IMAGINE lying in some government-run hospital, hospice or nursing home many years from now. Imagine languishing unattended for days in soiled sheets, suffering from hunger and thirst, covered with bed sores, your flesh aboil with untreated infections. Imagine living in fear of resentful, underpaid health aides who take out their anger on you and abuse you. And imagine spending your final moments on earth in the company of a government health care worker with a syringe, who injects you with a lethal cocktail.

Do you find this hard to imagine? You should. In any civilized country, such things should not happen — ever. But President Obama’s health care proposals have the potential to turn this nightmare into a reality for many Americans.

Especially vulnerable are the 80 million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964. (1) If you belong to that group, take note. Your generation has been targeted for a program of age-based medical rationing such as our country has never before experienced.

Obamacare is a cost-cutting plan. Many Americans do not understand this. President Obama has promised huge cuts in medical spending. In fact, he has warned that if we fail to make such cuts, we will face financial Armageddon.

“Make no mistake: the cost of our health care is a threat to our economy…,” Obama told the American Medical Association in Chicago on June 15. “It is a ticking time bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America. … If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade. And if we fail to act, federal spending on Medicaid and Medicare … will eventually grow larger than what our government spends on anything else today.” (2)

To avoid this catastrophe, we must make drastic cuts in health spending, says Obama. The size of his proposed cuts varies from speech to speech, but the figure cited most often by Obama’s advisers is 30 percent — up to $700 billion annually. (3)

A 30-percent annual cut is going to take a big bite out of somebody’s health care. The only question is whose. The numbers make clear that most of these cuts will have to come at the expense of those who need health care the most — the elderly, the disabled and the gravely ill.

“Older, sicker societies pay more on health care than younger, healthier ones,” Obama told the AMA.

He is right. According to a 2006 study by the Department of Health and Human Services, five percent of the U.S. population accounts for nearly 50 percent of health care spending in America. Who are those five percent? Most are people over 65 years of age with serious, chronic illnesses. (4)

By contrast, the study notes, half of the U.S. population “spends little or nothing on health care … with annual medical spending below $664 per person.” These, of course, are mostly healthy young people — people without serious, chronic illnesses.

Obviously, Obama will not meet his cost-cutting targets by reducing care to healthy young people. They are already spending next to nothing. It is the old, the dying and the chronically ill whose health care he will cut. The numbers make this clear.

At present, the main vehicle of Obamacare is the so-called Affordable Health Choices Act, introduced on June 9. (5)

This law will force Americans to enroll in “qualified” health plans — that is, plans approved and controlled by the government. We will be invited to “choose” between “public” and “private” insurance plans, but we will find little difference between them. “Public” or “private,” they will all follow the same rules, dictated by the Department of Health and Human Services — the same agency, incidentally, which issued the report cited above (“The High Concentration of U.S. Health Care Expenditures,” 2006). (6)

How will Obama cut costs? His June 13 radio speech gave some hints. Obama said his plan would give “incentives” to doctors to “avoid unnecessary hospital stays, treatments and tests that drive up costs.” (7)

And what sort of treatment does Obama consider “unnecessary?” In an ABC News special on June 24, he implied that medical treatment might be wasted on elderly people with grave illnesses, citing his own grandmother as an example. (8)

Dying of cancer, with less than a year to live, Obama’s grandmother broke her hip. “[T]he question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?” asked the President.

It turns out that Obama’s grandmother did get the hip replacement — though he did not say so on ABC that night. (9) Obama left the story about his grandmother unfinished. He went on to suggest, however, that other people faced with such choices might do well to forget about surgery and settle instead for palliative or comfort care — treatment that helps you feel better while you are dying, but does not prolong your life.

“Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” Obama concluded.

It is already happening in Europe

If you want to see how you will die, you need no crystal ball. Just go to Europe. There you can get a glimpse of your future.

In Europe, governments already ration health care, just as Obama plans to do here. The older and sicker you are, the less care you get.

In England, for example, bureaucrats determine a patient’s eligibility for health care using the QALY system (quality-adjusted life years). They divide the cost of treatment by the number of “quality” years the patient is expected to live. Older, sicker patients are expected to live fewer “quality” years, so why bother treating them at all? On this basis, British elders are routinely denied treatment for cancer, heart disease and other deadly illnesses. (10)

Many die in filthy, overcrowded hospitals or nursing homes, rife with pestilence, including the deadly, antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” Clostridium difficile and MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Each year in the UK, nearly three times more people die from hospital infections than from traffic accidents. (11)

In the nation where Florence Nightingale invented modern nursing 150 years ago, cleanliness has become a lost art. British newspapers reported in 2007 that patients in government hospitals were told to “go in their beds” when they had diarrhea. (12)

In March 2009, British health inspectors reported that poor treatment at one hospital may have killed up to 1,200 people in three years. That’s 1,200 people at just one hospital. (13)

Denied food, water and medicine, patients at Stafford Hospital in Staffordshire were left screaming in agony, drinking from flowerpots and lying helpless in their own waste. Many waited for operations which were repeatedly postponed. (14)

British officials were quick to label the Stafford horror an “isolated incident.” But many health care professionals in England say it is typical. (15) Unfortunately, dissenters have little voice in Britain’s National Health Service. The system is notoriously hostile to whistleblowers.

Take Margaret Haywood, for instance, a nurse of 20 years, who went undercover for the BBC, filming abuse and neglect of elderly patients at Royal Sussex Hospital. In April 2009, British health authorities punished Haywood for going to the press, banning her from practicing nursing. If she had complaints, they told her, she should have made them through proper channels. (16)

In England, whitewashing medical scandals is a bipartisan activity. Conservative and liberal politicians alike defend the National Health Service from all critics.

After a harrowing stay at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, Lord Benjamin Mancroft, a Conservative member of the House of Lords, spoke out in Parliament, declaring, “It is a miracle that I am still alive.” He described “filthy” wards that were “never cleaned” and nurses who were “grubby … slipshod, lazy … drunken and promiscuous.” (17)

Fellow Tories denounced Lord Mancroft for defaming British medicine. But his observations may help explain why Royal United Hospital leads Britain in superbug fatalities, having racked up 306 superbug deaths in four years. (18)

Government health care supposedly works better in France. But in August 2003, when temperatures in France soared to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly 15,000 elderly people dropped dead — that is, 15,000 more than the average or expected death rate for that time of year.

Most died in institutions, such as government-run nursing homes, which lacked air conditioning and other basic amenities.

Time magazine reported that deaths from the heat wave in France were “geometrically higher than anywhere else in sunbaked Europe,” thanks to a “chronically underfunded and understaffed elder care system.” (19)

Less money, less care

For 20 years, health care reformers from Edward Kennedy to Hillary Clinton have praised the government-run health systems of Europe and Canada. Obama and his team have taken up the same cry.

A June 1 report from Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers praised European health care and urged Americans to emulate it.

If health care is so abominable in Europe, why did Obama’s economic advisers commend it? Simple. It’s cheaper.

Titled, “The Economic Case for Health Care Reform,” the report noted that six countries — Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Britain and France — spend only 9.6 percent of their Gross Domestic Product on health care, while America spends 15.3 percent. It recommended bringing our health care spending down to European levels through “efficiency improvements in the U.S. healthcare system.” (20)

This is the dirty secret behind the movement for universal health care. Its true purpose is to cut medical care, not increase it.

Every plan put forth by health care “reformers” in the last 20 years features drastic cuts — not increases — in health spending. During her 2008 presidential run, for example, Hillary Clinton vowed to slash medical spending in America by $120 billion per year. (21) Obama says he will cut even more.

With “the right kind of cost-effectiveness,” Obama’s chief economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers told MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” on April 19, “we could take as much as $700 billion a year out of our health care system.” (22)

Current annual health spending in America is about $2.5 trillion, so Obama and his team are talking about a 30-percent cut.

It happens that a 1993 study by the Health Care Financing Administration, or HCFA, showed that 27-30 percent of annual Medicare spending goes to end-of-life care for the elderly — specifically, health care during the last year of life. (23)

These figures suggest that Obama could meet his target of a 30-percent cut simply by denying treatment to the sickest and feeblest of America’s elderly — those with a life expectancy of one year or less.

Obama’s special adviser for health policy, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, appears to have something like that in mind.

Obama’s Guru of Death

In a Jan. 31 article in the British medical journal Lancet, Emanuel advised steering health dollars toward the young and fit, specifically those between the ages of 15 and 40, while reducing health spending for the elderly. (24)

Weirdly, Emanuel — along with his co-authors Govind Persad and Alan Wertheimer — made a special point of arguing that age-weighted medical rationing does not violate the rules of political correctness. They wrote:

“Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination … Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years. Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.”

In other words, to put it crudely, if we decided to let the elderly die because we think of them in “stereotypical” terms — say, if we thought of them as useless old dodderers — we would be guilty of “ageism.” However, if we let them die for a “good” reason — for example, because we decide that they have already had their chance at life, and now it’s time to give someone else a chance — then letting them die is perfectly OK.

In Emanuel’s view, letting old people die is not the problem. The problem is finding the right words to justify it.

Words are very important to Emanuel — for example, the words of the Hippocratic Oath. He blames the Hippocratic Oath for much of what he considers wrong in American medicine.

Until the 1970s, all doctors swore this oath upon graduating medical school. It is believed to have been written by the Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos, the father of modern medicine, some 2,400 years ago.

The oath forbids doctors to kill, and expressly forbids administering any “deadly drug” or performing an abortion. For that reason, it has fallen out of favor with modern medical schools, which often use edited versions of the oath, or different oaths entirely, written in modern times.

Still, the tradition of Hippocrates dies hard. Doctors still honor him, and many feel guilty when they violate his precepts.

Dr. Emanuel would like to steer modern medicine away from the Hippocratic tradition. In a June 18, 2008 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, he wrote that strict adherence to the Hippocratic Oath caused “overuse” of medical care. (25)

“Medical school education and postgraduate training emphasize thoroughness,” he complained. “When evaluating a patient, students, interns, and residents are trained to identify and praised for and graded on enumerating all possible diagnoses and tests that would confirm or exclude them. The thought is that the more thorough the evaluation, the more intelligent the student or house officer.”

Particularly galling to Emanuel is “the Hippocratic Oath’s admonition to ‘use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment’” which he says doctors interpret “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others.”

Emanuel would like to see less thoroughness and more cost-cutting. Instead of being “thorough” and “meticulous,” doctors should be “prudent” in assessing how much time, effort and money each patient is worth, for the greater good of society, he argues.

Evidently, President Obama likes what Dr. Emanuel is preaching. In December 2008, Obama made him special adviser for health policy to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Given Emanuel’s views, it can be expected that age-weighted rationing will figure prominently in Obama’s health care “reforms.” Should Obamacare become the law of this land, many of those 80 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 may be facing a nasty, European-style death.

It is already happening in Oregon

You don’t have to go to Europe to see age-weighted rationing at work. Just take a look at Oregon. Its state-run Oregon Health Plan works very much as our president says Obamacare will work.

