THE MOUNTAIN OBSERVER

Vol. 2                                  Issue 1                                                   03/30/02                                            

A FREEWHEELING CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY DEDICATED

  TO THE DEFENSE OF FREEDOM AND THE NEXT GENERATION.

                      READER DIALOG ENCOURAGED.

Produced occasionally when I decide to do it.

J.E. Sohmer P O Box 129, Jefferson, CO 80456

Fly over country, where the air is thin and the hunting and fishing are good

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SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES:  "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."     (It's not about hunting ducks)

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Blowing off steam:

The Republic continues to unravel.

We are right on the edge of another major erosion of the Constitution.  President has signed a bastard amendment to the Constitution known as Campaign Finance Reform.  I am very deeply disturbed and disappointed in the President's decision to sign this legislation. This is another victory for Statist Liberalism and the mainstream press that is their mouthpiece. 

So it is that once again the Congress of the United States has engineered the subversion the Constitution and the Republic, specifically your individual right as a citizen to free political speech as protected by the First Amendment.  They don't even have the guts to do it the right way.   There is an amendment process.   This monkey business is born of a habit, that I believe is traceable back to a certain Supreme Court decision in 1803, that holds as its basic premise that anything Congress does is Constitutional until the Supreme Court says it isn't.   This has taught Congress and the Executive over the years to ignore their Constitutional responsibilities.  Under the label of "campaign finance reform", the House of Representatives, under Republican "control", has passed legislation that is truly destructive to the Republic. The Senate, run by Statist Liberal Democrats, a dairy Statist from Vermont, John McCain and the New York Times, has cleared the House version.

And so it is, George W. Bush, that as an American Patriot, you should have done your Constitutional duty and you should have gotten out your veto pen.  But you said you would sign it, which confirms my worst fears about you.  At least on the domestic scene, now on several counts, you are allowing yourself to be intimidated and manipulated under the rubric of "compassionate conservatism", a notion of yours that is utter nonsense. Where is the leadership?  One is compelled to wonder with all your coddling of Arabs and hypocrisy toward Israel how long your excellent efforts in Afghanistan will hold up.  And now you are proposing a 50% increase in non-military foreign aid.   This is serious, folks. Very, very serious.  America Wake Up.

The Boomer Generation contempt for ethics and honesty is really what is at the bottom of the Enron/Anderson thing, and lest a Boomer attempts to fault capitalism to you, it is necessary to realize that the accounting practices of government and the politicians are many times worse.  The real problem is the general cultural collapse of intellectual and moral integrity, especially over the course of the last 30 years.  Do not be fooled by the hypocrisy of grandstanding Congressional "investigators".  And what about Global Crossing, another big belly up outfit that built too many fiber optic cables undersea from continent to continent.  Perhaps it's missing in the news because:  

                        1). It is owned and operated by Democrats.

2). Before it collapsed Terry McAwful, now Chairman of the DNC, made $18mil out of  $100k while employees got the shaft.

3). Investors are now trying to sell the carcass to the same Red Chinese outfit, funded by the Peoples Liberation Army, that has already successfully signed leases controlling traffic at both ends of the Panama Canal and populates our railroads with COSCO containers perfectly sized to accommodate nuclear weapons.

America Wake Up.

Bush Score Card:

Not So Good:

Your biggest single asset was that you were an honest and decent fellow.  In my opinion you appear to have squandered yourself over the issue of campaign finance reform and failure to support your own judicial nominees.  You have done a lot of things right, and on those issues I respect you as a person, a leader and as the President of the United States.    But your domestic initiatives are generally terrible and a continuous cave-in to the left.   There is no automatic Republican vote.    I prefer kick-ass Conservatives and right now you are looking very shaky.

