will be paying heavily for the privilege of underwriting President Bush’s victory strut on the USS Abraham Lincoln last May 1.

Prior to invading Iraq, Bush talked as if overthrowing Saddam would bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Yet, seven months after the United States conquered Baghdad, Palestinian suicide bombers continue blowing up Israeli buses and cafes and Israeli jets and helicopters continue killing innocent Palestinian bystanders in their attacks on the cars and homes of “militants.”

Americans cannot afford any more Bush conquests. The Bush administration has already wrecked American credibility around the world with its Iraqi invasion. If Bush advisors want to conquer Tehran, let them do it themselves.

Monday 2nd January 2012

Ron Paul: Toppling Political Idols and Changing American Politics

10:46 am | Democracy | Ron Paul | Uncategorized | Comments: 9

As someone who was born in Iowa, I’m pleased to see many Iowans flocking to support Ron Paul.

The Washington Post has a tut-tutting front-page story today complaining that Paul’s 45-minute stump speech “outlines a view of the world so bleak it would make Chicken Little sound like an optimist.”

It is not surprising that a Washington reporter would be aghast at someone who spoke honestly about U.S. government policy.  But hopefully Iowa voters will be far more realistic than Washington Post editorial writers. It is encouraging to see so many people enthusiastic about a politician who is not promising them handouts.

Ron Paul’s support is a gauge of how many Americans have caught onto to the prevailing doggerel from Washington.   Many, if not most, of these folks will never “return to the fold” to docilely support whoever the Republican Party coronates as a presidential candidate later this year. Ron Paul is toppling political idols - and many Americans will never bow to those idols again.

The New York Times had an excellent piece last week on Republican candidates’ views on executive power. Ron Paul was the only candidate who declared that the President does not have a right to order the killing of American citizens on his own authority.   The other Republican candidates sounded like Obama - who signed a bill on Saturday that gives the federal government dire new powers.   The superb poster below features Obama - but it could just as well have included the Republican presidential candidates - except for Ron Paul.

 
[If anyone knows the author of this poster, shoot me an email and I will credit the creator.]
 
James Bovard

Wednesday 28th December 2011

“Was James Bovard Bit By a Mailman as a Child?”

3:47 pm | Uncategorized | wool | Comments: 5

The headline was the opening sentence of a letter written to the Los Angeles Times. The writer, Jim Washburn, was so upset that the Times clipped that first sentence from his published response that he posted it on his blog. He commented: “A few days previous, they’d run an op-ed piece by some blowhard named James Brovard complaining about the US Postal Service, claiming that the USPS has been intentionally slowing down mail delivery for decades, and essentially that they suck.”

Washburn (who also complained that the Times had never published any of the previous many letters he sent them) might not have noticed that the op-ed contained a heap of details on delivery slowdowns. No matter - as he proudly declared, “I happen to love the USPS.”

Never pays to argue theology.

I got a hoot out of his first sentence and thought it deserved to run another lap around the Internet.

The mail slowdown op-ed was syndicated by McClatchy and has been reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Miami Herald, the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, Newark Star Ledger, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Sacramento Bee, the Tampa Bay Tribune, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Bangor (Maine) Daily News, the Savannah Morning News, the Juneau (Alaska) Empire, Tacoma, Washington News Tribune, Tulsa World, the Hanford (California) Sentinel, the Mississippi Sun Herald, Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.), the Fargo (North Dakota) Forum, the Bellingham (Washington) Herald, Westchester, NY Journal News, and, most important of all, Government Management Daily.

Someone named “Froggy” commented on the Cleveland Plain Dealer website:

“It is hard to improve upon ‘almost perfection’, but, the USPS has improved over the years. No where in the world can one have a letter delivered over three thousand miles(farther when sent to Alaska and Hawaii) in only three days and for only 44 cents. In my 75 years, I have never had a letter or package that was lost or damaged beyond what must be considered normal. Their are those who wish to privatize the postal service but, if it were to occur, two things are certain, the quality of service will certainly decrease while the cost surely will increase.”

So how would that be different than life under the postal monopoly?

On the Juneau Empire website, “Mama T,” in a post headlined “Private, Profit, reduced services,”

Nothing has gotten better with privatization…just more expensive. Who’s got stock in Fed X and UPS? Ya know…we are talking about some inside trading by our lawmakers. Oppps…I mean INFORMED trading…which is not exactly illegal…YET. Someone could have a stake in the Post Office demise.”

Ya, like its captive customers.

