Too Many Problems and No Authority to Solve Them

The news never stops. Of course the important stories sometimes get lost in the mix; the news that actually gets through is more than enough for a day’s entertainment. After all, isn’t that what the news is nowadays, entertainment? I’m going to let you in on what I’ve read this morning and maybe then you’ll see what I’m talking about.

There was an op-ed in the New York Times that decried the ban on chewing coca leaves. The writer explained that his countrymen had been chewing coca since 3000 BC. He claimed it helped give farmers energy and taken in moderation, relaxed them. The piece probably wouldn’t have made the editorial page of the New York Times, but it was written by Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia.

There was more news from our neighbors to the South. It seems that the Russian government is seriously considering parking some of their medium range bombers in Cuba and Argentina. The United States can’t really object too loudly after parking it’s bombers in Karshi-Khanabad Air Base is located in southern Uzbekistan not far from Tajikistan. Poland has offered to host an anti-ballistic missile site on its territory. What’s fair is fair according to the participants. This is like a real life version of RISK! Will these missiles and planes actually take up stations in these countries? Maybe not, but it makes for good conversation. These are just distractions, the real problems of today are the economy and the state of war that exists on the U.S-Mexican border.

The bailout of AIG to the tune of 170 billion dollars was just in time to allow the insurance giant to offer its employees 165 million dollars worth of bonuses for practically ship-wrecking the company this year and last. Hey, what if they made some mistakes maneuvering through the economic reefs, they tried. That should in itself count for something. Anyway, who will buy the BMW’s and Benz’s or the Lexus’s and Cadillac’s?

Obama’s director of The White House Economic Council, Larry Summers "It is outrageous," Summers told host of “Face the Nation” Bob Schieffer. "The whole situation at AIG is outrageous. What taxpayers are being forced to do is outrageous."

But Summers also said that "you can't govern out of anger" and that the government doesn’t have the power to stop bonuses from being paid out under existing contracts.

So what does our government have the power to do? We can shuffle around military equipment and personnel, we can watch as Mexico descends into civil war as Pravda reports that there are over 100,000 “foot soldiers” involved in the drug cartel violence, with another 100,000 gang members working for them inside our own country according to the Governor of Texas and the Sheriff of Phoenix, Arizona.

Why do reports like this always come out during the week-end? Who controls the ebb and flow of information? By tomorrow all of this will become old news. While I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, letting the violence on the U.S.-Mexican border get out of control could be the first step in implementing the SPP/NAU plan to join Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into the North American Union. Maybe then the government will have the authority and clout to stop taxpayer dollars from going into the pockets of the same people that brought on this economic mess while the government looked the other way until the system ruptured and threatened to bleed the nation dry.

Somebody or something has to take responsibility for what has happened and if the government doesn’t have the power to stop the hemorrhaging of the monetary system, then maybe it is time to delegate that power. The taxpayers should be demanding it. The law enforcement people along the U.S.-Mexican border should be asking for combined police and military power on both sides of the border. There is` just too much going on to sit back and “see how this all plays out”.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future