“In times of emergency, this is okay.” Bill O’Reilly on the $20 billion BP “trust” fund 6/17/10.

The above quotation, taken from Bill O’Reilly’s show segment with Laura Ingraham is one of the scariest propositions that I have heard anyone come up with in a while. The idea that it is okay for the government to be extremely punitive in its treatment of BP, simply because there is an ecological emergency in the Gulf of Mexico is bad enough. But what is really scary is that so many people, ordinary folks and not just political grandstanders in the Congress, seem to have adopted this attitude.

Please understand that I am not even going to pretend that BP is blameless in the explosion of their deepwater drilling rig, or that they should not be held to account for the tremendous mess they have made of the Gulf Coast region. There is no doubt that they bear the lion’s share of responsibility, because it was their rig that exploded and their well that is gushing copious amounts of oil into the Gulf. However, there is more than enough blame to be spread around in this debacle: a Congress that bowed to environmentalist pressure tactics that forced us into deepwater drilling; a federal bureaucracy that failed in its oversight capacity; and an administration that did not respond well to the looming crisis, and that has chosen to use this as a political tool instead of treating it as the disaster that it honestly is.

However, Rep. Michelle Bachman in a speech to the Heritage Club hit the nail on the head when she asked where the executive branch thinks it derives the power to punish corporations for wrongdoing. Now, we all understand that as a part of the executive branch, the Department of Justice has that type of power, but this is not being handled at that level. What we are seeing is a White House that is doing exactly what Rep. Joe Blanton said they were doing; shaking down a corporate entity. Where in the Constitution does the provision exist that allows for a President or Vice President to tell accompany to set aside money for a compensation fund, or it will be taken from them? Where does the Constitution allow for a President, Vice President, or Congress to coerce a corporation to pay wages to workers idled by the political decisions of the President? I have searched high and low in the Constitution and I can’t find such provisions anywhere, mainly because those actions are not simply extra-legal as some are saying, but they run counter to the very ideals of limited governmental powers tat the document was written to set forth.

With that said, the most disturbing thing about all of this is the idea being pushed that these actions are justified, because we have a really serious crisis to deal with. Even that bloviating blowhard Bill O’Reilly had to admit that on principle Bachman and Blanton were dead right, but then he uttered the aforementioned quote about this being okay because we are facing an emergency. And it is that attitude, as stated earlier, that I find to be so disturbing.

In our history as a nation, we have plenty of examples of where this type of thinking leads. When we as a nation have faced crises in the past and abandoned our principles in order to face those crises, it has never worked out well for us. The record is clear on this, and these examples should suffice to prove my point:

•     In 1798 in response to the threat of war with France, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts that allowed for the punishment of anyone writing or speaking out against the US government, First Amendment be damned.
•        During World War I, Congress passed another sedition and espionage act that made any anti-government communications criminal.
•        In 1948 the Supreme Court upheld provisions of the Smith Act that made it illegal to advocate the overthrow of the US government, citing the fear of Communist plots as a “clear and present danger”.
•         During World War II, the Supreme Court upheld Executive Order 9066 and all orders issuing from it that allowed for Japanese-Americans to be dispossessed of their homes and properties and held in internment camps. The reason given was that we were in a state of crisis after being attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, so that made it legal.

Fortunately, we realized our mistakes in those case; the alien and sedition acts were eventually set aside in both cases; the Dennis decision on “clear and present danger” was overturned by the Supreme Court in the Brandenburg decision; and everyone with any legal sense realizes and recognizes that the Korematsu decision ranks right up there with Dred Scott and Plessy as total miscarriages of justice.

Sadly though, we seem not have absorbed those lessons well when we stand aside and assent to what is going on between the federal government and BP right now. There is too much cheerleading to get the evil old corporation, and not enough sober reflection of where this could take us…and what it says about us.

There is never a time when we should allow ourselves to abandon our fundamental principles and cede such punitive power to the government, simply because we face a crisis. Forget for a moment that this government has played a huge role in creating this situation, and focus on what the outcome of allowing this type of treatment will be. We started on this road when we allowed the government to fire the CEO of General Motors and force Chrysler into a bad business deal with Fiat, and now we are allowing this same power mad government to take money out of the pockets of BP shareholders to cover its own incompetence. Didn’t we learn anything from the GM fiasco?

Furthermore, it is exactly in times of crisis that we have to be willing to stand by our principles, or our principles mean nothing. Just as character is truly revealed when no one is watching, principles are found out when they are tested. And if we cannot hold to the principles of limiting government power and extending due process during a time of crisis, then those aren’t really our principles. They are simply platitudes we speak amongst ourselves in an effort to burnish our self image.

So we can all be angry at BP executives, at the lackluster government response, and be horrified at the images of dead wildlife floating in oil as our Gulf Coast beaches are despoiled. That is a natural reaction for all of us. But we had better be damned careful of willfully suspending our principles during times of emergency or crisis, especially when dealing with an administration that views crisis as political opportunity. Because with this group, you never know when the next crisis may involve the suspension of our individual rights in order to save us from some threat or other.

And we better decide if our principles are worth holding onto, even when something unprecedented happens. Because if we are willing to abandon our principles now, we never had them in the first place.

