The Family

"Jesus didn't come to take sides, he came to take over." - member of the Family and US congressman

"We desire to see a leadership led by God," reads a confidential mission statement. "Leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." Another principle expanded upon is stealthiness; members are instructed to pursue political jujitsu by making use of secular leaders "in the work of advancing His kingdom," and to avoid whenever possible the label Christian itself, lest they alert enemies to that advance.

--------

No, this is not about the mafia, but it's not that far off either. There is a secretive fundamentalist Christian group headed by Doug Coe named "The Fellowship" or "The Family", founded in the 1935, which makes Scientology or the K Street Gang look like Boy Scouts. Members of the Family include US senators, cabinet members, and state governors, and they seek to use their business/political connections to advance their views. They help organize the Congressional National Prayer Breakfast in Washington that sitting presidents also attend.

Their agenda is quite bizarre and hard to even call Christian. They believe that the New Testament's emphasis on helping the poor, humility, love, and compassion is all wrong. In fact, the Bible's secret message is all about worldly power, and they use free market capitalism, anti-gay, and anti-abortion issues to rally support. Yes, I know, Dan Brown is taking notes as we speak. Ironically for US lawmakers, they believe that American democracy is doomed to fail and totalitarianism is the way to go - the way Christ intended for us. Like many US elites, they were enamored with the European fascists (rising from nothing, their manipulation of the masses, uniformity of thought, and rapid industrialization/militarization), but after WWII they had to tone it down of course. Though even today, their leaders including Coe have used the examples of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot to instruct and describe how the Family seeks to embody and propagate total fanatical commitment to absolute power for Christ and his "true message".

They could be described as "elite fundamentalism". They also believe that Jesus has a special message for the chosen few, and his parables for the masses were just Spam, because we can't really handle the truth of his grand plan. Of course the high-ranking members of the family are the chosen. Strangely, the Family has both Catholic and Evangelical members. I suppose they put their dogmatic differences aside to join forces for the Culture War.

Their prominent members:
- Congressmen (some potential 2012 GOP presidential nominees, and some Dems too): Coburn, Prior, Grassley, Pitts, Stupak, Wolf, Ensign, Shuler, Nelson, Enzi, Thune, Inhofe, Wamp, McIntyre, Clinton (while she may not be an official member, Family head Doug Coe is an intimate spiritual advisor to her since her husband was president).
- Governor: Mark Sanford (yes, the guy who was caught using state resources to go to Argentina for a booty call).
- Other notable alums: Strom Thurmond, Charles Colson (Nixon's hatchet-man who went to jail for Watergate but after became CEO of big defense contractor Raytheon), Pat Robinson's father, David Kuo (Dubya's head of Faith-Based Initiatives).

Maybe leftist journalists are just trying to tar these conservative politicians with shady, unproven connections to a religious cult (like how douchebag Glen Beck tries to connect Obama to ACORN to the end of the world). But many of the Congressmen listed above live at C Street residences while in Washington owned by the Family, and rented to them at below-market rates. Probably the only reason the mainstream knows of the Family is some of their members were caught in embarrassing affairs (Ensign, Sanford, Pickering). I guess sometimes God wants you to break one of his commandments in service to the greater good.

Maybe you think that this is just tabloid and doesn't really affect our lives, but look at some of the Family politicians' recent actions. The last-minute abortion amendment to the House health bill was called the Pitts-Stupak amendment. Mother Teresa was not an outspoken critic of abortion until she met Pitts in the 1970s. Family members have used government funds to go on overseas missions in support of cruel dictators and corrupt regimes who happen to endorse pro-Family policies. They helped get weapons and money to Indonesian dictator Suharto, supported Christian militias in Lebanon, and currently back Yoweri Museveni, the despotic leader of post-Idi Amin Uganda (a nation with some of the most draconian anti-gay laws in the world). Before Museveni, they also armed Somali strongman Siad Barre during the Reagan-Bush years, who contributed to thousands of deaths. I have no idea how those Third World, war-torn nations and their pathetic leaders factor into God's plan for the world, but apparently the Family does. But what's the big deal, since other politicians take trips sponsored by companies or special-interest groups all the time? Well, it undermines US foreign policy and credibility when US legislators travel to speak with foreign leaders, advancing a private agenda that may or may not be aligned with official Washington policy (I would hope it isn't). One thing we have to thank Abramoff for are 2007 Congressional reforms that allow these trips and their funding to become public knowledge.