Your State of the Union address on international issues was good, especially that portion relating to the war on terrorism and the "Axis [of Evil ]", although, on domestic issues it was left wing.    I know you have a serious political problem in Congress, but I am very skeptical that you could not do more to shrink the size of government.    Makes one wonder where your head is really at.   This is really the perfect time to cut spending.   Keep pushing the tax cuts and ask for more.  Stay on target with sensible defense spending increases.  Cut domestic spending.   Cut domestic spending.  Cut domestic spending. That would really be the best tax cut of all because you would also be impeding the regulators.  That is why I am not pleased with most of your domestic spending initiatives, and one reason why I am not a Republican.  [I am a registered Independent.]  Surely you realize I am not alone and surely you know the spending waste is horrific.   Perhaps it is time to update the report of the old Grace Commission, which was at least pointed in the right direction.

You were more or less on target with the "Axis of Evil" thing, but you failed to include China, which will be perceived by them as weakness.    This will eventually come back to haunt us. They are as deep into the missile export business to the wrong people as North Korea, and they keep flipping us the bird.  Why is it that their export business with Walmart continues to take priority [with our own trade negotiators] ?  Why is it that the pending sale of the skeleton of Global Crossing assets to the Peoples Liberation Army not an issue?   The defense of the Republic does not require the approval of the New York Times or your buddy Ted Kennedy.   However, the concept of "Axis of Evil" is on target.   No better way to smoke out the equivocators, (we used to call them "fellow travelers") foreign and domestic. 

Better tell your tell your new RNC Chairman Marc Racicot that his job description should require that he not be a nice guy but a mean sonofabitch.  He's off to a bad start.

Terrible, or, even worse   

See above.

You keep beating up on Israel; when do you plan to invite Arafat to the White House ?  The Israelis have the right         to defend themselves as much as we do.  Ariel Sharon, soldier on.  Peace will follow someone's military defeat, and not until.  George W. Bush, you know that.  Mr. President, sooner or later you will have to decide which side you are on.   Are you for terrorism or against it?            That is the question you have created for yourself.  This moral equivalence business is nauseating.  Your father screwed up by not finishing the job in 1991.  Then we had to endure 8 years of OJ Billyboy foreign policy vacuum, and now we are stuck with you.  Let Israel do what they need to do, and yes, we need to finish the job in Iraq, with or without your Arab friends.  You need a point man; I'll lead the way and be proud to die for my country if that's what it takes.    Meanwhile, tell the United Nations to go straight to hell.

When are you going to get serious about defending our borders?   The first step would be to fire Norman Mineta who, for personal reasons, is causing the Statist war on racial profiling to prevail over the war on terrorism.  You can't have it both ways; get a grip.

What in the world are you doing further funding AmeriCorps?  This Federal funding and promotion of local "volunteerism" is exactly why Conservatives such as myself don't really trust your domestic intentions.   Cut domestic spending and promote personal responsibility.  Go eat some spinach and read the Constitution.            

Wall Street & Main Street:

My friends, an economic recovery will be accomplished from the bottom up, not the top down.  A recovery will be engineered on Main Street, not Wall Street, framed on genuine profits earned by small and medium sized businesses.   Remember that the current buzz about a new "bull" market tends to be jaw boned by major press sources that are hurting badly for advertising revenue.     I would point out that an S&P index featuring a PE ratio of 26 does not define a "bull" market, or even the basis for building one.  If you simply can't contain the urge to write a check, make it out to a proven "value" fund and be very patient.  Arthur Anderson type P T Barnum accounting practices need to be purged from the system before you can properly evaluate "growth" type investment.  Quit relying on the "wisdom" of a certain tired old man on the Federal Reserve, go understand the markets and think for yourself.  In the meantime a lot of good people work on Main Street.

I categorically reject support of any law, policy or regulation that either pushes or pulls American manufacturing and basic commodity production off shore, regardless of the source of the initiative, Democrat or Republican.   However, the way to un do the damage that has been done is to correct the incentives with "level table top" free market rules consistent with our national security interests, not union muscle, corporate mercantilism, or ignoring the problem.  Of course, the real fix is the enhanced repeal of the 16th Amendment.   America First.

The collapse of Enron is a victory for true free market capitalism, which purges bad management and morality according to the laws of nature.   This is the best wake-up call "the market" could have gotten to get back to traditional fundamental analysis.  The price to be paid for several years of Las Vegas style speculation will be a slow recovery, if indeed the bottom has yet been reached.  Remember in my last letter I referred to serious earnings problems.  Sooner or later a successful business, and the market that assesses its value, has to actually focus on generating income as opposed to gimmickry to inflate stock values.  Apparently every generation has to re-learn this lesson the hard way.