Barbara Wagner of Springfield, Oregon was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005. Chemotherapy and radiation put her cancer into remission. But the cancer returned in May 2008.

Wagner’s doctor prescribed Tarceva, a pill which slows cancer growth. There was a good chance it might extend her life by a few weeks or even months.

At age 64, Wagner had two sons, three daughters, fifteen grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Every moment she could spend with her loved ones was precious.

But Oregon’s health commissars nixed the plan. Her Tarceva treatment would cost $4,000 per month. Wagner was going to die anyway, so why waste the money?

Wagner received a letter stating that the Oregon Health Plan would not approve any treatment for her “that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of the disease…” However, if Wagner opted for physician-assisted suicide, Oregon would be happy to pick up the tab, said the letter.

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon and only costs about $50.

“It was horrible,” Wagner told reporters. “To say to someone, we’ll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it’s cruel. Who do they think they are?”

Wagner finally got her Tarceva when the manufacturer Genentech offered to supply it free of charge. She died in October 2008.

A humble, retired schoolbus driver, Wagner touched more people in death than she had in life. Local and national press picked up her story, alerting many Americans to the danger of medical rationing.

One person who remains untouched by her story is Dr. Walter Shaffer, who heads Oregon’s Division of Medical Assistance Programs, which runs the Oregon Health Plan. Regarding the Wagner case, Shaffer told the Eugene Register-Guard, “We can’t cover everything for everyone. Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people.” (26)

Equally unsympathetic is Barack Obama, who views Oregon’s medical rationing system as a model for the nation.

On March 23, 2008, asked to comment on Oregon’s assisted suicide law, candidate Obama told the Mail Tribune of southern Oregon, “I think that the people of Oregon did a service for the country in recognizing that as the population gets older we’ve got to think about issues of end-of-life care.” (27)

The pig in the python

What exactly did Obama mean when he said that “as the population gets older,” Americans need to “think about end-of-life care”?

He was referring to a problem economists have dubbed “the pig in the python.” If a python swallows a pig that is too large, the pig will give the python indigestion every inch of the way down, until it is finally expelled out the rear end.

Think of America as the python. Think of the baby boom as the pig. And think of Obamacare as an enema for the python.

“As the pig’s snout approaches the python’s nether regions,” wrote economist Paul Krugman in The New York Times, “the age distribution of the U.S. as a whole will look like that of Florida today. How will a relatively small number of workers be able to produce enough both to live well themselves and to provide the huge population of retirees with the standard of living it expects?” (28)

To put it another way, the baby boom is large. The generation coming after it is small. Consequently, as the baby boomers retire, a small number of young people will have to support a much larger number of elderly, retired people.

Young people will end up paying enormous taxes to keep the baby boomers alive. They will doubtless resent it. Indeed, they will have a strong economic incentive to look the other way and pretend not to notice while the older generation vanishes into government-run “end-of-life” programs, such as Oregon’s.

The first baby boomer applied for Social Security retirement benefits on Oct. 15, 2007. (29) Over the next 20 years, 80 million more will apply. Their huge numbers are expected to bankrupt the system, forcing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid into collapse.

“I fear that we may have already committed more physical resources to the baby boom generation in its retirement years than our economy has the capacity to deliver,” warned Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on April 21, 2004. “I do not see how we can avoid significant curtailment of the benefits currently promised.” (30)

If Greenspan is correct and we cannot afford medical care for baby boomers, then what will become of those 80 million people? Believe it or not, many elitist policy planners argue that America should essentially cut off their health care and allow them to die. And there is a good chance that the younger generation will accept this solution.

Obama vs. the baby boomers

The Obama administration is consciously fanning the flames of anti-baby-boom sentiment.

On May 12, for example, it released the 2009 Annual Report of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees. The report warns of imminent economic collapse, and blames the problem on baby boomers.

“[B]ecause the number of people receiving benefits will increase rapidly as the large baby-boom generation retires,” the report explains, the Social Security system will start running in the red as early as 2016, and will totally collapse by 2037. Medicare will go bankrupt in 2017. (31)

What can America do to fend off this catastrophe? Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – one of the authors of the report – told the New York Times on May 12 that the only way to save Medicare would be to support President Obama’s plan to “control runaway growth in both public and private health care expenditures.” (32)

Note that he said, “both public and private health care expenditures.”

One can understand why the Obama administration would want to cut public health expenditures. After all, if current expenditures are bankrupting the system, it makes sense to cut them.

But why cut private health spending? How will this help keep Medicare afloat?

Private health spending means paying our own money, out of our own pockets, to our own doctors, for our own health care. How could that possibly hurt Medicare? And why would President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner want to stop us from doing it?

The answer is that the more money we spend on our private health care, the healthier we get, and the longer we live. And, perverse as it sounds, that’s financially not good for Obamacare.

Most baby boomers will claim Social Security when they turn 65. Everyone who claims Social Security must enroll in Medicare, under current rules. So the longer we live past 65, the more Social Security and Medicare claims Uncle Sam has to pay. (33)

USA Today summarizes the problem thus: “Social Security’s original retirement age of 65 was set in 1935 when life expectancy was 63. Today, life expectancy is 77 — and, for those who live to 65, life expectancy is 83. The system used to benefit financially from people who paid Social Security taxes but died before collecting any benefits. … The baby boomers who retire in 2008 at age 62 will live an average of 20 more years, according to the Social Security Administration. Today’s workers don’t pay enough Social Security taxes during their careers to cover their lifetime benefits, so baby boom retirements will overwhelm the system unless changes are made.” (34)

Thus, the federal government has an undeniable financial incentive for hoping that as few baby boomers as possible live past their 65th birthdays. Cutting private health care spending would certainly contribute toward that goal.

4 ways of killing

Let’s review what we know. We know that Barack Obama personally endorses at least three different methods of shortening the lives of elderly, disabled and gravely ill people.

The first method – let’s call it the Oregon model – is to pressure them into committing suicide, by cutting off other options.

The second method is to pressure them into accepting palliative or comfort care in place of real care – again, by cutting off other options. Comfort care, remember, is care that helps you feel good while you are dying, but does nothing to prolong your life.

We also know that Obama endorses forced starvation and dehydration, as was famously inflicted upon Terri Schiavo in 2005.

When asked in February 2008 to state his regrets as a politician, candidate Obama said he regretted having voted to allow Terry Schiavo to stay on her feeding tube while her parents pleaded her case in federal court. If he had it to do over, Obama would have voted not to intervene. He would have stood back and allowed Florida officials to go ahead and disconnect Mrs. Schiavo from her feeding tube, before her parents had had a chance to exhaust their legal options. (35)

So now we know that Obama endorses physician-assisted suicide, pressuring people into accepting palliative or comfort care in place of genuine care, and depriving people of food and water until they die.

But there is a fourth way of killing which Obama has not publicly endorsed, at least not yet. It is the cheapest, most efficient way of all: killing by lethal injection. Will doctors be encouraged to administer lethal injections to their patients under Obamacare?

The New Orleans massacre

After Hurricane Katrina, rescue teams found 45 patients dead at Memorial Medical Center. No other New Orleans hospital had yielded so many bodies.

Within days, reports surfaced that hospital staffers had killed many of those patients by lethal injection. Witnesses came forward, including one doctor who said he had fled the hospital rather than take part in the killings.

After a year-long investigation, one doctor and two nurses were arrested for second-degree murder. They were accused of killing four patients with lethal doses of morphine and midazolam.

“There may be more arrests and victims that cannot be mentioned at this time,” announced Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. at a press conference. (36)

The case seemed open and shut. There was no question that some patients had been killed. In fact, several staffers had confessed to the deed, telling their stories anonymously to a sympathetic British newspaper The Mail. (37)

The Mail reported, “Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals. … [S]enior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive. … Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana, and The Mail on Sunday is protecting the identities of the medical staff …”

One female doctor told The Mail, “I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul.”

At least three witnesses heard Dr. Anna Maria Pou state that she intended to give “lethal doses” to patients. Dr. Pou was the one doctor arrested in the case. (38)

Witnesses saw her carrying syringes and morphine vials into patients’ rooms, accompanied by nurses. After visiting one patient, Pou reportedly said, “I had to give her three doses. She’s fighting.” (39)

Despite the evidence, a state grand jury declined to indict Pou in July 2007. No criminal charges of any kind were pressed against her. She walked free. (40)

Political forces weighed heavily in Dr. Pou’s favor. Throughout the proceedings, local and national press praised her as a hero and accused her prosecutors of grandstanding, publicity-mongering and witch-hunting. Prominent citizens of New Orleans contributed to her legal defense fund. Respected medical authorities warned that Pou’s arrest would have a “chilling effect” on physicians, who might now fear to volunteer during disasters.

The real meaning of comfort care

“I do not believe in euthanasia,” Dr. Pou told Morley Safer on CBS’s “60 Minutes, Aug. 26, 2007, “I don’t think that it’s anyone’s decision to make when a patient dies. However, what I do believe in is comfort care. And that means that we ensure that they do not suffer pain.” (41)

These words may explain why so many doctors, journalists, philanthropists and politicians came flying to Dr. Pou’s defense. They may also explain why she ultimately got off the hook. Pou argued that when she killed those patients, she was giving them “comfort care.”

“Comfort care” is an important concept in 21st-century medicine. If Dr. Pou went to jail for rendering “comfort care,” that would indeed have a chilling effect – not on doctors who volunteer during emergencies, but rather on bureaucrats, politicians and New Age bioethicists who would like to turn “comfort care” into a convenient euphemism for euthanasia.

Recall Barbara Wagner’s horror upon receiving a letter telling her that the Oregon Health Plan would not cover her chemotherapy, but would cover assisted suicide.

“We had no intent to upset her but we do need to point out the options available to her under the Oregon Health Plan,” said Dr. John Sattenspiel, an official of LIPA, the private insurer which administered Wagner’s state health coverage.

Under the Oregon Health Plan, cancer patients who are denied chemotherapy must at least be provided with “comfort care.” Sattenspiel explained to the Eugene Register-Guard that doctor-assisted suicide “could be considered as a palliative or comfort care measure.” (42)

Remember that the next time you hear the words “palliative” or “comfort” care. The hard truth is, in the jargon of 21st-century medicine those words can mean anything from changing your bed pan to killing you by lethal injection.

For promoters of medical rationing, it is essential that people like Dr. Pou be permitted to kill patients through “comfort care.” Few cost-cutting methods are more efficient.

Medical training must “move toward more socially sustainable, cost-effective care,” wrote Obama’s health care guru Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel in the Journal of the American Medical Association of June 18, 2008. An encouraging sign, he wrote, was that medical schools were already moving from the Hippocratic “do everything” approach to the “palliative care” approach. (43)

A June 17 e-mail announcement from the Center to Advance Palliative Care, or CAPC, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York punctuated Emanuel’s point in dollars-and-cents terms. The e-mail said:

“According to a recent study of eight very different hospitals, hospitals saved from $279 to $374 per day per palliative care patient. Savings included significant reductions in pharmacy, laboratory and intensive care costs. This means savings of more than $1.3 million for a 300-bed community hospital and more than $2.5 million for the average academic medical center.” (44)

Given these savings, it is understandable why Obamacare planners take such a keen interest in “comfort care.”