So to close, I know the Family is probably less of a risk to global stability than Al Qaeda or H1N1, but the fact that they are out there, that they believe what they do, and occupy very high positions of US power is cause for concern. If they are doing God's work and mean no harm as they say, then why be so secretive? Level with us and lead the masses on the path of righteousness, like the dictators they admire. Hopefully government transparency and accountability will grow, and constituents may find out if their leaders are affiliated with and executing the agenda of private groups that don't have the people's or America's best interests in mind.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120746516
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVrQkunIZXo&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(Christian_political_organization)
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15778 (a criticism of the Family from a Christian right source)
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/12/sharlet

A consequence of China's social engineering

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/04/04/world/1194839161724/china-s-kidnapped-children.html

With the "one child" policy now a generation old, many unforeseen
consequences affect the most populous nation. Sons are obviously
preferable in a Confucian society, so the family line can continue,
and girls are often expected to live with and serve the husband's
family after marriage (especially in rural/poorer communities),
leaving the parents of the girl without a caretaker in their old age.
Therefore many of the boys in China are referred to as "little
princes" because they are spoiled and the focus of the family, with so
much riding on their existence.

So even though prenatal gender screening is illegal in China, some 40M
girls have been aborted since 1979 according to this documentary:
http://www.hbo.com/docs/docuseries/chinasstolenchildren/index.html.
That creates a terrible gender imbalance, which will render millions
of (mostly poor) Chinese males unable to find a mate when they mature,
which defeats the whole purpose of their parents having a son in the
first place.

The policy and culture have created an environment where children are
a very precious commodity, and a black market has emerged. In China's
growing economy, more mothers have joined the workforce, and migrating
labor creates transient communities where neighbors do not know each
other, so children are more vulnerable. Human traffickers abduct young
children and sell them to a new family. Obviously the child has to be
young enough so it can't escape and find its way back home, and cuter
males are more expensive. Babies are cheaper because they are more
labor-intensive. People are willing to pay 10,000 RMB ($4,000) for a
child.

Besides kidnappings, some poor parents have no choice but sell their
kids. Even if you have no children, you must obtain a birthing license
with the state (pre-labor) to be able to officially register your
child. Otherwise authorities will charge large penalties (8-20k RMB)
if a couple has a child without a license. Some laborers many only
earn 2-5k RMB per year, so such a fee is impossible to meet, and they
may decide to not register their child and sell them to traffickers
for 3-8k RMB. Then I suppose the new parents will falsely register the
child under their name.

Girls are kidnapped for another reason. Due to the gender imbalance,
poorer males will have a harder time getting married. Black market
wives can be more expensive (~20,000 RMB) and less reliable, so why
not buy a girl younger, cheaper, and then groom her to become your
little prince's spouse?

Officially, there are about 3,000 official kidnapping cases under
investigation each year, but some estimate the actual number to be
70,000. Law enforcement is either too busy or unwilling to investigate
many cases, maybe due to lack of evidence. But local authorities are
also concerned about angry parents traveling to Beijing to petition
the government and make a stink about their case. So instead of
helping the grief-stricken parents, they will intimidate them into
silence. Injustices and discontent make the state look bad, and the
government is more concerned with preserving stability and the
appearance of harmony versus solving crimes. For the greater good I
suppose.