It was not helpful for Enron to have to deal with a deadbeat customer: the State of California. However Enron should have known what they were dealing with up front, and the practice of hiding debt in obscure partnerships was irresponsible in the extreme.  Nor was it very smart of Enron employees to have ever invested more than 5% of their retirement savings in any particular stock.  Actually the basis of their main complaint is that they were not allowed to participate in the scam, a good Democrat issue.  The cost of nanny state thinking has been painfully demonstrated.

The truth is that Enron was a classic example of what I refer to as fascist economics.  They were in bed with the environmentalist left and the corporate spear point for American support of the Kyoto Treaty, the premise of which was the "impending disaster of man-made global warming".    Months ago in these letters, in discussing the California power fiasco, I pointed out the environmentalist political preference for natural gas.  Go back and read what I said then about low sulfur western coal.  Meanwhile Enron was attempting to persuade political power brokers to support Kyoto, which would have devastated free energy markets and artificially promoted gas.  It didn't work; to his credit 43 cast Kyoto aside in favor of truly free markets (although more recently he has been pandering to the left with "goals").  All the Enron payola backfired and so has the "need" for campaign "finance reform".

Meanwhile notice that the flow of gas remains uninterrupted at reasonably stable prices, and the only real "victims" are careless investors and hapless employees.  The political theater in Washington is only predictable in an election year while the capitalist system repairs itself and moves on, a lesson still lost on the State of California.

Should certain [Enron] people go to jail?  Probably so, but the point is that there is nothing wrong with capitalism; it is working in spite of government efforts to get in the way.  Campaign reform?  Irrelevant.  There is no evidence so far that anyone currently in authority was "bought".  Political donations (protection payments) generally go to politicians and organizations already in agreement, or near agreement, with the donor's interests.  Corruption occurs only when the money gets results that actually pervert a politician's broader constituent interests.  To my knowledge the only known intervener on behalf of Enron was Robert Rubin, OJ Billyboy's Treasury Secretary, who ran into a brick wall with the Bush Administration.  Enron was apparently more successful in 1997 with OJ Billyboy [himself] in soliciting his help to obtain approval by India of a power plant project (It subsequently went belly up and was a massive failure).   That was in exchange for $100,000 to the DNC, but the point is that the corruption occurs not with the donation, or its acceptance, but with tangible effort and results at taxpayer and public policy expense.   Not to be confused with legitimate intervention on behalf of constituents.   In the matter with India there was a bit of a foreign policy flap.  Again, remember that G. W (43) vetoed Kyoto which was entirely inconsistent with the wishes of Enron.

The current effort on the part of Democrats to link Enron with the Bush energy initiatives is laughable. The Bush administration hasn't proposed anything inconsistent with its own conservative thinking irrespective of any input from Enron.  There is absolutely nothing in the Bush energy proposals that would change with the presence or absence of Enron.  Furthermore, the executive branch cannot function without the right to consult in private.  The United States is (was) a Republic, not a democracy.

Ad Nausium:

If I understand this correctly, a Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has proposed an Arab settlement with Israel that sounds a lot like the United Nations design of 1948 that the entire Arab world has fought for 55 years.  How many years, wars, bodies and broken lives has it taken?   I must be missing something, like what authority does the Saudi government have to speak for anyone other than themselves?  The best that can be said is that we have been dealing with slow learners, and that it will buy time to deal with Iraq.  Stay tuned.  Certainly there is no evidence to support the sincerity of this Arab offer.  You can be reasonably sure that the rug merchants in Beirut [Riyadh] are less than forthcoming.   Their real purpose is the destruction of Israel.

Why I am not a Democrat? :

Over the course of the 20th Century the Democrat Party has evolved into a party of raw statist collectivist socialism, the incidental engine, if you will, of the New World Order, which is totally incompatible with the founding principles of the American Republic.  I am an American.