In the Bangor Daily News, “mcmaineacjam” commented:

Wow, it takes two days instead of one to mail a letter, it is the end of the world. More interested in storing letters then delivering them, some one is prone to exageration. I’ll bet he is not interested in paying extra, as is offered , to get it there overnight. Hire a courier servise to mail a letter from LA to New York and see how much it costs.

Relying on the Postal Service’s “Express Mail” is worse than Russian Roulette, as far as the chances of the mail actually arriving on time - despite a massive surchage.

A comment on the Mississippi Sun Herald entitled “Slick Solutions Inc” observed:

The solution I suspect is to outsource the Post Office to corporations like our military did. No thanks late bloomer

As I noted on this blog last week, I am vehemently opposed to permitting the Postal Service to have its own drones.

From posting on the Miami Herald site,

federal crime to provide better mail service than the government”.Then How did UPS and FedEx with guaranteed delivery times eat the Post Office’s lunch over the last decades ?

What’s with this forever delivery time ? I put a letter to NY Friday, they got it yesterday, Monday morning the week before Christmas.

Then I see the answer is the last line of the article:
James Bovard is the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy.”. So it’s not that Bovard is dumb, it’s that he thinks we are.

As I see it the PO’s big problem is the bulk of most deliveries is junk. I have a PO box so that that crap never makes in my home. There’s also email of course.

So believing that people can make wiser choices for mail service than government permits somehow means that I think people are dumb? In reality, it has long been the defenders of the postal monopoly who insist that people are unfit to choose what is good for them.

I am surprised how the little detail about the monopoly applying only to first class mail seems to have been brushed aside.

Christy-Sue Huber, commenting on the Westchester, NY “Journal News” site-

“I don’t know what post office you are using. I have used the post office on a daily basis for the last 50 years and have never had a problem. I guess you didn’t see the FedEx driver who threw the TV over the wall instead of delivering it as expected. This does not make FedEx bad. I don’t now of any business that does not goof now and then.” To err is human.” Oh, I forgot, only government workers make mistakes.

Christy-Sue should get an award from the Postmaster General. She just provided a new motto for the Postal Service: “To err is human.”

Tuesday 27th December 2011

MP3 of Dallas Interview on Santa, Postal Snafus, Etc. with Brian Wilson

11:11 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 8

Brian Wilson and I had some fun this morning on Dallas station KLIF.

I am waiting for the defamation lawsuits to arrive from the city of Boston and from the Postal Service.

You can download or listen to the show by clicking the following:

12-27-11-invu

Obama’s Dictatorial Assassination Program

10:30 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 3

Future of Freedom Foundation

Freedom Daily, October 2011 (posted online 12/23/11)

Obama’s Dictatorial Assassination Program
by James Bovard

The Obama administration now claims the authority to kill American citizens without a trial, without notice, and without any chance for targets to legally object. The “targeted killing” program of George W. Bush’s administration has been radically expanded to include Americans far from any war zone. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified last year that the targeting-to-kill decision depends on “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us.” But that is a very vague standard, especially for use in capital punishment. And the list of officially designated terrorist groups has little or nothing to do with whether organizations actually pose significant danger to the United States.

The poster boy for the targeted-killing program is Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric who is reported to be in Yemen. The Obama administration touts allegations that Awlaki helped spark the slaughter at Ford Hood, Texas, that he inspired the attempt to destroy a jetliner on Christmas Day, and that he has done other dastardly things that the government has not yet disclosed (for our own good, of course). Awlaki might well be a four-star bastard, but government press releases and background briefings have not previously been sufficient to justify capital punishment.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to compel the government “to disclose the legal standard it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.” The Obama administration responded by invoking the doctrine of state secrets, effectively claiming that national security demanded that its policies be kept hidden. By invoking the “state secrets” doctrine, the feds don’t even have to explain why the law doesn’t apply to their actions.

In oral arguments in federal court in November 2010, Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter asserted that no judge has legal authority to be “looking over the shoulder” of the Obama administration’s targeted-killing program. Letter declared that the program involves “the very core powers of the president as commander in chief.” When Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008, entitling the president to kill Americans without a trial was not one of the reforms he promised. (A federal judge derailed the ACLU lawsuit.)

The main difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration is that the Obama team publicly claims the authority to do what Bush’s lawyers claimed behind closed doors. Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee in early 2006 that Bush could order killings of suspected terrorists within the United States. When Newsweek contacted the Justice Department to verify this novel legal doctrine, spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos stressed that Bradbury’s comments occurred during an “off-the-record briefing.” Newsweek’s revelation generated no media stir. Apparently, unless the government disclosed that it had actually begun assassinations within the United States, it was a nonstory. In an open Senate hearing later that year, Bradbury declared, “Under the law of war, the president is always right.” That legal/moral standard simplifies matters immensely, especially when the commander in chief is killing American citizens.