Rockefellercare

Today we call it Obamacare. In 1993, we called it Hillarycare. A more accurate name would be Rockefellercare.

America’s leading promoter of medical rationing, since the 1980s, has been Democrat Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, better known as Jay Rockefeller. (45) He also happens to be America’s preeminent apostle of “palliative” or “comfort care.”

The Rockefeller clan has long had an interest in using medicine as an instrument of population control. Dynasty founder John D. Rockefeller, the legendary oil tycoon who created Standard Oil, poured money into eugenics projects, designed to purify the human race by preventing undesirables from breeding. He was a member of the American Eugenics Society, founded in 1922 and renamed the Society for the Study of Social Biology in 1973. (46)

In 1969, the Hastings Center in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, received start-up money both from the Rockefeller Foundation and from John D. Rockefeller III personally. “The activities of the Center” included research into “death and dying, behavior control, genetic engineering and counseling, and population control,” writes bioethicist Albert R. Jonsen in his book “The Birth of Bioethics.” (47)

The Hastings Center pioneered “end-of-life” care as we know it today.

John D. (“Jay”) Rockefeller IV has followed in his father’s footsteps, working energetically over many years to promote “palliative” or “comfort” care as a substitute for real care.

The untold story of Hillarycare

Like Obamacare today, the Clinton health plan of 1993 focused on cutting costs by cutting care. Like Obamacare, Hillarycare relied heavily on age-weighted rationing to meet its projected cost-cutting targets. Hillary Clinton gets most of the blame for this plan, but it was Jay Rockefeller’s brainchild from the beginning.

On Jan. 17, 2008, the public interest group Judicial Watch published a memorandum the Clinton Library was forced to release under the Freedom of Information Act. (48)

The 24-page memo shines a spotlight on Hillary’s little-known relationship with America’s mightiest oil and banking dynasty. Dated May 26, 1993, and addressed to “Hillary Rodham Clinton,” the memo comes from Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

The memo lays out a detailed strategy for pushing the “Clinton reform plan” for universal health coverage. In it, Rockefeller snaps orders at Mrs. Clinton in the imperious tones of a man accustomed to obedience.

He instructs Hillary to get tough on critics of the health plan. “Impeach the credibility of opponents,” he writes. Portray them as “perpetrators,” “paid lobbyists” and purveyors of “ideological extremism.” Assign investigators to conduct “opposition research” on them and expose their “lifestyles.” Do not allow them “even one day without scrutiny.”

Regarding the need for a radio and TV advertising campaign, Rockefeller fumes, “Fundraising must begin immediately. I am frankly surprised that I have not been contacted or shown a plan for fundraising and media expenditures.”

Rockefeller plainly viewed Hillary as his subordinate, and the “Clinton reform plan” as his project. And no wonder. The plan we know as Hillarycare was originally Rockefeller’s idea.

“Health care was his major interest”, writes Joshua Green in The Atlantic. “The agony of watching his mother’s lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s had made him a crusader for universal health insurance, and in the years before Bill Clinton was elected he had organized labor and health interests toward that goal.” (49)

Many Democrats urged Jay Rockefeller to run for president in 1992, but he declined and backed the Clintons instead. (50)

On Jan. 25, 1993 – only five days after his inauguration – Bill Clinton appointed Hillary chairman of his National Task Force on Health Care Reform. Prior to that, she had no history as a health care reformer. In order to carry out the assignment, she had to make a crash study, “bearing down and learning the mind-numbing intricacies of the health-care system,” The Atlantic reports. (51)

More importantly, Hillary relied on the guiding hand of Jay Rockefeller, who watched closely over the Task Force. In their book “The System,” Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder note that Sen. Rockefeller was “largely responsible for creating the coalition of pro-reform groups to campaign for passage of the Clinton plan and had opened his mansion in Rock Creek Park … to them for their first strategy meeting.” (52)

Rockefeller’s health dictatorship

Today, Jay Rockefeller is leading the charge for Obamacare. As Chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care, he is currently pushing a bill that will strip Congress of all authority over federal health spending. Henceforth, such decisions will be made by a secretive committee of “experts,” modeled after the Federal Reserve Board, if Rockefeller gets his way. (53)

Much as the Fed controls America’s monetary policy, Rockefeller’s MedPAC would control federal health spending.

The current version of MedPAC (Medicare Payment Advisory Commission) is a panel of experts which advises Congress on Medicare spending. The new MedPAC – nicknamed “MedPAC on Steroids” – will no longer advise Congress. It will tell Congress what to do. (54)

On May 20, Rockefeller introduced the MedPAC Reform Act of 2009. Rockefeller declared in a press release that day:

“It’s time to move MedPAC into the executive branch and away from the power of special interests. Congress has proven itself to be inefficient and inconsistent in making decisions about provider reimbursement under Medicare. … Congress should leave the reimbursement rules to the independent health care experts.” (55)

During a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee on March 10, Rockefeller had given a preview of his plan. He told fellow senators:

“I think one of the major problems you have in your $700 billion of wasted money every year is the fact that there are too many political judgments made because there’s too much lobbying and Congress can – you know, unless they’re all health care experts, can fall victim to that. So the idea of MedPAC having the power to set those fees, reimbursement fees, to me is enormously attractive, takes politics right out of it and takes Congress right out of it.” (56)

Rockefeller’s May 20 press release said that the new law would “reform MedPAC as an executive agency modeled after the Federal Reserve Board.” Its mission would be “to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries get the right care at the right time.”

Of course, everyone wants people to get “the right care at the right time.” But, given Rockefeller’s persistent advocacy of medical rationing through the years, his idea of “the right care at the right time” may well mean no care at all for a great many people, just when they need it most.

President Obama officially endorsed Rockefeller’s “MedPAC on Steroids” proposal on June 2. (57)

Stop the killing

When that heat wave killed 15,000 elderly people in France in 2003, the French did considerable soul-searching. Many experts concluded that disintegrating family values had contributed to the catastrophe.

“The French family structure is more dislocated than elsewhere in Europe, and prevailing social attitudes hold that once older people are closed behind their apartment doors or in nursing homes, they are someone else’s problem,” French Red Cross official Stéphane Mantion told Time magazine. (58)

However, Mantion noted that far fewer deaths occurred in the south of France. Nice, Marseilles, Toulouse and other southern towns suffered only a fraction of the north’s death rate. Mantion opined that the lower death rate was due to “Latin attitudes” that still prevailed in southern France. People in those areas were old-fashioned; they still believed that old people were worth something; they still loved, cherished, respected and cared for their elders.

And, wonder of wonders, their elders lived through the heat wave.

Saving them did not require trillions of dollars in government programs. It didn’t take MedPAC on Steroids. It didn’t take Obamacare. It didn’t take blue-ribbon panels of Rockefeller-funded experts jibber-jabbering into microphones about the benefits of “comfort care.”

All it took was love.

American hospitals have not yet sunk to the level of their Canadian and European counterparts, but this nation is sliding fast down that slippery slope.

On one level, the health care reformers may be correct. Perhaps we can learn a few things from the French – not the northern French, with their “chronically under-funded and understaffed elder care system” – but the southern French, with their “Latin attitudes.”

And while we’re at it, we might take a fresh look at another old-fashioned Mediterranean institution – the Hippocratic Oath.

The answers to America’s health care problems may not be as complicated as Obama’s bean counters have made them out to be.

Maybe the first step in solving those problems is to stop listening to people like Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. Maybe then we will finally be able to think clearly.

We may just discover that we are closer than we realize to returning American medicine to its true purpose – saving lives, rather than taking them.

Reprinted from WorldNetDaily’s Whistleblower Magazine, August 2009

[EXCERPT] “MEDICAL MURDER: Why Obamacare Could Result in the Early Deaths of Millions of Baby Boomers,” WorldNetDaily.com, August 5, 2009

[EXCERPT] “Obamacare to be 1 Big `Death Panel’: Just as in U.K., Government System Will Lead to Early Demise of Seniors,” WorldNetDaily.com, August 20, 2009

See reader comments at FreeRepublic:

Sun Aug 9 18:22:15 2009
August 20, 2009 2:26:25 AM EDT by RobinMasters
Thu Aug 20 20:58:10 2009 by Richard Poe
Thu Oct 15 18:37:33 2009

Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics

Commonwealth Club of California

Leftwing blogger Markos “Kos” Moulitsas Zúñiga, who founded DailyKos.com, claimed in a June 2, 2006 interview that he applied for work with the CIA’s Clandestine Service in 2001, but decided against joining, even after successfully completing a six-month screening process. A blog called The Truth About Kos now denounces Moulitsas as a CIA infiltrator. Moulitsas enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17 and served from 1989-92.

Gregory Dalton: Good evening and welcome to tonight’s meeting of the Commonwealth Clubs and Forum. Tonight our guest is Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas. Mr. Moulitsas served in the U.S. Army for three years and later earned two bachelor degrees from Northern Illinois University and a law degree from Boston University. After moving to California to work in the tech industry, he started DailyKos.com in 2002. That is now one of the top political Web sites, indeed overall Web sites, in the country and he’s a celebrity among bloggers and netroots political activists.

Markos Moulitsas: Or nerds. Nerds.

Dalton: Celebrity nerds. While he actively supports Democratic candidates, he has plenty of harsh words for the Democratic Party establishment, so please welcome Markos Moulitsas. [...]

[...]

Dalton: Not long ago, liberals loathed the Central Intelligence Agency as the enemy of democratic governments and they install dictators around the world, and these days you read the papers and people on the left are rallying to the defense of the CIA and indignant when the CIA is politicized. How did this come about, that suddenly liberals are championing the CIA?

Moulitsas: I don’t know. You know, I…

Dalton: Do you find it strange or ironic that there’s all of a sudden love for the CIA?

Moulitsas: You know, I think a lot of the people that did have problems with the CIA, I mean, it was a very vocal minority. I think most people didn’t really think about it that much, right? It wasn’t really on their radar screens in the way that now it is because now we’re in this huge war and it was the CIA that was warning the Administration against invading because there were no weapons of mass destruction.

Here’s a little secret I don’t think I’ve ever written about, but in 2001 I was underemployed, unemployed, underemployed, you know, I was in that, you know, y’all have been there, right? Dot-com people? Kind of like between jobs and you do a little contract work and kind of, so, that’s where I was, in this really horrible netherworld of will I make rent next month? And so I applied to the CIA and I went all the way to the end, I mean, it was to the point where I was going to sign papers to become Clandestine Services, and it was at that point that the Howard Dean campaign took off and I had to make a decision whether I was going to kind of join the Dean campaign, that whole process, or I was going to become a spy.