Why I am not a Republican? :

            Because I am a republican.

Republicans will not confront the consequences of the Sixteenth Amendment, which feeds the maw of big government, stimulates public and private corruption and has empowered Statists to take over our lives.  The solution to concerns about campaign finance and enforcement of the 13th Amendment is the Constitutional elimination of all direct taxation.

Under Republicans, as well as Democrats, the size of the Federal government continues to grow; there is no Republican commitment to reconstruct Constitutional limits, and the Republic.

            The Republican Party is ambiguous about abortion.

Republicans support phony "free trade" at the expense of our national security, national sovereignty and the entangling engagements of international organizations.  The "New World Order" is an assumed philosophical outlook promoted by Liberals as a logical function of their Statist/Internationalist agenda, not an organized conspiracy, per se.    But the problem is that Liberal Republicans, including George W Bush, fall for it.

Republicans will not challenge the Liberal P.C. demonization of the Constitution.

            Republicans will not challenge the Liberal hypocrisy on race.

Republicans will not confront the issue of the dual citizenship of Mexican immigrants, and the future             implications of this hostile policy of the Mexican government.

            Republicans will not confront the consequences of open borders.

            Republicans continue to tolerate the existence of Fiddle Castro.

            I could continue.  

The best chance for the Republican Party is for Zell Miller (D-GA), and a raft of similarly situated southern Democrats to recognize that they have more in common with Republican Conservatives, and switch.  Both parties need to be purged of Liberal Statists, but clearly the most likely vehicle for doing so is the Republican Party.  Zell Miller Yes.  Tom Daschle No.  The announced grounds for rejection of US District Court Judge Charles Pickering by mostly Northern Liberals were despicable, a fact that will not be lost on fellow Southern politicians, or their constituents.

NATO has re-surfaced as a subject lately, as in "what is its mission in the war on terrorism".  The answer, quite plainly is none.  The point is that NATO has no further mission whatsoever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  It should be disbanded.  For twelve years we    have witnessed a massive (and expensive) international bureaucracy floundering around in an attempt to justify its continued existence.  The truth is that under any formulation today NATO can only cause mischief for the USA.  I reject the notion that NATO continues to be necessary as a tool to save Europe from itself.  That is international nannyism right out of the Statist Liberal playbook.  We need to focus on national security, not international self-congratulation.   What is needed on our part is the wisdom to know when to let go of obsolete relationships.  The best thing the French can do is eat cheese.

One of the more useful by-products of the 2000 election year was the blue/red election map analysis produced by USA Today.   Aside from the fact that the colors were reversed from what arguably would have better represented the reflected politics (I'm not convinced this was not a deliberate obfuscation on the part of the editors), the data was extremely revealing and a shock to many urban Liberals.  The real usefulness lay in the fact that it was a county by county analysis.  Sadly, subsequent references to it by conservative as well as liberal pundits refer to it as a "blue state/red state" thing, [failing to recognize differences at the county level] which is a little sad, because to do so tends to trivialize the significance of conservative political support in certain states dominated by liberals. Cooperation by conservatives with this subtle shift in emphasis by liberals is an unnecessary self-defeating gesture.

Adios Waylon. Yes, the Eagle is hurt, pretty bad in my opinion.  But the Eagle is tough and the Eagle flies.  See you on the other side.

Under an under-funded congressional mandate to check each piece of luggage going on a plane, as a substitute for the proper necessary equipment, airlines are allowed to merely ensure the each bag loaded is accompanied by a matching passenger.  In other words this means that the new rules work to ensure that the suicide bombers will be accompanied by their bombs.  Security seems to consist of terrorizing little old ladies with knitting needles for fear of appearing to profile bad people.  Perhaps the scrap value of Amtrak is rising.  Meanwhile we need to resurrect profiling as an honest and necessary law enforcement tool.  If they walk like ducks, talk like ducks and look like ducks the chances are increased that they really are ducks.  Norman Mineta has to go.

