$920 Billion More to Bail Out the World

 

AIM Column  |  By Cliff Kincaid
 |  September 28, 2008

 

With one socialist “bailout” bill apparently on the way to passage by
Congress, two more are pending―both of them sponsored by Senator Barack Obama.
One is the Jubilee Act, which would cancel as much as $75 billion worth of Third
World debt, and the other is the Global Poverty Act, which would cost an
estimated $845 billion. Total potential cost: $920 billion.
Meanwhile, in an appearance on the Fox News Channel on Sunday, Republican
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan called the $700 billion plan now before
Congress “Fleece in our time,” a reference to Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace in
our time” appeasement deal with Hitler that eventually plunged the world into a
World War. The House is scheduled to vote on the measure on Monday.
Calling the deal “Wall Street socialism,” McCotter added, “Now the Wall-Street crony capitalists have put a 700-pound billion dollar bag
of dung on taxpayers’ doorsteps, rung the bell, and expect you to thank them
when you answer it. I think the American people will believe otherwise.” His
appearance can be viewed here.
But consider what’s going to happen when the American taxpayers realize that
more and larger bailouts are on the way.
Commentators such as Andrew C. McCarthy have pointed
out that Obama’s Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) would cost even more than the
$700 billion that is being proposed as part of a socialist takeover of the U.S.
financial sector. Obama’s bill passed the House and Senator Joe Biden’s Foreign
Relations Committee and now awaits full Senate action.
But the Jubilee Act (S. 2166), which is co-sponsored in
the Senate by Barack Obama, has also passed the House and awaits Senate
action.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain is not an official sponsor of
the Jubilee Act or Obama’s Global Poverty Act. But the pressure is mounting on
McCain, as well as running mate Sarah Palin, to endorse the
legislation. 
In fact, McCain recently asked the wealthy rock star Bono, an advocate of
more U.S. foreign aid spending, for advice on how to help the rest of the
world. 
“The ONE Campaign and co-founder Bono spoke by telephone this afternoon with
Senator John McCain, Governor Sarah Palin, and members of the McCain campaign
policy staff about the issue of extreme poverty, especially in Africa,” a
September 24 ONE campaign news release declared. “The call today was part of
ongoing conversations between ONE and both the McCain and Obama presidential
campaigns.” No details of the conversations were provided.
Although we don’t know the specific advice provided to McCain and Palin, we
do know that the ONE campaign organization has been urging Senate passage of the
Jubilee Act, which would cancel the debts of 26 foreign countries even while the
U.S. suffers through its own financial crisis and Americans are losing their
homes and savings. It passed the House in April on a 285-132 vote. 
While the Global Poverty Act has started getting more serious attention, the
implications of passage of the Jubilee Act have been generally ignored. Yet, a
representative of the Treasury Department, Assistant Secretary For International
Affairs Clay Lowery, testified
at a Senate hearing in April that “The Jubilee Bill represents an unfunded
international mandate to fully cancel roughly $75 billion worth of debts owed by
the potentially eligible countries to official bilateral and multilateral
creditors.” This is on top of the $110 billion in debt reduction already being
granted to various countries, he said.
Despite foreign aid having cost the American people $2
trillion since World War II, Bono’s ONE organization believes in “allocating
more of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs” for the rest of the
world. 
ONE also promotes compliance with the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals,
the same expensive effort set forth legislatively in Obama’s Global Poverty
Act.
Bono, the lead singer of the rock band U2, is one of the richest entertainers
in the world and gets tremendous access to the media―and politicians―because of
his anti-poverty campaign. Less well-known is the fact that his band came in for
criticism two years ago when it transferred
part of its business empire out of Ireland to avoid high tax rates.
He also runs an organization known as DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), which is
funded in part by the Open Society Institute of Democratic Party moneybags George
Soros. A Soros associate, Morton Halperin, sits on the DATA board.
The ONE campaign says it is funded “through private and public foundations”
but only one name has been identified―that of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, which provided $3 million in 2004.
ONE campaign “partner”
organizations include the United Nations Association, the pro-U.N. lobbying
group, and Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation, which financially supports
the U.N.
While the ONE campaign is generally regarded as a left-wing organization, it
claims support from such notables as Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting
Network and Purpose Driven Life author and pastor Rick Warren.
ONE campaign members frequently show up at political rallies and have specifically targeted Sarah Palin with a
postcard campaign. They also presented her with a white “ONE” bracelet at a
campaign event. The bracelet is one
of many items being sold on behalf of the ONE campaign by the
“socially-conscious clothing company” known as EDUN.
The McCain campaign apparently figured that having Palin rub elbows with
Bono, while she was at the U.N. in New York meeting foreign leaders, would
impress the American people. Reportedly because of traffic problems, they ended
up having a telephone discussion and no photo opportunity. Conservatives were
alarmed by this effort of the McCain campaign to transform Palin into a pawn of
the “international community.”  
Also bowing to the left, before he came to Washington, D.C. to work on the
$700 billion federal takeover plan for the U.S. financial sector, McCain had
taken time to attend and speak at the “Clinton Global Initiative,” a campaign underwritten by big companies and
rich individuals to promote the pet causes of the disgraced former president.
One of these causes has been
an international tax on airline tickets to generate funds to fight
HIV/AIDS. 
Obama, as well as Bono, also spoke at the Clinton event.
On September 25, after conversing with McCain and Palin, Bono and his
collaborators were scheduled to hold a “United Nations emergency summit on the
Millennium Development Goals.” Bono’s ONE organization described them as “eight
goals” that were “drawn from the targets contained in the Millennium Declaration
that was adopted by 189 nations―and signed by 147 heads of state and governments
during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000.”
Similar language is incorporated in Obama’s Global Poverty Act, which has
passed the House and Senator Joe Biden’s Foreign Relations Committee, and now
awaits full Senate action. As AIM has documented repeatedly, a careful analysis
of the legislation, as well as the follow-up 2002 U.N. Financing for Development
Conference, which was designed to make the “goals” into a reality, leads to the
conclusion that the U.S. will have to provide $845 billion in increased foreign
aid spending, generated if necessary by a global tax on the American people.
At the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, Obama reaffirmed a “commitment” to “embracing the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.” He added, “This will take
more resources from the United States, and as President I will increase our
foreign assistance to provide them.”
On his blog, Bono spoke with pride about the fact that Obama and McCain had
cosponsored the “historic” $48 billion AIDS initiative this year and that Biden
“fought in the trenches for debt cancellation for the poorest of the poor when I
first started down this road.”
“So it will be interesting to find out where Governor Palin stands,” Bono
added. The implication is that Palin will have to come out in favor of spending
more U.S. taxpayer dollars on the rest of the world or she will risk getting
criticism and bad publicity from Bono and his media allies.
Once again, observers say, the McCain staffers seem to have tried to strip
the Alaska Governor of her conservative core beliefs.
Rushing her into interviews with liberal media attack dogs has already
backfired. If she is sent with talking points from Bono into the
vice-presidential debate with Obama sidekick Biden, who is pushing both the
Global Poverty Act and the Jubilee Act, her appeal to conservatives may take a
nose dive from which she may never recover.
For his part, if McCain backs a financial bailout of the rest of the world,
on top of an endorsement of the $700 billion Wall Street socialist scheme, some
conservatives are saying that they may start looking elsewhere for a
presidential ticket to support.
One place some may look is Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, who has
already been endorsed for the presidency by Rep. Ron Paul.  Baldwin,
calling the Wall Street plan a “fraud” on the American people, has called for “No Amnesty” for
the Wall Street “banksters.”

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Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at
cliff.kincaid@aim.org