[laughter from audience]

And it was going to be a tough decision at first, but then the CIA insisted that if I join that they’d want me to do the first duty assignment in Washington, DC and I hate Washington, DC. That was six years in Washington, DC before they’d post me overseas, I was like, yeah! That made the decision a lot easier.

But what was really amazing about that experience is that every single person I talked to in the CIA, and I must have talked to dozens of people, you know, psychologists and, you know, people in the leadership, and you go through this whole, like, six month process, really in depth. Every single one of them was liberal. Every single one of them, and, to the point where I was talking to somebody, we were talking about my Web site, because they came by my Web site, and she was agreeing with me on everything and this was before the war, right? And she kept saying, man, they’re going to take us to war and, you know, it’s, the evidence isn’t there and this is crazy, and I was like, is this just you or what? And she’s like, no, we’re all like this here. We’re all, this is a very liberal institution.

And, in a lot of ways, it does attract people who want to make a better, you know, want to make the world a better place. I mean, people who are internationalist, in general. Rarely are people who say I want to go bomb the f–k out of some other country, right? That’s not, do you have to bleep that out on the radio?

[laughter from audience]

Dalton: Yeah, why don’t you try to say it again? [laughs]

Moulitsas: Uh, you can, I’ll let you bleep it out. And so it’s, I mean, and when you think of it in a more logical sense, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Of course, they’ve got their dirty ops and this and that, right? But, as an institution itself, the CIA is actually really interested in a stable world. That’s what they’re interested in. And stable worlds aren’t created by destabilizing regimes and by starting wars. They’re done so by other methods. You know, assassinating labor leaders, and, no, I’m kidding.

But that was really surprising to me. So coming from the, and of course, I think a lot of conservatives would kind of take that as evidence that the CIA was out to undermine Bush or something because they are a bunch of liberals, and they are, they were a bunch of liberals. But ultimately that was an eye-opening experience for me, and at least ultimately I don’t think it’s a very partisan thing to want a calm, stable world, and even if you’re protecting American interests, I mean, you know, that can get ugly at times, but generally speaking, I think, as an organization, their heart’s in the right place and, if liberals before had a [inaudible], you know, this is before my time.

I’ve never had a problem with the CIA, and, which is why I’d have no problem working for them. But I don’t know. I mean, also keep in mind I came to this country in 1980, so I don’t, you know, a lot of this more historical hostility towards the CIA by the left is before my time, so I may be missing nuances or something that, but, from a modern perspective, you know, obviously things are a little different.

[...]

Many thanks to Taki Theodoracopoulos and to all the good folks at Taki’s Top Drawer for reprinting my trio of essays on the Christopher Hitchens Question. Given the privileged status Mr. Hitchens currently enjoys in elite circles both Republican and Democrat, I daresay these stories would have found a cold reception in almost any venue of respectable punditry other than Taki’s.

To speak and be heard is a treasure beyond price. For this gift, I extend to Mr. Theodoracopoulos and to his stalwart crew my heartfelt gratitude.

Part I

Hitchens Unhinged

October 9, 2007

Writer Christopher Hitchens has hit the jackpot. His new book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has proved a runaway bestseller. Why, then, is Mr. Hitchens so angry? Eyewitnesses report that Hitchens erupted into a drunken rage at a recent promotional event for his book. After denouncing circumcision as a “filthy Jewish practice”, Hitchens reportedly descended from the stage, visibly inebriated, approached a Roman Catholic priest in the audience, and began shouting at him, only inches from his face. Hitchens called the priest (a hero of Sept. 11) a “child molester”. Read more…»

Part II

Hitchen’s Haj

October 15, 2007

Hitchens rejects the Soviet or “Stalinist” model (as do virtually all leftists today), and proposes instead that we fashion our enlightened “secular” state after the example of… Moorish Spain. Hitchens praises the Muslim warlords who conquered Spain in AD 711 and ruled it for centuries. Hitchens suggests that life under the firm yet benevolent rule of enlightened Muslim emirs may be the closest thing to a perfect society that we benighted humans can expect to achieve. Read more…»

Part III

Hitchens: Enemy of my Enemies?

October 22, 2007

The now-infamous confrontation between Hitchens and Father Rutler at Manhattan’s Union League Club on May 1 reveals a deadly weakness in the conservative movement. It shows how carelessly and reflexively we have fallen into the habit of treating our enemies as friends, and our friends as enemies. Many of us, it appears, have lost the ability to tell the difference. This is no trivial flaw. Unless corrected, it spells doom for our movement, and perhaps for our Republic. Read more…»

An exclusive interview with author Mark W. Smith, and a review of his controversial new blockbuster, DISROBED: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left’s Stranglehold on the Courts

by Richard Lawrence Poe

Go here to read Richard Poe’s exclusive interview with Mark W. Smith, author of DISROBED.

BOOK REVIEW:
Fighting Fire with Fire

A Seven-Step Strategy for Retaking the Courts

DISROBED: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left’s Stranglehold on the Courts by Mark W. Smith Crown Forum 272 pages Paperback: $14.95

CONSERVATIVES have been losing the battle of the courts for seventy years. It is time to fight back, says New York litigator Mark W. Smith. In his new book DISROBED: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left’s Stranglehold on the Courts, Smith explains how conservatives can win by fighting fire with fire. We must use the weapons of the left, to wit, litigation and judicial activism.

“The Right will never thwart the liberal legal assault until we abandon our own self-defeating tactics,” warns Smith, who is also author of the New-York-Times bestseller The Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Too often, conservative attorneys plea for “judicial restraint,” urging judges to stick to the letter of the Constitution, to the original intent of the Framers, and to the authority of legal precedent. This is a losing strategy, says Smith.

“Even if we could miraculously convince every judge in America that he must never overstep his authority and must simply `follow the law,’ we’d have done nothing to get rid of all the existing liberal legal precedents,” he avers.

Take gun rights, for instance. The case books are filled with 70 years of anti-gun decisions, most of which violate the Constitution. Conservative judges should strike them down, but “judicial restraint” prevents them. It demands that they follow precedent, and so they honor the anti-gun decisions of their leftwing colleagues. The result is a “ratcheting effect,” whereby conservative judges enforce yesterday’s anti-gun laws, while leftist judges busy themselves inventing new and ever-harsher restrictions for tomorrow.

“We must stop playing defense against the courts and instead go on offense,” urges Smith. Going on offense means casting off judicial restraint and embracing judicial activism. It is not enough to restrain leftist judges from further mischief. We must undo the damage already done. Smith proposes this seven-step strategy for retaking the courts:

• STEP 1. Set clear political goals. Whether we like it or not, judges are “de facto legislators,” writes Smith. Conservative judges must understand that their mission is to advance the conservative political agenda.
• STEP 2. Appoint reliable ideologues. The left uses ideological “litmus tests” to screen judicial applicants. Conservatives should do the same. Every judicial candidate should be required to divulge his views on the big issues, such as property rights, immigration, gun rights, national defense and so forth. Only conservative loyalists should win appointments.
• STEP 3. Use carrots and sticks. Leftist judges are rewarded with fawning media coverage and professional acclaim. Conservative judges endure smear campaigns and harsh ethical scrutiny. Under this pressure, most judges drift leftward, the longer they serve. Conservatives must use the new media, and other resources, to create counterpressure, lionizing conservative judges and vilifying leftist ones.
• STEP 4. Use legal ju-jitsu. Through judicial activism, conservatives can turn the leftists’ favorite legal precedents against them. “If a judge can force a state or city to raise taxes, why can’t a judge order a state or city to cut them, too?” asks Smith.
• STEP 5. Litigate. Judges need cases in order to make rulings. Litigators supply those cases. Currently, most litigators serve the left, because that’s where the money is. Once conservative judges begin aggressively awarding damages to victims of leftist social policies, many litigators will switch sides, in order to get a slice of the pie.
• STEP 6. Employ incrementalism. It took seventy years for the left to undo the American way of life. It may take seventy years to restore it. Judicial activists of the right must be patient, fighting the left “one case, one decision, and one precedent at a time.”
• STEP 7. Play to win. “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose,” said President Ronald Reagan. Conservative jurists need to become “Judicial Reagans.”

“Allowing the Left to pillage our cities with the weapons of judicial activism while we stand there offering the flowers of judicial restraint is a path to dismal failure,” writes Smith. “A new tactic is required.”

Amen. Every serious conservative should read Smith’s book, and prepare for the legal struggle ahead.

Go here to read Richard Poe’s exclusive interview with Mark W. Smith, author of DISROBED.

The review of Mark Smith’s DISROBED which appears on this page is reprinted here with the kind permission of NewsMax Magazine, which published it in September 2006.

An exclusive interview with author Mark W. Smith, and a review of his controversial new blockbuster, DISROBED: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left’s Stranglehold on the Courts

by Richard Lawrence Poe

Go here to read Richard Poe’s review of Mark W. Smith’s book DISROBED.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Mark W. Smith

Author Tells How He Became a Legal Radical of the Right

New York City litigator and activist Mark W. Smith: “I want the Left to fear us.”

ANN COULTER has called Mark W. Smith “one of the fastest-rising legal stars in the country.” Now Smith is putting his career on the line.

In his new book, Disrobed: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left’s Stranglehold on the Courts, Smith breaks every taboo of the conservative legal elite. He exhorts conservatives to copy the tactics of the left, using lawsuits and judicial activism to take back the courts.

In an exclusive interview with Richard Poe, Smith recounts his transformation from mild-mannered, white-shoe litigator to fire-breathing radical of the right.

POE: It took guts to write this book. Have you gotten flack from fellow conservatives?

SMITH: Some conservatives have accused me of sinking to the level of the leftists. They tell me that two wrongs don’t make a right. But a lot more have told me privately that they applaud what I’m doing, because they too are tired of losing in the courts.

DISROBED: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left’s Stranglehold on the Courts by Mark W. Smith Crown Forum 272 pages Paperback: $14.95

POE: You seem an unlikely radical. Until now, you’ve followed the path of an insider’s insider in the legal world.

SMITH: Yes, I followed the traditional path for elite, conservative litigators. Since graduating from New York University law school in 1995, I have served as Vice President of the New York City Federalist Society. Whitewater Prosecutor Kenneth Starr sponsored my admission to the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. I helped President Bush defend his selections of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and I attended the swearing-in ceremony of Chief Justice Roberts at the White House.

POE: Now, at age 38, you risk everything by writing a manifesto calling for open ideological warfare in the courts. What made you do it?

SMITH: I spent a year after high school playing semi-pro baseball. From sports, I learned that you play to win. I approach litigation and politics from this same perspective.

In August 2000, I attended David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend. As a former Marxist leader of the Sixties who later moved to the right, Horowitz was saying that conservatives must adopt leftist tactics if we want to win. That made sense to me.