The Obama administration has been as power-hungry as the Bush team. A New York Times article late last year noted, “There is widespread agreement among the administration’s legal team that it is lawful for President Obama to authorize the killing of someone like Mr. Awlaki.” It is comforting to know that top political appointees concur that some “law” gives them the authority to kill Americans. But that is the same “legal” standard the Bush team used to justify torture. Since Bush’s lawyers told him that waterboarding wasn’t torture (despite a hundred years of U.S. court decisions to the contrary), the president was blameless.

There are other ominous parallels with the worst abuses of the Bush administration. When Bush decreed in November 2001 that he had the authority to perpetually detain anyone as an enemy combatant, solely on the basis of his own assertion, administration defenders rushed to assure the media that the new policy did not apply to Americans or inside the United States. Seven months later, after Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and labeled an enemy combatant, the administration acted as if only fools would believe the president would not use his boundless power any way he could.

Similarly, Obama’s power grab has not spurred much opposition, perhaps in part because it is assumed to apply only to killing Americans abroad (hopefully farther away than Niagara Falls, Canada). But the basis of the policy is that the entire world is a battlefield, and thus that the president has unlimited “commander in chief” powers everywhere.

Unfortunately, some of the suggested “reforms” for the targeted-killing program are as harebrained as the policy itself. A New York Times editorial piously declared, “Dealing out death requires additional oversight outside the administration. Particularly in the case of American citizens … the government needs to employ some due process before depriving someone of life.”

And what is the Times’s standard for sufficient “due process” before government hit squads snuff Americans? The feds should “establish a court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes wiretaps on foreign agents inside the United States.” The FISA court is one of the biggest farces in Washington. The court rubber-stamps more than 99 percent of all wiretap requests; the judges hear only the government’s side, since government targets are never permitted to dispute official assertions. And the FISA court completely failed to prevent the proliferation of other illegal wiretaps of Americans by the U.S. government. But the New York Times — which has done some of the best work exposing this power grab — apparently believes that a mere sham of oversight should be sufficient to sanctify government killing.

Blank checks for killing enemies of the state is the same recipe for domestic tranquility that most dictatorships have used throughout history. Un fortunately, it is a standard that many Americans might embrace. Consider the enthusiasm by some conservative commentators for the proposed assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. If Assange were killed, it would only fuel demands for broader target lists of enemies.

The Obama administration’s position “would allow the executive unreviewable authority to target and kill any U.S. citizen it deems a suspect of terrorism anywhere,” according to Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pardiss Kebriaei. But the feds have a long history of making false terrorism accusations. Bush declared in 2005 that “federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted.” But only 39 people were convicted on crimes tied to terrorism or national security between 2001 and 2005, as a Washington Post analysis found.

Obama’s doctrine of “targeted killing” of American citizens is at least as much an assassination of the Constitution as anything George W. Bush did. Yet, most of the media have ignored the issue or treated it like an arcane legal dispute of interest only to people in desert hideaways 6,000 miles away.

One consequence of the hubbub over whether Obama needs court permission to kill American citizens is that the notion that the U.S. government is entitled to kill foreigners on a whim is no longer even disputed. WikiLeaks and other sources have documented the killings of many innocent Iraqis, and other sources have confirmed that many of the Pakistanis killed by U.S. drones were hapless bystanders. Such fatalities are almost always ignored in Washington. Or, at most, they are treated as blunders, not crimes — mistakes that could make it more difficult for the U.S. government to extend its sway or achieve foreign-policy goals. That is the same mindset that permeated Washington from the mid 1960s onwards as the Pentagon relied on carpet-bombing in both South and North Vietnam. The Washington Post reported in 1965 that American pilots “are given a square marked on a map and told to hit every hamlet within the area. The pilots know that they sometimes are bombing women and children.” And policymakers could not be blamed for the deaths of the cartographically damned. Harvard historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, the author of Collateral Damage, noted, “The U.S. armed forces deemed large parcels of the South Vietnamese countryside to be ‘enemy base areas’ or ‘enemy supply areas.’… Within this territory … any building, vehicle, or person could be targeted.” U.S. bombing killed between one and two million civilians between 1965 and 1973.

