Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Jimmy Carter working to weakening the USA

host · 09-17-2006, 06:08 AM

Here are the effects, in borrowed dollars, of "leadership" choices:

From: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdhisto4.htm
12/29/1961 $296,168,761,214.92 Start of JFK's First budget year
12/31/1969 $368,225,581,254.41 Start of Nixon's first budget year
12/30/1977 $718,943,000,000.00 start of Carter's first budget year
12/31/1981 $1,028,729,000,000.00 start of Reagan's first budget year
09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32 start of Bush 41's first budget year
09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38 start of Clinton's first budget year
09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06 start of Bush 43's first budget year
09/12/2006 $8,534,633,344,894.82 http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

In 1980 When the total treasury debt stood at $995 billion, and the US was well into the process of turning away from the failed policies of militarism that resulted in the 1975 withdrawal of US presence in South Vietnam, and had developed a "model" foreign policy with a foundation firmly anchored in a new priority for championing human rights, nationally and internationally,
and national priorities were identified with energy conservation and independence, the US electorate chose: Republican leadership that stressed militarism over diplomacy, WASP centric discrimination against women, gays, and minorities, over equality, resulting in huge deficit spending, accompanied by cuts in domestic social programs, workers rights, worker safety regulation, environmental protection, energy independence research and subsidies, and taxes on the wealthy and on business. Spending shifted to finance a huge military buildup, and to corporate entitlements and agency wrecking, "cronyism" appointments, similar to what we witnessed, last year, with the FEMA implosion.

When the US electorate shifted away from the political leadership that had sponsored what I described above, the national treasury debt was almost 4-1/2 times the level of 12 years before, at $4,411,488,883,139.38.

After eight years of reduction in all of the areas that I described above, including an increase on taxes on the income of the rich, reduced military spending, aggressive environmental regulation and protectiong of federal lands and wildlife habitat, the rights of gays, women and minorities, and a renewed pursuit of diplomatic solutions in the M.E.. with China, and in world trade, with a long term emphasis on solving CO2 emissions damage to the environment, the US electorate by a razor thin margin, if any....chose: Republican leadership that stressed militarism over diplomacy, WASP centric discrimination against women, gays, and minorities, over equality, and huge deficit spending, accompanied by cuts in domestic social programs, workers rights, worker safety regulation, environmental protection, energy independence research and subsidies, and taxes on the wealthy and on business. Spending shifted to finance a huge military buildup, and to corporate entitlements and agency wrecking, "cronyism" appointments, similar to what we witnessed, last year, with the FEMA implosion.
This time, the militarism included a policy of preemption, resulting in an increase to the national treasury debt of $2,727 billion, in just 59-1/2 months....

Can anyone who "knows" that the republican leadership that, for the last 45 years, always makes us "stronger", except in the areas of diplomacy, respect for individual and human rights, policies and programs to keep less of us out of poverty and uninsured medically, and progressive taxation, government ethics and quality of political appointments and "open" government, energy conservation and independence, environmental protection and private encroachment and exploitation of irreplacable resources on public land, and appointment of judges committed to a priority of protecting the least of us from the rest of us, safeguards that insure a fair and transparent bidding process on government contracts that results in best price and quality for the taxpayers, financial support for public housing, mass transit, and vital inner city infrastructure, parks, and public safety....along with mind numbing, eye popping, deficit growth, explain to me how the "tax and spend liberals" are worse, when the numbers and the results are compared, during and after the leadership time periods of each?

....because, I don't see it. I see that one choice, is so clearly superior to the other....based on the experience of the last 45 years, and of the deficit numbers and the rise and fall of the reputation of the US in the global community, and how our goverment regards us, relates to us, protects us and the environment, who and how it taxes the most, and increases and reduces taxes on, and what it willingly discloses to us, and refuses to disclose, that I wonder how those who are so sure that "Carter was a bad president", and Reagan was a wonderful one...." come by that opinion. I'm guessing that it must be the influence of ideology, because the numbers and the trends, when each was in office, and from the legacy that each left the rest of us, speak clearly, for themselves. For the nation, is "stronger" with a huge, unserviceable, recently accumulated treasury debt, a legacy that is "less weak" than a legacy that leaves a debt less than half the size, with less militarism, but a well respected diplomatic reputation, human rights principles, and perceived equality at home, a stronger social safety net, a judiciary that defends individual, and consumer rights, and environmental protection, over corporate and government lawyers priorities and arguments? Looking at the numbers, is the militaristic party governance, if it spends much more time "leading us", even sustainable, financially?