Four months later, we had the 2000 election fiasco. The passivity of Republicans astonished me. Here was Al Gore challenging the election in Florida. Meanwhile, the Democrats in Missouri ran a dead man against John Ashcroft for the Senate. The dead man won and his widow ended up taking his place in the Senate. Ashcroft was too polite to sue. When Gore sued in Florida, we should have sued in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa and every other state where the count was close, but we didn’t. I saw that Horowitz was right. In his book The Art of Political War, he writes, “if only one side is shooting, the other side will soon be dead.” In 2000, the Left was shooting, but we weren’t shooting back. That got me thinking.

POE: What effects do you hope to see from the publication of Disrobed?

SMITH: I want to encourage conservative judicial activism. We need to legislate from the bench. We need to sue to strike down gun control laws, economic regulations and the like. Every year at Christmas, Americans are terrified to put up a Christmas tree in a public park because they fear an ACLU-inspired lawsuit. In contrast, no liberal politician or loony liberal fears lawsuits by conservatives because we rarely start any. I want the Left to fear us.

And for those conservatives who disapprove of my plan, and who still think judicial restraint is the way to go, I would ask them, in the words of TV therapist Dr. Phil, “How’s that been working for you?”

Go here to read Richard Poe’s review of Mark W. Smith’s book DISROBED.

This interview with Mark W. Smith was first published by TheVanguard.org on April 2, 2007.

Media Matters’ Attack on The Shadow Party (Continued)

by Richard Poe, FrontPageMagazine.com, October 30, 2006

Appendix: 21 Points Which Media Matters Apparently Concedes

The 21 points set forth below encapsulate the major arguments and allegations made in our book The Shadow Party. An ancient principle of law holds that “Qui tacet consentiret” or “silence gives consent”. Media Matters’ silence on the 21 major arguments of The Shadow Party would seem to indicate that it cannot refute — indeed does not dispute — our claims and thus concedes them.

In The Shadow Party, we argue the following:

ARGUMENT #1: George Soros and Hillary Clinton jointly control today’s Democratic Party.

We present evidence that Soros and Senator Clinton, working together in a coordinated effort, managed to gain effective control over the Democratic Party between 2002 and 2004.

ARGUMENT #2: Soros controls the official party through a private “Shadow Party”.

Mr. Soros exerts his influence over the Democrats through a network of private groups which he organized. This network raises and disburses campaign funds outside the control of the official Democratic Party. Soros’ groups raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates in 2004. Together they have the power to make or break any Democrat candidate by choosing to fund him or withhold funding from him. We call this private network the Shadow Party.

ARGUMENT #3: The Shadow Party operates in violation of the law.

The Shadow Party routinely plays fast and loose with state and federal election law. For instance, Shadow Party groups frequently coordinate their activities with elements of the official Democratic Party. Moreover, many Shadow Party communications — including its websites — clearly indicate to potential donors that money contributed to the Shadow Party will be used to defeat Republican candidates.

For example, the now-inactive Shadow Party group ACT (America Coming Together) displayed on its website during the 2004 campaign season this message:

“America Coming Together is the largest voter mobilization project in American history. Knocking on doors and speaking the truth, ACT canvassers are laying the groundwork to defeat George W. Bush and elect Democrats in federal, state, and local elections in 2004. Because close elections are won on the ground, it takes each one of us.” (44)

Private non-profit groups such as those which make up the Shadow Party are expressly barred from such blatant electioneering, yet no controlling authority seems willing to hold the Shadow Party to account.

ARGUMENT #4: The chief liaison between George Soros’ Shadow Party and Hillary Clinton’s political machine is notorious mob lawyer Harold Ickes.

Harold Ickes serves simultaneously as the unofficial CEO of Soros’ Shadow Party and as a top advisor to Hillary Clinton. Before joining the Clinton White House as deputy chief of staff in 1994, Ickes ran a New York law practice which represented corrupt labor unions controlled by Mob racketeers. In the Clinton White House, Ickes escaped prosecution for his illegal fundraising methods only because then-Attorney General Janet Reno blocked requests from her own Justice Department to move against Ickes.

ARGUMENT #5: The Shadow Party is fundamentally anti-American.

As chief ideologist of the Shadow Party, Soros has formulated an explicitly anti-American agenda. For instance, in his new book The Age of Fallibility, Soros writes, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” (45) He announced in 2004 that it is necessary to “œpuncture the bubble of American supremacy.” (46) In the Atlantic Monthly of February 1997, Soros wrote, “The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.” (47)

Soros has stated that he wants America to lose the War on Terror. In an updated preface to the 2003 edition of his book The Alchemy of Finance, Soros admits that his greatest fear is that the Bush Doctrine might succeed — that Bush might crush the terrorists, tame the rogue states of the Axis of Evil, and usher in a golden age of what Soros calls “American supremacy”. While insisting that “the concept” of “American supremacy” is “flawed” and bound to “fail in the long run,” Soros nevertheless admits that it might succeed in the short run, and he dreads the possibility. He writes, “What I am afraid of is that the pursuit of American supremacy may be successful for a while because the United States in fact enjoys a dominant position in the world today.” (48)

ARGUMENT #6: The Shadow Party is purging moderates from the Democratic Party.

The Shadow Party is using its newly-acquired power to purge the Democratic Party of all moderate, level-headed and responsible elements — in particular, all Democrats who support U.S. victory in the War on Terror (such as Joseph Lieberman).

ARGUMENT #7: The Shadow Party seeks regime change in America.

The Shadow Party’s ultimate goal is regime change. Its opposition to the War on Terror is merely an adjunct of this larger strategy. In order to set the stage for regime change, it must destabilize America, which it plans to do by engineering U.S. defeat in Iraq; impeaching President Bush and forcing the U.S. economy into crisis.

Argument #8: Destabilization is the key to Shadow Party victory.

The purpose of this planned destabilization is to shake Americans’ confidence in our constitutional system of government, instilling fear and panic among the populace, and rendering Americans susceptible to the allure of radical solutions.

The use of destabilization to effect regime change is a familiar and time-honored tactic of the left. Saul Alinsky — a radical activist who served as an influential mentor to young Hillary Rodham during her college and law school years — once wrote, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization.” (49) George Soros concurs. In his 2000 book Open Society, he wrote, “Usually it takes a crisis to prompt meaningful change in direction.” (50)

Argument #9: The Shadow Party’s goal is a world government run on socialist lines.

Among the radical solutions which the Shadow Party offers is,

1) to rewrite the U.S. Constitution so as to promote a socialist form of government;

2) to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a global authority whose laws will supercede our own;

3) to impoverish America by obliging us to provide social benefits to an ever-growing flood of illegal immigrants;

4) to further impoverish America by obliging the U.S. taxpayer to fund a global war on poverty, whereby America’s wealth will be taxed and redistributed to the poor nations of the world, under the auspices of the United Nations Millennium Project, currently directed by Soros operative Jeffrey Sachs.

ARGUMENT #10: George Soros has long experience in forcing regime change.

Soros is one of the few men in the world with the financial power, the on-the-ground experience and the network of powerful allies required to force regime change in America. Indeed, what he now attempts in America he already accomplished long ago in several other countries, including the former Soviet Union.

ARGUMENT #11: Soros helped overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1991, Soros offered a privatization plan to then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev rejected the plan, angering Soros. Thereupon, Soros turned against Gorbachev, hastening the Soviet president’s ouster by opposing Gorbachev’s efforts to obtain critical foreign aid loans from the G-7 nations.

ARGUMENT #12: Soros helped destroy the Russian economy.

After Gorbachev fell, Soros and his operatives allied themselves with the corrupt Boris Yeltsin regime. They presided over the privatization of Russia’s state-owned enterprises. The ensuing orgy of corruption came to be known as “Russiagate”, a term coined by Washington Post correspondent David Ignatius. In an article of August 25, 1999, he decried, “the lawlessness of modern Russia and the acquiescence of the Clinton administration in the process of decline and decay there.” Ignatius also wrote:

“What makes the Russian case so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most precious assets imaginable — which is the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people as they emerged from 70 years of Communist rule. The Russia debacle may haunt us for generations.” (51)

ARGUMENT #13: Soros exploited the massive corruption of Yeltsin’s Russia for personal gain.

Between 1992 and 1996, 57 percent of Russia’s state-owned firms were sold for a grand total of only $3-$5 billion, in rigged auctions and other sweetheart deals. (52) By 1996, 60 percent of Russia’s natural resources had come under the control of seven men, known as the “seven oligarchs”. (53) Soros worked closely with these oligarchs. With their help, he acquired shares in such properties as the Russian oil giant Sidanko and the steel mill Novolipetsk. During these years, Soros’ power in Russia grew to such proportions that he told The New Republic in 1994, “the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire”. (54)

ARGUMENT #14: Soros is now applying to America the same strategy he used in Russia.

In Russia, Soros helped engineer an economic crisis, triggered hyperinflation, then bought up Russian properties at firesale prices. Soros used a similar tactic to take control of the Democratic Party. First he pushed the party to the verge of bankruptcy, then he bought it.

Beginning in 1994, Soros colluded with a group of leftwing foundations — including the Pew Charitable Trusts — to bamboozle the U.S. Congress and Senate into believing that Americans were clamoring at the grassroots for “campaign finance reform” — when, in fact, Americans wanted no such thing. The Pewgate conspirators spent $140 million lobbying for their bogus “reform” plan. The result was the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002. (55)

McCain-Feingold threatened to bankrupt the Democratic Party, by cutting off the party’s life blood — the huge, soft-money contributions from unions upon which the Democrats formerly depended. After forcing the Democrats to the brink of ruin, Soros then offered to rescue them. He set up the Shadow Party — a network of private groups which could raise money and organize political campaigns outside the auspices of the official Democratic Party. With Soros’ help, the Democrats could now stay in the race. But, from now on, they would have to take orders from their benefactor George Soros.

As Soros operative and MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser put it in December 2004, “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it [...]” (56)

ARGUMENT #15: Soros is pursuing a three-phase plan for regime change in America.

Now that he controls the Democratic Party, Soros is moving ahead with a three-phase strategy for regime change. The first two phases are based upon the successful effort of the American left to force regime change in America during the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Phase #1: Vietnam II

Turn Iraq into a new Vietnam. Undermine America’s will to fight by discrediting, hindering — and thus prolonging — the war.

Phase #2: Watergate II

Turn George Bush into the new Richard Nixon. Inflict upon America a second Watergate crisis, thus depriving us of our war leader when we need him most.

This strategy worked for the left in the early ’70s. Nixon was forced to resign in August 1974. In April 1975 — barely eight months later — a Democrat Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam, thus inviting a full-scale communist invasion from the north. The Shadow Party is pursuing a similar strategy in Iraq. If Bush can be neutralized through impeachment, Democrats will be free to cut off aid to the Republic of Iraq, and allow Islamist extremists to dominate the Middle East.