Do Americans have any rights that the government is still obliged to respect? Perhaps the only right that Americans would still possess is the First Amendment’s forgotten right of petition. If the government tries to kill you and fails, you can write a letter complaining to your congressman. If the government succeeds, members of your family can write that letter. Except that protesting might get them added to the hit list.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.

This article originally appeared in the October 2011 edition of Freedom Daily

Listen Live -On Dallas Radio with Brian Wilson 10 am Eastern Tuesday 12 27

9:59 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 1

I will be on the air with guest talk show host Brian Wilson on Dallas’s KLIF radio this morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time.

You can listen on the air at AM 570 in parts of Texas or listen live online by clicking here and tapping the Listen Live button.

Wednesday 21st December 2011

Wall Street Journal: “Confessions of a One-Season Santa Claus”

9:42 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 12

< from Thursday's Wall Street Journal editorial page-

Confessions of a One-Season Santa

by James Bovard

When I asked one girl what she wanted for Christmas, she gritted her teeth: ‘I want you to leave.’

In the fall of 1977, I moved to Boston seeking literary triumphs and intellectual stimulation. As a 21-year-old college dropout from the mountains of Virginia who had just sold his first article, I assumed I could easily rack up more sales in the big city. But my submissions struck out everywhere, and the financial wolves were soon howling at my door. After seeking refuge in the Boston Globe’s Help Wanted ads, I found myself front and center at a Santa Claus prep session run by the Western Temporary Services.

After completing the 28-minute training program, I was dispatched to a Filene’s department store in the distant south suburbs where I met the Boss Lady from Hell. She looked me over, grimaced, snorted and growled: “I hope you’re not like those Santas that damn temp agency sent last year.”

“Why? What’d they do?” I asked.

“The first one was a drunk who would sneak into the bathroom and hit his flask and then drool on kids while slurring the names of his reindeer. The second pranced around like he was Peter Pan. The third was the worst—he seemed perfectly normal till he dropped trousers with a hundred kids watching.”

I made a note to double check the belt on the Santa outfit.

Boss Lady greeted me every day with the traditional Boston “Howahya? . . . LISTEN!!! I don’t like the way your hair looks under the wig! And I thought I told you to shave that red beard. And don’t be snacking while you’re on the job. Now, get out there and look jolly.”

I worked as a restaurant Santa, circling the dining room and visiting families as they munched their mediocre cuisine. After getting kids to recite their Christmas gift wish list, I handed them a little bag of goodies. It was holy writ to never promise that a child would receive a specific gift, else Filene’s would suffer the parents’ undying wrath.

This was my first and only experience being a minor deity. As I approached, some kids would jump up and down in their seats, and if there were two or more children at the same table they often had shouting contests.

But not all the children treasured their visit with Santa.

I walked up to one agitated 4-year old, blond-haired girl hunkered down in her chair and clutching the arm rests like a life raft. When I leaned over and asked what she wanted for Christmas, she gritted her teeth: “I want you to leave.”

One evening, I saw a dark-eyed, dark-haired, 7-year-old boy standing in the entrance staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. I stopped and gave him the biggest grin of the night. “Santa, you have a weird laugh,” he sputtered as he clung to his mother’s skirt.

The boy had a point. My laugh has always been rambunctious and it became rowdier when I occasionally slammed down a beer or two before commencing Claus work. It wasn’t my fault that the happy hour at the nearby pub commenced just before my shift started. The same laugh that spooked some young Bostonians got me ejected almost 20 years later from the Supreme Court press box.

Toward the end of my final night on the job, the high-strung assistant restaurant manager—who had almost fired me the previous night after she caught me poaching a piece of apple pie—signaled to follow her to the soda fountain section of the restaurant, far from the prevailing hubbub, for a special guest. As I readied the jollity, Boss Lady Jr. tapped me on the shoulder: “The little girl is blind.”

There sat two of the most tranquil people I had seen the entire holiday season. The mother was resting her left hand lightly on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl looked to be 6 or 7 years old, with light brown hair and a gentle smile that bloomed across her face when her mom announced, “And here comes Santa Claus.”

I encouraged the girl to touch the fake Santa beard. Unlike some kids, she did not attempt to yank it off as if she were capturing the enemy’s flag.

I have forgotten what she requested for Christmas, but it was reasonable. She didn’t ask for a pony and a French au pair and every Barbie doll and accessory produced since 1957.