Would we really be worse off today, if Carter had been given another four years, to pursue the following agenda, and if the "Reagan Revolution", had never occured? How?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

The Peace Agreement between Israel and Egypt can not be held in responsibility for Carter. Egypt was completely decimated militarily. Israel controlled the Sinai, which held almost all of Egypt's oil and thus their income. Egypt hardly had anything that could be considered and Army or Air Force. Israel for their part had no ally in the region.

To claim that it was Carter's superior negotiation skills that caused the Peace Treaty is bunk.

And for the Israel/PLO treaty? Yeah we all know how well that has worked.

I recall that you've posted that your higher learning curriculum includes the history of the M.E. Where did you get that "stuff"?

Quote:

To Read full article:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...1/ai_n10629593
Clinton aims to match Carter's summit success

'78 Camp David talks laid base for later U.S. efforts in Mideast

By JOHN LANCASTER

Washington Post

Tuesday, July 11, 2000

Washington -- Alone in his study at the rustic Aspen lodge of Camp David, President Jimmy Carter gazed out the window at the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland and bowed his head in prayer. After 10 days, peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had broken down, apparently for good. Aides began drafting a speech for Carter announcing that the summit had failed.

The speech was never delivered, of course. The 1978 Camp David talks ended in a triumph for American diplomacy, setting the stage for the landmark Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and laying the foundation for U.S. efforts to broker a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, whose 52-year struggle over land and identity is the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict......

Abstract (Document Summary):

Alone in his study at Camp David's rustic Aspen lodge, Jimmy Carter gazed out the window at Maryland's Catoctin Mountains and bowed his head in prayer. After 10 days, peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had broken down, apparently for good. Aides began drafting a speech for Carter announcing that the Camp David summit had failed.

It was a diplomatic high-wire act that came perilously close to disaster. According to Carter's account, Begin's insistence on maintaining Jewish settlements in the Sinai infuriated Sadat, who at one point packed his bags and arranged for a helicopter to pick him up. Carter, too, grew exasperated with the hard-line Israeli. "You are as evasive with me as with the Arabs," he told Begin in one heated exchange. "The time has come to throw away reticence. Tell us what you really need."

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser, it was only after Carter threatened to publicly blame Israel for the collapse of the talks that Begin finally relented on the settlement issue. Begin's concession helped save the summit. In March 1979, Sadat and Begin returned to Washington to sign the peace treaty that restored the Sinai to Egypt and paved the way for the first exchange of ambassadors between Israel and an Arab state.

Quote:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/...ps_energy.html
Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977.

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.

The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy............

..........If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than we do today.

We can't substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil. Last year we spent $37 billion -- nearly ten times as much -- and this year we may spend over $45 billion.

Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by 1985 -- more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America. Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions.

Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs. Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil -- from any country, at any acceptable price............

.....The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.

Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we set for 1985:

--Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.

--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.

--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.

--Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply.

--Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.

--Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.

--Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.

I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future.

Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home an don every highway and every farm.

I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud, through our history of being efficient people.

We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example.

And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than we've had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don't act.

I've given you some of the principles of the plan.

I am sure each of you will find something you don't like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful -- but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone.

But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits.

The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.

We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing.

There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country.

Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom.

Jimmy Carter, "The President's Proposed Energy Policy." 18 April 1977. Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XXXXIII, No. 14, May 1, 1977, pp. 418-420.

Quote:

AP
Dateline: WASHINGTON, June 30
Publication title: New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jul 1, 1980. pg. D.1

President Carter signed legislation today encouraging development of synthetic energy sources, declaring that ''the keystone of our national energy policy is at last being put in place.''

In a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, the President said his energy policy - two-thirds completed with the signing of the new bill -''gives us the weapons to wage and win the energy war.''

The scope of the synthetic fuels program ''will dwarf the combined programs that led us to the moon and built our interstate highway system,'' he said.

$92 Billion in U.S. Spending

All told, the program could mean eventual Government expenditures of $92 billion by 1992, although initial funding authorization is for about $24 billion.