Phase #3: Velvet Revolution

The third and final phase of Soros’ plan for regime change calls for a velvet revolution. This is a term used in Eastern Europe to describe the sort of bloodless coup for which Soros is well-known in that part of the world. He has used these methods to topple regimes in many countries, such as Yugoslavia, Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia. Soros’ velvet revolutions always follow the same pattern. The rebels wait for an election, then precipitate a crisis by charging voter fraud.

ARGUMENT #16: Soros appears to be planning a velvet revolution in America.

The Shadow Party appears to be setting the stage for an Eastern European-style velvet revolution in the USA. If they fail to win legitimately in 2008, they will likely cry voter fraud, fomenting an electoral crisis similar to the Bush-Gore deadlock of 2000.

ARGUMENT #17: The “crisis strategy” underlies Shadow Party planning.

Underlying Soros’ planning is the so-called “crisis strategy”, sometimes known as the “Cloward-Piven strategy.” Its purpose is to break down society’s resistance to radical change by creating artificial crises. In its present form, the plan was developed by two Columbia University social scientists and radical activists named Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

In 1966, they set out to destroy the U.S. welfare system, which they viewed as an instrument of the ruling classes to mollify the poor and dampen their revolutionary rage. Cloward and Piven proposed a “massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls.” Rising welfare costs would bankrupt American cities, they predicted, leading to what they called “a profound financial and political crisis”, which would pave the way for socialism. (57)

Their plan nearly succeeded. Cloward and Piven organized a mass movement of welfare rights activists to press for spending increases. They succeeded in swamping the welfare system and actually drove New York City to the brink of bankruptcy in 1975. However, the resulting backlash from voters forced Congress to enact massive welfare cuts rather than embracing socialism.

ARGUMENT #18: Today’s Voting Rights Movement is a Cloward-Piven maneuver by the left.

After their “welfare rights movement” ran out of steam, Cloward and Piven next applied their “crisis strategy” to America’s voting system. Neither Cloward nor Piven believed in voting. They viewed America’s voting system — like its welfare system — as a sop to the poor, to keep them docile. As they had done with welfare, they set out to disrupt and destroy the voting system, under the guise of promoting “voting rights”.

Cloward and Piven created and successfully lobbied for the so-called Motor-Voter law of 1993, which loosened up voter registration requirements. When President Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act on May 20, 1993, Cloward and Piven stood behind him, in places of honor, at the ceremony.

The law quickly led to what John Fund of The Wall Street Journal called, “an explosion of phantom voters.” (58) On the eve of the 2000 election, in Indiana alone, state officials discovered that one in five registered voters were duplicates, deceased, or otherwise invalid. (59) Leftist activists set to work flooding the polls with phony ballots and bogus registrations. Election officials who dared to complain were intimidated with lawsuits and cries of “racism.” (60) Richard Cloward defended the mess he had created by telling CBS News in 1996, “It’s better to have a little bit of fraud than to leave people off the rolls who belong there.” (61)

Once again, the Cloward-Piven strategy had proved effective. Throughout the 1990s, U.S. elections descended ever deeper into a maelstrom of confusion and chaos, culminating in the Florida recount crisis of 2000.

ARGUMENT #19: The Voting Rights Movement enjoys Shadow Party support.

The Shadow Party has emerged as a major supporter of the “voting rights movement” which Cloward and Piven created. Soros-funded groups such as ACORN, the National Voting Rights Institute and the Brennan Center now lead the movement. Now a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York, Frances Fox Piven is listed as an advisor on the website of Robert Borosage’s Campaign for America’s Future, a Shadow Party front group which has received more than $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Institute.

ARGUMENT #20: Soros uses street thugs to influence elections.

When toppling governments in foreign countries, Soros typically pays private armies of young rowdies to take the streets. In Yugoslavia, for instance, he funded a group called Otpor, whose 70,000 members ran wild during the election deadlock of September 2000, throwing Molotov cocktails and setting fire to government buildings in Belgrade. Outside the city, Otpor-led units set up roadblocks, armed with AK-47s, mortars and shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons.

The Shadow Party has already set up an extensive network of organized street rowdies in America. In March 2006, about half a million protesters brought Los Angeles to a standstill, calling for open borders and free immigration. Some burned American flags and fought with police. Similar protests occurred simultaneously in many cities. The Shadow Party orchestrated the entire operation. Virtually every sponsor was a Soros-funded group — at least eight organizations — including ACORN, La Raza, MALDEF and others. One of the organizers, the Center for Community Change, has received $5.2 million from Soros’ Open Society Institute.

ARGUMENT #21: The Shadow Party may call on foreign mediators in the 2008 election.

The last time the Democrats attempted a velvet revolution in America, they were foiled by the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court. The next time they try, the Shadow Party will doubtless try to circumvent the Supreme Court. We suspect that they will press for international arbitration, possibly under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The U.S. State Department under Colin Powell actually invited this group to monitor our elections in 2004, in the face of Democrat demands for foreign observers. Go here to download a copy of the OSCE’s “mission report” on America’s 2004 election. (62)

In normal times, Americans would never accept foreign arbitration of an election, but a destabilized America, demoralized by military defeat, discouraged by the fall of a president, and alarmed by orchestrated unrest in the streets, might just go along with any plan that promised to restore order.

NOTES

Return to previous page here.

by Richard Poe

October 30, 2006

Summary: Media Matters for America published a 6,500-word screed, attacking our book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party by David Horowitz and Richard Poe (Thomas Nelson, 2006). While Media Matters generated a prodigious mass of verbiage, we counted only 25 specific allegations of error. Of these, only four turned out to have merit. Two of these are typos and one a misstatement of a person’s job title. Need we say more?

DAVID BROCK’S Media Matters for America is widely recognized as a propaganda front for leftwing billionaire George Soros. (1) For that reason, we were not surprised when Media Matters attacked our new book, The Shadow Party, which exposes Mr. Soros’ sinister agenda and hidden power in American politics.

Six days before the official publication date, Media Matters posted a 6,500-word article purporting to debunk The Shadow Party. Bearing the zany title, “Echoing Lyndon LaRouche, Horowitz and Poe smear 14-year-old George Soros as Nazi ‘collaborator’“, the text ran 6,533 words. It accused us of 25 specific instances of “false”, “misleading” or “unsourced” statements.(2) Of these, only four actually fall into these categories, all of them trivial.

First, a footnote on page 247 should refer to CNBC and not CNN as we wrote. Second, Shadow Party moneyman “Peter Bing” — referred to on page 186 — should have been Stephen Bing. We obviously conflated his name with that of Peter Lewis, another Shadow Party moneyman mentioned in the same sentence. Third, we state on page 24 that Morton Halperin “directed” the ACLU from 1984 to 1993. In fact, Mr. Halperin directed the ACLU’s Washington office and the ACLU Foundation, but not the national organization. Finally, on page 126, we mistakenly identified George Soros as the founder of the National Voting Rights Institute, when he is only a supporter of the Institute.

Now we turn to the…

21 False Allegations by Media Matters

FALSE ALLEGATION #1: “Echoing the rantings of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and his followers, David Horowitz and Richard Poe charge in their new book that George Soros was a Nazi “collaborator in fascist Hungary” and “survived [the Holocaust] by assimilating to Nazism” as a 14-year-old boy. Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest. The unsourced smearing of Soros as a Nazi collaborator echoes the obscure anti-Semitic rantings of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and his followers, who have referred to Soros as a “Nazi beast-man” and a “small cog in Adolf Eichmann’s killing machine,” aiding “the Holocaust against 500,000 Hungarian Jews.”

When the Nazis came in 1944, Soros’ father saved the family by splitting them up, providing them with false identities and bribing Hungarian Christians to take them in. Young Soros posed as the godson of a man named Baumbach, an official of Hungary’s fascist government. In an April 15, 1993 interview on the PBS television show Adam Smith’s Money World, Soros explained that Baumbach’s job “was to take over Jewish properties, so I actually went with him and we took possession of these large estates. That was my identity. So it’s a strange, very strange life. I was 14 years old at the time.” (3) Connie Bruck, who interviewed Soros for The New Yorker in 1995, wrote that, “he posed as the son of a Hungarian government official, sometimes accompanying the official as he delivered deportation notices to Jews, or took possession of property owned by them.” (4)

On December 20, 1998, Soros had the following exchange with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, which is cited verbatim in our book:

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

SOROS: Not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

SOROS: No. (5)

By his own account, the chief lesson Soros learned under Nazi and Soviet occupation is that, when faced with extreme conditions — what he calls “far-from equilibrium” conditions — the rules of civilized society no longer apply. One is justified in doing whatever it takes to survive. (6)

In keeping with this philosophy, Mr. Soros has written, “I do not accept the rules imposed by others. If I did, I would not be alive today. I am a law-abiding citizen, but I recognize that there are regimes that need to be opposed rather than accepted. And in periods of regime change, the normal rules don’t apply. One needs to adjust one’s behavior to the changing circumstances.” (7)

In Soros’ view, one of those “regimes that need to be opposed rather than accepted” is the current Bush administration. All this information, with the sources cited, can be found in our book.

FALSE ALLEGATION #2: We are accused of drawing some of our material from an investigative article which I wrote for the May 2004 issue of NewsMax Magazine — material which Media Matters claims it “debunked” long ago.

Yes, I wrote an investigative article which was published in the May 2004 issue of NewsMax Magazine. However, Media Matters no more “debunked” my NewsMax article than it has our book The Shadow Party.

FALSE ALLEGATION #3: We are accused of having “doctored or misrepresented” a reference from page 52 of Michael Kaufman’s biography of George Soros.

We did no such thing. Seventeen-year-old George Soros told his father in 1946, “I’d like to go to Moscow, to find out about Communism. I mean, that’s where the power is. I’d like to know more about it.” Media Matters complains that we left out the final sentence of the quote, which reads, “Or maybe go to England because of the BBC, which we listened to”. (13) We did leave it out, because it was incidental. As we related in our book, Soros did end up going to London and not to Moscow, after his father discouraged him from going to Moscow.

FALSE ALLEGATION #4: We are accused of having “doctored or misrepresented” a reference from page 76 of Michael Kaufman’s biography of George Soros.

On page 76 of The Shadow Party, we quote Soros telling his biographer Michael Kaufman, “My goal is to become the conscience of the world.” Media Matters implies that we should have quoted the full, unedited passage from page 293 of Kaufman’s biography. It reads: “‘My goal is to become the conscience of the world.’ The words sounded less pompous in conversation than they appear in print. Perhaps the hubris was modulated by a wink or a smile.” (14)

Perhaps it was, or perhaps not. Kaufman admits he does not remember. Kaufman is a Soros acolyte who left a good job at the New York Times to edit Soros’ magazine Transitions for two and a half years. Kaufman knew his subject well enough to subtitle his Soros biography, “The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire”.