However, my point isn’t so much to argue the merits or demerits of SB1070, but to take a strong look at what we have happening in our country today. It is my view that what we have is not a matter of immigration, but something far different.

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines an immigrant as “a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence”, and in our nation’s history we have seen much of that type of activity. We have all read or heard stories of immigrants from Europe coming through Ellis Island and being overwhelmed at the sight of the Statue of Liberty, or the perilous journeys made by the Vietnam boat people, Cuban exiles, Chinese dissidents, and Haitian refugees all undertaken to get to this land of freedom. Those people wanted nothing more than to get here and become Americans, and to someday bring their families here to become Americans as well.

Those immigrants and asylum seekers sought to add their special flavoring to the “melting pot” that was American society, and to adopt a clearly American way of life. The first generation may have struggled to learn the language, but they were intent on making sure that succeeding generations knew the language and customs of their new home so that they could be seen as “fully” American. They gladly assimilated; while never forgetting their cultural roots, they wholeheartedly laid down new roots in American soil. It was important to them to become simply Americans, not (insert nation here)-Americans.

What we have in America today is not immigration at all. Rather, it is much more akin to a move to colonize our nation from without. Webster’s defines a colony as “a body of people living in a new territory but retaining ties with the parent state.” Can there be any doubt that this is what we are truly witnessing today?

The vast majority of illegal colonists in our country today have no intention of becoming American citizens, and retain their loyalty to their mother countries. How many Mexican “immigrants” do you know that care to learn English? How many of them have any real stake in the health of our society? I would posit that the number is quite small, and if you doubt that, just take a look at their economic priorities.

It is a known fact that as of 2005, a full 81% of all illegal immigrants in this country were of Hispanic/Latino descent. Further, of that 81%, 57% were from Mexico. Now if these Mexicans were interested in building lives for themselves here, it would stand to reason that the money they make here would be used in our economy. However, that is certainly not the case. The facts are that remittances to Mexico from monies made abroad by Mexican workers are one of the top three sources of income in the Mexican economy. In 2009 alone, remittances to Mexico totaled $25.14 billion…and that was down from around $26 billion in 2008! These alleged immigrants are not making any investment in our economy, but are instead taking wealth from our economy to support their parent state.

Now, I don’t presume to have the answers for the problems we face with illegal immigration, or illegal colonization if you prefer, but I do know that we cannot survive if we take the course our “leaders” keep pushing o us. Arizona’s SB1070 is a good first step in shaming the federal government into doing its job in securing our borders and enforcing the federal immigration statutes already on the books. And we had all better realize that the people pouring into our nation are not here to assimilate or immigrate, they are here primarily as colonists. We need to get a handle on that before our new colonists set about destroying their host.

When President Obama assumed office in January 2009 he inherited an economy that was on the verge of implosion. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac were either collapsing, or on the verge of collapse. Former President George W. Bush and the Democratic Party controlled Congress had rushed through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), better known as the bailout package that was supposed to stabilize the economy, relieve financial firms of their so-called “toxic assets”, and prevent further economic collapse. Also, in the opening days of his presidency Mr. Obama proposed, and the Democratic Party controlled Congress passed the $787 billion Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the Obama stimulus package.

We were assured that the economy was the first priority of the President and his staff, and the President himself sold us on that idea when pressing for passage of the stimulus package. On January 10, 2009 then President-Elect Obama was quoted as saying, “That work [restarting the economy] begins with this plan; a plan I am confident will save or create at least three million jobs over the next few years.” And in the days before his inauguration, the Obama economic team released a report predicting that the stimulus package would hold the unemployment rate below 8 percent through 2010, so congressional approval was vital to the economic health of the nation.

Yet we have seen this president seemingly lose his focus on rescuing the economy and improving the economic situation of the people and direct his energies almost wholeheartedly to the health care reform debate. It seems that the vast majority of his time has gone towards pushing a massive overhaul of the health care system and the health insurance industry, changes by the way that polls show is opposed by about 53-57 percent of the population, and the economy has been given short shrift. I do not want to get into a debate about the reforms that President Obama wants in the healthcare system, but would like to focus on the more pressing issue: addressing the unemployment epidemic that the Obama administration and the Congress have virtually ignored to wage the healthcare battle.

The national unemployment rate in February, one year after the passage of the stimulus, according to the Department of Labor stood at 9.7%. Unofficially, when factoring in discouraged and underemployed workers the percentage was closer to 17 percent. And the numbers for African-Americans were even worse; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics African-American unemployment was officially 15.8%, with Black men at 17.8%.

Where is the leadership from the Obama administration on this issue? I well understand that a president has limited ability to change situations such as this, but I also understand that what a president deems important becomes an issue of national focus. And to this point President Obama has given passing lip service to the overall issue of unemployment, but has barely mentioned the epidemic that exists in the community from which he so proudly claims to belong. It would be nice if our “first Black President” would use some of his famed oratorical ability, and soaring intellect to address this issue, which unlike the healthcare battle, is of vital importance to the nation and the Black community in particular.

1. Thomas Jefferson
2. William Fessenden
3. John McCain
4. Olympia Snowe

1. Ronald Reagan
2. James Madison
3. Lindsey Graham
4. Charles Sumner

Have a go at it and all will be revealed by week's end!