Notice the Liberals in Congress who are more concerned about the comfort and legal accommodations of terrorists at Camp X-Ray than Fiddle Castro's political prisoners at the other end of the island.   And then there was the Navy Seal who, having fallen from a helicopter, was taken prisoner by al-Qaeda mistreated and shot.   Outrage from Europeans and domestic Liberals?   The silence was deafening.    Actually I think the Administration is making a mistake in not getting on with a summary disposition of the cases in custody in Cuba, and the bodies.

In a spectacular display of pure democracy, a mob in Afghanistan attacked Aviation Minister Abdul Rahman, beating him to death and throwing his body out of a plane onto the tarmac. How about a republican government under the rule of law?   How many US school kids today even understand this discussion?

In a rare display of philosophical honesty, President Bush's friend Senator Ted Kennedy, referencing the N.E. Patriot's Super bowl win, observes that our "---entire country is banding together and facing down individualism---".  Well, Senator, perhaps that is true in Massachusetts, but it is not true in "fly over country".    In what is left of the Republic we celebrate individualism, and so it is that the Senator has correctly identified the central political conflict in America even as he fails to comprehend that the country is not "banding together" on this point.   Far from it; as we have known for years, the Senator is a collectivist.

Also notice who in Congress is more preoccupied with Enron than the intelligence failures that set up the attacks on 9/11.  But this may be changing.  The House and Senate in a rare display of intelligence (no pun intended) are setting up a joint investigative committee.  Now the question is, will they ultimately reach the right conclusion: that much of our current intelligence gathering and analysis weakness is directly attributable to years of previous congressional meddling.  [As it turned out later, they ignored that issue].

Salt Lake City, UT. I'm really having a hard time with the International Olympic

Committee instructing Americans on how and when to display our own flag on our

own soil.

Attn: Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO).

Perhaps you should look into the following:

I recently pulled a load into a certain maximum-security federal prison here in our fine state, and was reasonably impressed with the security procedures up to my final exit from the facility.  Leaving the trailer doors open for inspection by the main guard shack upon exiting (routine at most grocery warehouses), I was told they weren't interested in looking inside. Somewhat shocked, I asked "why not?”.  The answer was that they were under instruction to check inbound but not outbound trucks.

Prediction

The European Union (EU) won't work; the introduction of the Euro currency will prove to be the catalyst of             failure.  Statist capitalism (fascist economics) is less sustainable at that higher level than at the national level (watch the failure in Argentina that is about to really start).  Coupled with unfavorable demographic trends, what we are watching now is the set-up for the utter collapse of western civilization in Europe.  My guess is about 30 years.  Why does it matter to us?  Because when the internecine fighting starts to break out, we will be asked to mount rescue efforts.  Consider Argentina today on an European scale; we must be prepared intellectually to mind our own business.  Europe should not rely on an American willingness to repeat Normandy.

Heartland rebellion update:

It seems now that the Feds are admitting that all the damage done to Pacific Northwest farmers last year to save salmon and sucker fish was unnecessary.  The Bush Administration could have stopped this Democrat fiasco, but was typically too timid to do so.  And remember the firefighters who died because the Feds feared for the fish that might be scooped from the river?  So sorry.   

A committee chaired by Rep. Scott McInnis (R-CO) has begun an investigation of fraud by government "scientists" inventing various "endangered species".  Perhaps they will propose an inventory of spotted owls, and the loggers put out of business.

CURRENT READING RECOMMENDATION:

1.) EXPERIMENTS AGAINST REALITY: THE FATE OF CULTURE IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD                   

            ROGER KIMBALL

            IVAN R. DEE                             359 PGS           $28.50

2.) CHRIST: A CRISIS IN THE LIFE OF GOD     

            JACK MILES

            KNOPF                                     322 PGS           $26.00

3.) THE DEATH OF THE WEST: HOW DYING POPULATIONS AND IMMIGRANT INVASIONS IMPERIL OUR COUNTRY AND CIVILIZATION                          

            PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

            ST. MARTIN'S PRESS              308 PGS           $25.95

God Bless America

JIM

            JIM SOHMER

            AMERICAN NATIONALIST CONSERVATIVE

            JEFFERSON, CO 80456

                                                 IN GOD WE TRUST