President Carter's aides had originally contemplated a July 4th ceremony in which the President would have signed the Energy Security Act, as the bill is formally known, and another bill creating an Energy Mobilization Board to assign priorities to energy projects and place some on a ''fast track.''

But a House vote on Friday to send the second bill back to a House-Senate conference committee denied President Carter that opportunity. All but nine Republicans voted against the measure.

The President, in remarks prepared for delivery at the signing ceremony today, said: ''The fight for energy security is not a partisan fight. I ask members from both parties to complete our energy agenda in the same spirit of cooperation that has brought us the success which we are celebrating today.''

He urged Congressional leaders to turn out legislation establishing an energy board that would speed up approval of energy projects while respecting environmental concerns.

The synthetic fuels program, the energy board and the already enacted tax on oil companies' ''windfall'' profits that stem from oilprice decontrol make up the three legs of President Carter's energy program.

''The new Energy Security Act will help the American people to conserve even more and industry to produce more energy,'' President Carter said. Oil imports, he said, dropped 12.9 percent in the past year, gasoline consumption fell 8 percent and total oil consumption was down more than 9 percent.

President Sees 70,000 New Jobs

''This legislation will help create at least 70,000 jobs a year to design, build, operate and supply resources for synthetic fuels plants,'' he said.

On Thursday, the House voted 317 to 93 for the Energy Security Corporation, a concern created to encourage energy projects not now economically feasible.

Through the use of loan guarantees, purchase agreements and Government production it would encourage turning coal into gas and extracting oil from shale.

Its initial funding would be $20 billion, to produce the equivalent of two million barrels of oil a day by 1992 -slightly more than 10 percent of current consumption.

It would also spend $5 billion over five years to promote solar energy and production of energy from farm, forest and urban wastes. The Energy Mobilization Board, which the House sent back to a House-Senate conference committee by a vote of 232 to 131, almost certainly killing it, would have cut red tape that could have delayed major energy projects.

Quote:

ROBERT D. HERSHEY Jr.
Dateline: WASHINGTON
Publication title: New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jan 11, 1981. pg. A.10

Copyright New York Times Company Jan 11, 1981

In November 1978, with the Iranian revolution about to send the world into oil shock for the second time in five years, President Carter signed the most comprehensive energy legislation ever enacted by the United States.

''Today we can rightfully claim that we have a conscious national policy for dealing with the energy problems,'' he said, adding later: ''We have declared to ourselves and to the world our intent to control our use of energy and thereby to control our own destiny as a nation.''

In the past two years, still more elements have been added, capped last June 30 when Mr. Carter put his signature to the bill establishing the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, which is to spur creation of an industry producing the equivalent of two million barrels of oil a day by 1992.

It is to be backed by as much as $88 billion in Government funds, largely from the ''windfall'' profits tax on domestic oil that is being freed from price controls. The program will provide more money than was spent on the Marshall Plan, the space program and the interstate highway program combined.

But in spite of the statements of high principle and all the laborious policy making, little has been done so far to improve the country's day-to-day energy position, and many argue that the threat to national security of a abrupt oil cutoff is graver than ever.

Indeed, some of the energy measures have already proven hard to implement, perhaps reflecting the crisis atmosphere in which they were framed as well as an overreliance on dubious assumptions about the changing future.

An example of how hard-won legislative consensus has been imperfectly carried out is found in the synthetic fuels program.

Construction of the nation's first commercial-scale coal gasification plant, for which its sponsors began planning nearly a decade ago, finally began last July just days after the Department of Energy gave its conditional commitment to guarantee a $250 million loan covering most of the first year's costs.

Then, last month, just after the department had raised its backing to $1.5 billion so private investors would lend all the money needed to build the North Dakota plant, a Federal appeals court ruled that the agency that regulates pipeline charges had overstepped its authority in approving a price schedule for the synthetic gas.

As a result, the pioneering Great Plains Gasification Project faced collapse, and the prospects for similar plants became clouded.

The prospects for coal gasification had already dimmed because national energy planners appear to have underestimated how much competing natural gas remained to be found in the United States. Some critics suggest that the price controls that have been in effect since 1954 had simply blinded policy makers to the fact that rising prices almost always lead to increased supplies.