Speaking softly, I described some of the Christmas decorations in the restaurant. She seemed to enjoy my comments, so I rattled on about the meaning of Christmas. I had seen a lot of warmth between parents and children that season, but the bond between this mother and daughter was more precious than any other. There was such a radiance from her mother’s love, I knew that girl would have a wonderful Christmas.

Visiting with that mother and daughter rejuvenated my holiday spirit in a way that a bowl of spiked egg nog never could. In later decades, when the Christmas season sometimes seemed burdensome or hollow, thinking back on that pair has helped put a sparkle back in my eyes. And I count my blessings that I no longer have to don a garish suit, false whiskers and a stuffed pillow to rake in $3.50 an hour frightening children with my laugh.

****
Mr. Bovard, the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy” (Palgrave, 2006), is working on a memoir.

Tuesday 20th December 2011

Good News: Americans Finally Recognize Congressmen as Rascals

2:16 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 3

From an interview today with Press TV:

The historical low approval rating of Congress signals that most Americans may be finally paying attention to the ‘dishonesty’ of Congress, according to James Bovard of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

“More Americans may finally be paying attention to what Congress is doing. I’ve been surprised for decades that far more Americans do not disapprove of the dishonesty, of the negligence, of the lack of oversight and all the power grabs that happen on a routine basis by the U.S. Congress.”

Speaking to Press TV’s U.S. Desk on Tuesday, Mr. Bovard said “Most of that 11 percent [that approve Congress's job] are people who have relatives or friends in Congress.”

A report by Gallup Poll on Tuesday showed that job-approval ratings for Congress have reached a new low, with only 11% of adults giving lawmakers good marks. The job-approval rating is the lowest in Gallup history since it started asking in 1974.

You can hear the brief early morning monologue by clicking or downloading the following: james-bovard-final-1

Postal Service Vindicated in L.A. Times

11:10 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 2

The Los Angeles Times ran a couple letters defending the Postal Service today in response to last week’s piece on nearly 50 years of intentional mail slowdowns.

I was especially hurt by the statement that I had “maligned” the Postal Service. Geez, I bend over backward to give the government a break and I still get my chops busted. Pulling punches just doesn’t pay.

The first letter claims that our mail service is far better than that in any foreign country. I suggest that gentleman spend some time in Germany. Their service is faster and far more reliable than what is offered by the U.S. Postal Service.
++++
Los Angeles Times December 20, 2011 Tuesday

SECTION: MAIN NEWS; Letters Desk; Part A; Pg. 20

Some stamps of approval
Re “U.S. mail: Slow and slower,” Opinion, Dec. 16

James Bovard maligns a venerable American institution and the thousands of its hard-working employees.

I’ve used U.S. mail for many years, from writing and receiving V-Mail in the South Pacific during World War II, to buying and selling on EBay today. The service has been excellent. Any traveler to another country will discover how efficient, fast and reliable our postal system is compared to others.

Our government should completely subsidize the U.S. Postal Service and quiet its haters, who want to privatize mail delivery.

The U.S. Postal Service is the best deal in town. Try sending a letter or package with any private delivery service and find out for yourself.

Larry Macaray
Fullerton
******
::

Bovard’s attack on the U.S. Postal Service has some great lines, notably, “The Postal Service has often acted as if mail delivery was a mere nuisance distracting from the gainful pursuit of pensions.” But his piece in no way reflects the service I use and enjoy six days a week.

Are postal workers overpaid? I wouldn’t know, but I do know they are overworked and understaffed and do a fine job of delivering the packages from which I make my living faster and cheaper than other carriers.

I have yet to encounter a postal employee who wasn’t devoted to his or her job.
Jim Washburn
Costa Mesa

Thursday 15th December 2011

Los Angeles Times: Postal Service’s Almost 50-Year Intentional Slowdown of Mail

9:39 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 12

Los Angeles Times Op-Ed December 16, 2011

U.S. mail: Slow and slower
The Postal Service has been intentionally slowing down first-class mail for almost 50 years.

By James Bovard

The U.S. Postal Service announced plans this month to phase out overnight delivery of first-class mail. Postal officials are portraying the decision as a painful but necessary budget-induced departure from a long history of exemplary service. In reality, the Postal Service has been intentionally slowing down first-class mail for almost 50 years. It’s time to end the post office’s monopoly on letter delivery.

In 1960, the post office’s annual report announced “the ultimate objective of next-day delivery of first-class mail anywhere in the United States.” But official standards for overnight delivery were lowered later that decade, trimming the target zone from statewide to areas conveniently covered by mail-sorting centers. At a high-level meeting in 1969, postal management decided “to no longer strive for overnight mail delivery and to keep this a secret from Congress and the public,” the Washington Post reported in 1974. Management also considered cutting costs by educating Americans not to expect prompt service, according to the Post.