A more objective source, Connie Bruck, who interviewed Soros for The New Yorker, has written, “[Soros] had harbored messianic illusions — what he describes as a sense of himself as superhuman — since childhood. Soros is not reticent about this aspect of his personality.” (15) Indeed he is not. He seems to enjoy talking about it, and does so frequently. Here are some examples:

“I have always harboured an exaggerated view of my self-importance — to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god…” (16)

“If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me into trouble. But when I had made my way in the world, I wanted to indulge my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.” (17)

“It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of God, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” (18)

“Next to my fantasies about being God, I also have very strong fantasies of being mad. In fact, my grandfather was actually paranoid. I have a lot of madness in my family. So far I have escaped it.” (19)

FALSE ALLEGATION #5: We are accused of having “doctored a quote”, thus “altering the meaning” of a passage from Soros’ speech at the June 3, 2004 Take Back America conference, on page 53 of The Shadow Party.

Here is Soros’ quote: “I think that the picture of torture in Abu Ghraib, in Saddam’s prison, was the moment of truth for us, [...] I think that those pictures hit us in the same way as the terrorist attack itself, not quite with the same force because in the terrorist attack we were the victims. In the pictures we were the perpetrators, others were the victims. But there is, I’m afraid, a direct connection between those two events, because the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators.”

Here are the words we replaced with an ellipsis: “I think that the picture of torture in Abu Ghraib, in Saddam’s prison, was the moment of truth for us, because that is not who we are as a nation.”

Omitting these words certainly improved the flow of Mr. Soros’ quote — that is what ellipses are for — but we fail to see how our edit changed its meaning.

FALSE ALLEGATION #6: On page 79 of The Shadow Party we state that Soros has cited his wartime experiences as having contributed to his ill feelings toward fellow Jews. We are accused of having provided “no source” for this information.

In fact we do. The source was provided in footnote 31 at the beginning of the discussion, two paragraphs earlier, on the same page. It cited page 167 of Kaufman’s biography. We saw no need to repeat the same footnote a second time in the same discussion, on the same page, to make the same point. Kaufman wrote: “In those days, the only solicitations he [Soros] regularly received came from Jewish organizations. ‘I absolutely did not respond to them,’ he said, acknowledging that his general contempt for philanthropies was even more pronounced in the case of Jewish organizations. He traces this antipathy to that day in Hungary when as a fourteen-year-old messenger boy for the Budapest Jewish community organization he had delivered messages, drafted under Nazi pressure, ordering Jewish lawyers to present themselves for deportation.”

Soros thus tells us that, as much as he despised charities in general, he despised Jewish charities in particular. And why? Because he despised the Judenrat for its treacherous behavior under Nazi occupation.

Of course, the Judenrat was not a charity. It was an administrative arm of the Nazi occupation government. Nor was the behavior which Soros claims he found objectionable in the Judenrat related to any charitable activity. Why then would Soros’ unpleasant experience with the Judenrat translate into a specific aversion to Jewish charities?

Moreover, how do we explain the many statements Soros has made indicating a deep-seated antipathy toward the very concept of Jewish community, as, for instance, when he said: “I don’t think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe. [...] The only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness.” (20)

FALSE ALLEGATION #7: We are accused of having distorted the meaning of Soros’ remarks to the Jewish Funders Network on November 5, 2003. Media Matters wrote: “Horowitz and Poe distorted remarks made by Soros to a Jewish Funders Network event in 2003, misleadingly describing Soros as calling “on fellow Jews to acknowledge what he called their role in provoking anti-Semitism around the world.” In fact, Soros attributed ‘a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe’ not to ‘fellow Jews’ but specifically to the foreign policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon government in Israel.”

Soros did say that the Bush and Sharon policies in the Middle East “contribute” to what he called the “resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe”. However, he also said this, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “I’m also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world. As an unintended consequence of my actions, I also contribute to that image.” (21)

Here Soros referred specifically to recent remarks by his long-time nemesis Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, formerly Prime Minister of Malaysia, who had, for many years, accused Soros of triggering the 1997 collapse of the Asian economy through currency manipulation. On October 16, less than a month before Soros’ speech to the Jewish Funders Network, Mahathir Mohamad had declared that, “Jews rule the world by proxy.” (22) Soros plainly implied that his own wheeling and dealing in global markets had contributed to the “image” held by Mahathir and others that “Jews rule the world”.

Media Matters may have missed this point, but Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, did not. In response to Soros’ comments, Foxman said, “If [Soros] sees that his position of being who he is may contribute to the perception of anti-Semitism, what’s his solution to himself — that he give up his money? That he close his mouth?” (23)

Realtor Michael Steinhardt, who invited Soros to the meeting, likewise had no difficulty understanding that Soros was directing his criticisms toward all Jews, including those in the room. At one point, Steinhardt sought to defuse tensions by taking the microphone and joking, “George Soros does not think Jews should be hated any more than they deserve to be.” Steinhardt’s quip reportedly brought chuckles from the audience. (24)

In this instance, as in so many others, Media Matters defends the indefensible. Mr. Soros’ views on anti-Semitism are well-known. As noted above, Soros is on record stating that the ultimate source of anti-Semitism is the very existence of Jews as a distinct “tribe” or people. He told The New Yorker, “I don’t think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe. … The only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness.” (25)

FALSE ALLEGATION #8: We are accused of “cropping Soros’s quote” to CNBC in such a way as to distort his meaning, on page 5 of The Shadow Party. Media Matters wrote: “Horowitz and Poe cropped Soros’s quote, and left out the portion in which Soros explained that his decision [to short the dollar] was based on statements from then-Treasury Secretary John Snow. As Reuters reported that same day: “I have to disclose that I now have a short position against the dollar because I listen to what the Secretary of the Treasury is telling me,” Soros said in the interview”.

Soros’ statement was obviously a wisecrack, not to be taken literally. He was mocking Snow for certain remarks he had made which sounded like an endorsement of a “weak dollar” policy, even while America officially touted its commitment to a “strong dollar.”

Appearing on ABC’s This Week on May 11, 2003, Secretary Snow had said, “When the dollar is at a lower level, it helps exports, and I think exports are getting stronger as a result.” Many commentators interpreted Snow’s remark — wrongly, as it turned out — to mean that the U.S. government was actively seeking a weaker dollar. (26)

Playing on this misperception, Soros accused the Bush administration of trying to “talk down” the dollar. He told CNBC that Snow’s alleged efforts to weaken the dollar would backfire, depressing the global economy and reducing American exports in the long run. With heavy — and obvious — irony, Soros said, “I have to disclose that I now have a short position against the dollar because I listen to what the Secretary of the Treasury is telling me. So who am I to stand in the way?” (27)

Of course, Soros was just playing games. It was Soros, not Snow, who was doing his best to “talk down” the dollar, and he had been doing it for years.

“We desperately need an international currency system that is not based on the dollar,” Soros wrote in 1987. (28) More recently, on September 16, 2002, Soros told Maria Bartiromo of CNBC’s After Hours, “It looks like the dollar has topped — it has reached its highest level.” (29) With these words, Soros signaled investors that the dollar had nowhere to go but down, and it was time to start dumping greenbacks.

Obviously, Soros did not adopt this position in response to any remarks by John Snow, who only became Secretary of the Treasury five months later.

FALSE ALLEGATION #9: We are accused of citing a report from the National Law Journal stating that Hillary Clinton serves on the board of the Soros-funded American Constitution Society. The reference appears on page 70 of The Shadow Party.

We make no apology for citing The National Law Journal as a source. (30) It is a well- respected publication. The same cannot be said of Soros-funded advocacy groups, whose websites have been known to edit their online personnel listings in the wink of an eye, when they find it necessary to shield certain of their associates from unwanted scrutiny. (31)

FALSE ALLEGATION #10: We are accused of having misrepresented a New York Times report of November 14, 1998. We wrote: “The New York Times reported on 14 November 1998 that, in response to the growing worldwide recession, President “Clinton has proposed a ‘third way’ between capitalism and socialism.’” (The Shadow Party, page 217) Media Matters complains: “[T]he Times reported no such ‘revelation’ about a ‘third way’ or any other new economic plans that day. The Times reference — ‘Mr. Clinton has proposed a “third way,” between capitalism and socialism’ — was buried in an essay on the global financial crisis that appeared on page 9 of the Arts & Ideas section with a Berlin dateline”

Here Media Matters argues that the piece we cite from The New York Times has no significance since it appeared on the op-ed page, and not in the news section. This is a red herring. The op-ed piece — whose author was the New York Times’ Berlin bureau chief (soon to become its foreign editor) — was not aimed at a mass audience. It was written by, for and about elite decision-makers. The fact that it was directed at an elite audience does not make it any less interesting or authoritative.

Bill Clinton had been touting the “third way” since at least 1992, but he had never clearly explained what the “third way” meant.

The global financial crisis of the late 1990s inspired a new frankness among promoters of the “third way”. Books and articles suddenly flooded the market, predicting the imminent demise of capitalism. Many promoted the “third way” as an alternative.

George Soros led the pack with an article in the Atlantic Monthly of February 1997, which stated, “The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.” (32) Soros followed up with his December 1998 book The Crisis of Global Capitalism, in which he wrote, “The (global capitalist) system is deeply flawed. As long as capitalism remains triumphant, the pursuit of money overrides all other social considerations.” (33)

In his 1998 State of the Union address, President Clinton declared, “We have moved past the sterile debate between those who say government is the enemy and those who say government is the answer. My fellow Americans, we have found a third way.” (34)

Commenting upon this Clinton initiative, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post penned a column titled, “A World Safe for Socialism”, in which he exulted that the bold new talk coming from “Third Wayers” had provided “a refreshing alternative”, “ended the Reagan-Thatcher era” and given “liberals and, yes, socialists presentable new clothes to wear.” (35)

It was in this perfervid atmosphere of socialist millennialism that New York Times Berlin bureau chief Roger Cohen (who was later promoted to foreign editor of the Times) wrote the above-cited op-ed which appeared in The New York Times of November 14, 1998.

Cohen wrote: “In Western capitals there is a rush to rethink the world. At issue is the end of the so-called Washington consensus, which has held more or less unchallenged since the end of the cold war: that more open markets, freer trade and larger international capital flows are necessarily good. [...] Mr. Clinton has proposed a ‘third way,’ between capitalism and socialism.” (36)

With this op-ed, written by one of its own bureau chiefs, the Times added its voice to an already deafening chorus of journalists celebrating — prematurely, as it turned out — the end of capitalism.

FALSE ALLEGATION #11: We are accused of having cited an article from the London Sunday Times which Media Matters evidently considers to have been unworthy of citation. “In another case, the authors reprint a false news report with apparent full knowledge of its falsity before correcting it themselves. On page 88, they write, ‘His motives in pursuing philanthropy have often been questioned.’ As back-up, they cite a 1995 article in the London Sunday Times by right-wing commentator Taki Theodoracopulos, who reported, erroneously, that ‘all [Soros] philanthropy began in 1987, the first year he and his fund had to pay taxes. Charitable matters are tax deductible and Soros says his aim is to give away half his yearly income, the maximum he can deduct.’ But Soros’ philanthropy did not start ‘the first year he and his fund had to pay taxes.’ It started in 1979, as Horowitz and Poe acknowledge in the very sentence following the Times reference. ‘In fairness to Soros,’ they write uncharacteristically, ‘he actually began dabbling in philanthropy as early as 1979.’ Then why print the falsehood?”