Just as it has had trouble projecting supplies, the Government has not done well in forecasting prices. The Energy Department in the spring of 1979 said the world price of a barrel of oil in 1985 would be from $16 to $25, a level already passed. It said the recent $32 price would not be reached until 2000. And last year, as John C. Sawhill, chairman of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, noted, the Energy Department was saying crude oil could reach $32 a barrel by 1985 even though it had actually hit that level.

Another deficiency in carrying out energy policy is found in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was authorized in 1975 with a goal of storing one billion barrels of oil in underground caverns in Louisiana and Texas. Currently, however, the reserve contains only 100 million barrels, enough to replace less than 2 1/2 weeks' worth of imports.

Filling the reserve was suspended because of tight world supplies in the summer of 1979 and not resumed until late last September, despite the recession-aided 1980 oil glut. Many in Congress and elsewhere thought the Administration was far too sensitive to the objections of Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern oil exporters, and it is widely agreed that a major opportunity to acquire oil was missed.

The United States now also has on the books an elaborate emergency gasoline rationing plan under which car owners or drivers would be entitled to a basic monthly allocation. Additional gasoline could be bought in a Government-approved market where the public could trade surplus allotments at a presumably higher price.

Even Federal officials concede, however, that the plan would take up to 15 months to implement and would require a huge, costly bureaucracy. It is more likely that some stiff, quickly imposed special tax on gasoline will be proposed.

Two bills that failed to pass Congress last year point up difficulties with the two main alternatives to imported oil: coal and nuclear power.

Utilities are having little success switching to coal-fired units from oil because of environmental restrictions and lack of cash to finance the conversions. A move to provide Federal subsidies failed because of Republican opposition to ''corporate welfare'' and opposition by liberal Democrats who wanted to use the occasion to tighten the Clean Air Act of 1970.

And 35 years after the birth of the nuclear industry, the nation has not yet permanently disposed of its first pound of nuclear waste. Failure to pass a bill creating a schedule for Federal disposal sites is regarded as a major setback for the industry. A number of those who look at America's energy policies in broad national security terms think too much attention has been paid to reducing the number of barrels imported and too little to the prevention of or response to a serious supply disruption. The fact that many Americans are apparently willing to risk war to protect Persian Gulf oil routes but are unwilling to pay higher taxes on gasoline to discourage consumption led Joseph S. Nye, a Harvard University professor and a formerState Department official, to declare recently that "Americans have not yet risen to the challenge" of the new world oil realities. "Our dependence on oil imports increased 25 percent between 1973 and 1979, and our overall energy security diminished," Professor Nye said. "We talked the high rhetoric of energy security, but our policies belied our words."

Why is Carter held in such low regard, compared to Reagan, and why are democrats demonized as "tax and spend liberals", given the record that I've outlined? Why would it be in the interest of any working class American, to support Reagan or either Bush? Did Americans receive more from government versus the taxes they paid, the debt that they owe. and pay the interest on,
from the Reagan and 2X Bush administrations, than they would have from four additional years of a Carter presidency, and six years of Al Gore, vs, the ten years that the republicans held the presidency, instead?

Are we, as a nation, safer, enjoying higher environmental quality, more energy independence and conservation, more individual rights, better education and social services, less poverty, better maintained public infrastructure, and better relations with our allies, and non-aligned nations, in a world that has a higher priority of promoting human rights and uniform justice....are our courts more representative and sensitive to today's population demographics in the US....is the workplace safer, and labor organizing oversight, and SEC oversight, and the fiscal soundness of our corporations, because of the higher debt that the ten extra years of republican presidential administration, and congressional "leadership", has provided to us, than if democrats had been elected and served? Is our government less corrupt, more transparent?

Can anyone make an argument that Carter and Gore could have governed in some way that would have been less fair, shortchanged us more, left us with more debt, and in a worse state in our relationship with the community of nations, than we find ourselves in, today? Could we possibly be more dependent on imported petroleum, have a higher trade and budget deficit, have cities and race relations in worse shape, than they are today? Speaking for the 150 million Americans who control less than 2-1/2 percent of the national wealth, and the forty percent who control another 27 percent of that wealth, I just don't see how they could have produced worse results or greater debt, or more gender, race, and sexual orientation based discrimination and inequality or worse international relations, or a greater threat to national security that exorbitant treasury debt and disproportionate energy consumption and dependence, compared to all other nations, than what we currently experience, in all of those categories, can you....how?