Back in 1764, colonial Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin — yes, that Benjamin Franklin — proclaimed a goal of two-day mail delivery between New York and Philadelphia. In 1989, the Postal Service’s goal was two-day delivery from New York City to next-door Westchester County, N.Y. Under the new standards, the target for overnight first-class delivery was reduced from a 100-to-150-mile radius to often less than 50 miles. The Postal Service estimated that the changes could add 10% to the average delivery time for first-class mail, which was already 22% slower than it had been in 1969.

In 1989, Postmaster General Anthony Frank claimed that the standards would “improve our ability to deliver local mail on time.” But this was simply because the Postal Service lowered the definition of “on time.” Frank also defended the reduced standards by noting that Mexico’s mail service did not have an official overnight delivery goal for any of its mail. The Postal Inspection Service concluded that post offices “generally have a negative attitude toward service improvement, even when the capability is there at no additional cost.”

In 1996, partly to counter its widespread “slacker” image, the Postal Service began bankrolling a Tour de France bicycle racing team. But this did not deter the service from again hitting the brakes on the mail.

Beginning in 2000, the Postal Service quietly slashed delivery targets in much of the nation for first-class mail going beyond local areas. A 2006 Postal Regulatory Commission report found that the Postal Service scorned federal law requiring the “highest consideration” to speedy mail delivery. Instead, “administrative convenience resulted in mapping coverage of the two-day standard exclusively in terms of surface transportation.” The commission found that “postal patrons in several Western states, including California, experienced far more service downgrades than those in other parts of the country.”

The Postal Service has often acted as if mail delivery was a mere nuisance distracting from the gainful pursuit of pensions. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 that the Postal Service fails to “measure and report its delivery performance for most types of mail.” The GAO also found that the Postal Service’s “outdated standards are unsuitable as benchmarks for setting realistic expectations for timely mail delivery, measuring delivery performance or improving service, oversight and accountability.”

The Postal Service has gotten away with scorning its customers because it is effectively a federal crime to provide better mail service than the government. The Postal Service has a monopoly over letter delivery (with a limited exemption for urgent, courier-delivered letters costing more than $3). The monopoly, which dates back to the 1840s, has become more indefensible with each passing decade.

When people bought “forever” stamps, they didn’t realize that the name referred to the delivery time, not stamp prices. The American people can no longer afford a monopoly more interested in storing letters than in delivering them.

James Bovard is the author, most recently, of “Attention Deficit Democracy.” He has been writing about the Postal Service since 1978.

My Drunken Wisdom on Foreign Aid on Fox News

9:56 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 4

I had a couple cameos in the two-part Fox News report this week on foreign aid. At one point in the sit-down interview with Fox’s John Roberts, he mentioned a couple foreign aid “success stories.” I doubted the success claims but I commented that there had been so many programs over the years, that….. Well, here’s the one sentence outtake Fox used:

JIM BOVARD, AUTHOR/FOREIGN AID CRITIC: “Sort of like if you have a drunk throwing darts at a dart board from 50 feet away, every now and then, there’s going to be a dart that hit.”

I’m always happy to come on to a TV program and add a little tone.

The prior night, they popped in a sentence from me counterpointing quotes from foreign aid backers:

JIM BOVARD, AUTHOR/FOREIGN AID CRITIC: “I think it’s a great idea to start the foreign aid budget at zero and then leave it there, because there’s simply not evidence for the vast majority of countries that the foreign aid has helped them.”

I am looking to track down copies of the actual broadcast segments. If anyone has any suggestions or leads, I’d be much obliged.

James Bovard

Tuesday 13th December 2011

On Fox News Tonight, Probably - on Foreign Aid

2:36 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

Just received an email from Fox News regarding an interview that I taped with them last Wednesday. The topic was foreign aid - a subject near and dear to my heart.

“We just wanted to let you know that the two part series will begin airing tonight on Special Report with Bret Baier, which is on Fox News in the 6 p.m. hour. Approximate air time is 6:20 p.m. but that can change depending on other news today. Part two will air tomorrow night around the same time.”

I don’t get cable news at this point. If anyone out there could run a tape or digital copy of the program, I would greatly appreciate that!

UPDATE CORRECTION: I was wrong about watching it live on the internet at live.foxnews.com. Didn’t work.

James Bovard (jim@jimbovard.com)