We cited the article because the point it made was true. The small (and incidental) exaggeration it contained, we corrected. As we wrote on pages 88-89 of The Shadow Party: “Soros’ road to power, in this instance, as in others, was through his philanthropic enterprises. His motives in pursuing philanthropy have been often questioned. In 1995, the London Sunday Times noted: `[Soros'] investment fund did not pay taxes in the United States between 1969 and 1986, enjoying a ‘free ride’ that netted him and his investors billions of dollars. Until the American Tax Reform Act [of] 1986 was passed, [Soros'] Quantum Fund legally avoided paying a cent.” The Times went on to observe that, ‘all [Soros'] philanthropy began in 1987, the first year he and his fund had to pay taxes. Charitable matters are tax deductible and Soros says his aim is to give away half his yearly income, the maximum he can deduct.’ In fairness to Soros, he actually began dabbling in philanthropy as early as 1979. In 1984, he launched his first Open Society Foundation in Hungary. But it is also true that his giving remained modest until 1987.”

The point of Mr. Theodoracopoulos’ article was, as his headline succinctly put it, “Soros is Charitable up to the Tax Break”. Mr. Theodoracopoulos made a small error in saying that Soros began his philanthropy in 1987, but we corrected that error in our text. The larger point — that Soros’ investment fund did not pay taxes between 1969 and 1986 — was entirely accurate, and that was the point of Mr. Theodoracopoulos’ article. (37)

FALSE ALLEGATION #12: We are accused of having wrongly stated on page 24 that the National Security Archive, which Morton Halperin headed, was an ACLU project. According to Media Matters, it was independent of the ACLU.

Media Matters is wrong. The National Security Archive at George Washington University was set up in 1985 under the auspices of the ACLU’s Center for National Security Studies, which Morton Halperin headed. The first items in its collection were the so-called “Central America Papers”, which were declassified documents obtained by New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner, concerning the activities of rightwing death squads in El Salvador. In 1984, Morton Halperin provided storage for these documents at the ACLU’s Washington office, pending the establishment of a permanent archive for them. The program of events for the Archive’s 20th anniversary celebration notes that Morton Halperin “sponsored the National Security Archive in 1985 as part of the Fund for Peace and the [ACLU's] Center for National Security Studies.” (38)

FALSE ALLEGATION #13: We are accused of having linked Aryeh Neier “falsely” to the Weather Underground, on page 23 of The Shadow Party.

Readers may judge for themselves. Here is what we wrote, on pages 23-24 of The Shadow Party: “Another key Soros appointee is Aryeh Neier, who is president of the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundation Network. As director of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy, Neier personally created the radical group Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, in 1959. During the Vietnam War, SDS was the student group most responsible for fanning the flames of unrest on US campuses, and later transformed itself into the terrorist Weather Underground, which declared war on ‘Amerikkka’ and bombed the Pentagon and the Capitol. By that time, however, Neier had moved on to more important projects.”

Media Matters objects: “Contrary to what Horowitz and Poe assert, Students for a Democratic Society did not “transform itself into the Weather Underground.” SDS essentially disintegrated following a power struggle during its 1969 convention; a splinter group comprised of some former SDS members who thought the organization was too moderate formed the Weather Underground.”

Again, Media Matters is wrong. The Weather Underground was no “splinter” group. It was an elite cadre of high-level SDS leaders who took charge of the entire organization at the SDS national convention of June 1969. At the convention, Weatherman terrorists Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and others took over the top positions of national leadership in the SDS. The Weathermen thereupon commandeered the SDS national office in Chicago, and began giving orders. From then on, “most New Leftists recognized the Weathermen as the [SDS] organization’s leadership”, writes Drew University historian Jeremy Varon in Bringing the War Home. (39)

FALSE ALLEGATION #14: We are accused of unfairly suggesting that Soros’ Open Society Institute did not make it easy for people to find out that the OSI had funded the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.

If a visitor types Lynne Stewart’s name into the search engine on the home page of the OSI site, no grants to Lynne Stewart will appear. There is no reason for a visitor to draw the conclusion that there are additional search engines buried on other, deeper layers of the site. This is a basic site management principle, with which we presume OSI’s Web designers are familiar.

FALSE ALLEGATION #15: We are accused of having “grossly overstated” the amount of money that Soros’ Open Society Institute has donated to the ACLU.

According to Media Matters, George Soros’ Open Society Institute gave only $6.6 million to the ACLU from 1998-2004. Media Matters is wrong.

The ACLU has 51 independent affiliates, located in all fifty states and Puerto Rico. In addition, it has an ACLU Foundation. Soros’ Open Society Institute has given generously to many state-level ACLU affiliates, as well as to the ACLU Foundation.

We calculated Soros’ total donations to the ACLU by taking data from IRS filings, the Capital Research Center and the Foundation Directory in Manhattan, and cross-referencing them to eliminate duplicates. We arrived at the following totals:

1998 – $4,286,720

1999 – $3,120,000

2000 – $5,379,600

2001 – $2,200,000

2002 – $2,406,000

2003 — $747,000

2004 — $579,500

Total: $18,718,820

FALSE ALLEGATION #16: We are accused of having misrepresented the character of Mark Halperin’s infamous ABC News memo of October 8, 2004, on page 70 of The Shadow Party. Media Matters writes: “On page 70, Horowitz and Poe recited the claim that ‘Mark Halperin, who is political director of ABC News, issued a memo to his reporters during the final weeks of the 2004 campaign, instructing them to slant the news in favor of Democrat candidate John Kerry.’ In fact, as Media Matters noted, when Brit Hume made a similar charge in October 2004, the memo actually said the opposite of what Horowitz and Poe claimed — that reporters should hold Kerry and Bush to the same standard.”

Media Matters is wrong. Here is the full text of Mark Halperin’s memo. It speaks for itself:

Friday October 8, 2004

It goes without saying that the stakes are getting very high for the country and the campaigns – and our responsibilities become quite graveI do not want to set off (sp?) and endless colloquy that none of us have time for today – nor do I want to stifle one. Please respond if you feel you can advance the discussion.

The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done.

Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.

We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides “equally” accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.

I’m sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.

It’s up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right. (40)

FALSE ALLEGATION #17: We are accused of having “falsely linked Saddam Hussein to the 1993 WTC bombing”, on page 7 of The Shadow Party.

Actually we take no position on the question of whether or not Iraqi agents were complicit in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. We do, however, mention that FBI assistant director James Fox, who then headed the Bureau’s New York City office, suspected that the Iraqi intelligence service Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-A’ma had orchestrated the bombing, using Islamist volunteers from other countries as cover.

We mention further that Fox claimed he was blocked by Janet Reno’s Justice Department from pursuing any leads that might implicate Iraq.

Our intention was not to take sides, one way or the other, on these matters. It was to demonstrate the inadequacy of dealing with terrorism as an ordinary problem of law enforcement, as Mr. Soros recommends.

FALSE ALLEGATION #18: We are accused of falsely claiming that the GOP supported Bill Clinton’s wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Here is what we wrote on page ix of the Introduction to The Shadow Party: “Bipartisanship in wartime has been a hallmark of American foreign policy since the Second World War. Republicans displayed it when President Clinton went to war in Bosnia and Kosovo — wars conducted without congressional authorization or UN approval, but which Republican leaders nonetheless supported. Such bipartisanship is strikingly absent in America’s war in Iraq. It has been undone by a Democratic leadership committed to more radical goals.”

Media Matters responds by pointing out that Republicans on two occasions voted against sending troops to the Balkans, and on two other occasions voted to withdraw troops who were already there. This is true, but irrelevant.

The examples Media Matters cites took place during peacetime, not wartime. All four examples involve U.S. peacekeeping forces, tasked with policing cease-fire agreements in countries which were no longer at war.

FALSE ALLEGATION #19: We are accused of having falsely claimed that the majority of the American people supported the Vietnam War, on page xiv of the Introduction to The Shadow Party.

In The Shadow Party, we wrote, “The American people supported the war in Vietnam to its bitter end. Yet, after years of organized chaos on the home front, American leaders grew weary of the internal divisions and yielded to the forces of defeatism. Americans allowed the Left to prevail, not because Americans supported the Left’s agenda, but because the Left had a strategy and determination to succeed, while their opponents lacked either the understanding or the will to counter them.”

Media Matters responds by citing polls that supposedly show that the majority of Americans opposed the Vietnam War. But the poll that mattered was the election of 1972 which pitted an anti-war Democrat, George McGovern, against Richard Nixon. Nixon won 49 states.

FALSE ALLEGATION #20: We are accused of having exaggerated the clandestine character of the Shadow Party.

On page xi of the introduction to The Shadow Party, we wrote:

“The Shadow Party is a network of private organizations that exercises a powerful and hidden influence over the Democratic Party, and through it, over American politics in general. It is not a political party per se, and it works outside of the normal electoral system, in pursuance of goals that are not openly disclosed.

“The Shadow Party cannot afford to function as an ordinary political party. That would require making an honest, public appeal to voters, and this it cannot do, for its radical vision would offend most Americans.”

Media Matters finds these assertions laughable, dripping with “unintentional hilarity”, in their words. Yet, Soros himself corroborates our point. In his new book, The Age of Fallibility, Soros writes, “[T]he Democratic Party does not stand for the policies that I advocate; indeed, if it did, it could not be elected.” (42) In short, Soros admits that he has been devious in stating his agendas. He and the Shadow Party have invested huge resources into campaigns to elect Democrats, yet he dares not reveal his true intentions to Democrat voters.

FALSE ALLEGATION #21: We are accused of falsely charging Soros’ Open Society Institute with engaging in political intrigue, in violation of its 501(c)(3) non-profit status.

The political intrigues of Soros’ Open Society Institute are a matter of public record. To cite but one example, consider the so-called “Pewgate” scandal.

According to the New York Post, the Open Society Institute was one of several leftwing foundations which together spent more than $140 million to pressure U.S. lawmakers into passing “campaign finance reform”. These efforts resulted in passage of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002.

The “reformers” knew they had no grassroots constituency for their cause, so they created one — or rather, the illusion of one. The “Pewgate” foundations subsidized “experts” and front groups across the nation, to generate outcries for “campaign finance reform.” Some front groups were created from scratch. In other cases, existing non-profit groups were paid handsomely to climb on the “campaign finance reform” bandwagon.

Flush with foundation money, these front groups beat their breasts unceasingly for “campaign finance reform,” putting on an energetic show for a tiny audience of 100 Senators and 435 members of Congress.

“The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington. The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot — that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform,” admits Sean Treglia, a former program officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts, who took part in the lobbying effort. (43)

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