Some committed parents have set up web networks for kidnapping victims
to share information, and this has resulted in a few rescues. But
generally, cases will never be solved and families are forced to live
with the shame and despair of their predicament. But since this
tragedy mostly affects the poor, much of China is turning a blind eye.
Growth and progress always come at a price, with a huge abyss
separating those who profit and those who pay. Just as the Great Wall
was supposedly built upon the corpses of slave laborers and conquered
foes, modern superpower China is only able to exist because of the
suffering of the poor masses (as an example, over 4,000 Chinese coal
workers officially die each year to keep their factories humming, but
the actual number is probably double). Marx and Mao may not have
expected that curve ball, but to be fair, this is the case for every
strong nation.

Newsweek's "How we could have won in Vietnam"

http://www.newsweek.com/id/221632

To Newsweek,

In response to your Nov. 16 cover story about how we could have won in Vietnam, your writers failed to mention that (a) the fact that we lost in Vietnam did not greatly imperil America as the hawks predicted, and (b) we could have recognized an independent Vietnam in 1945, and worked diplomatically to sway them from communism, thereby averting the deaths of over two million people.

a) After the US withdrew and South Vietnam fell, a pan-communist Asian axis never materialized to threaten Western interests in the region. In fact, those nations were at times hostile to each other. China briefly invaded Vietnam in response to their toppling of the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea - all three being communist nations at the time. Since the 1990s, the US and Vietnam have been cordial trading partners, though of course political differences persist. But there was no "domino effect" or hateful Vietnamese fanatics plotting revenge against America, which is often speculatively associated with radical Islam today. Defeat is never palatable, but it's not the end of the world either, even in Afghanistan.

b) Abraham Lincoln said, "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" A war with Vietnamese communists was not inevitable. The OSS helped Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh (precursors to the Viet Cong) fight an insurgency against the occupying Japanese during WWII, with the hopes of earning independence later. As a vision for the postwar world, the US and UK signed the "Atlantic Charter" proclaiming that all peoples have the right to self-determination, and Ho called Truman on it. But after the war, Washington ignored Vietnam as France attempted to reclaim its former colonies. If we upheld our principles of freedom and liberty, instead of succumbing to Cold War fears and bygone colonialism, we could have made an independent Vietnam our ally. Ho lived in the West and was inspired by the American Revolution, but the US decided to make him an enemy.

Health bill narrowly passes House

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091108/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120220977

"The House bill drew the votes of 219 Democrats and Rep. Joseph Cao, a first-term Republican who holds an overwhelmingly Democratic seat in New Orleans. Opposed were 176 Republicans and 39 Democrats."

I called in a favor to my cousin there! You can thank me later, Obama. Well I guess Cao was in a tough spot, getting fluke elected in a mostly Dem district just because the FBI found blocks of cash in his opponent's freezer. He voted yes to hopefully get re-elected (doubtful) by his liberal constituents, but pissed off the GOP in the process. So even if he does get another term, no one will want to work with him (as if anyone wants to work with a guy named Cao to begin with).

The bill narrowly passed the House, which has a much bigger Dem majority than the Senate. So if 39/258 Dems opposed the bill (15%), and the same percentage holds in the Senate, then they can't get the 60 votes needed (even with Snowe). Lieberman said that he feels "morally obligated" to filibuster any bill with a public option in it. So I guess anything that passes the Senate probably won't have a public option.

And Blue Dog Dems even had to inject a sneaky abortion proposal into the House bill for it to pass. These conservative Dems (they should just register Republicans and stop trying to have it both ways) are so worried about their re-election if they endorse the health bill, that they supported an amendment essentially making the ban on federal assistance for abortions permanent. And Pelosi caved. Apparently the ban is currently yearly and needs to be renewed (but it always is), stemming back from Clinton times when he needed a big bill passed and the GOP stuck that provision in there, so he had no choice but accept it to move his bigger policy priorities forward.

Of course it's not like DC is handing out free abortions all the time to piss off Jesus, but that's what conservatives fear I guess. They think that federal subsidies to help the poor afford health insurance will allow them to get abortions covered by their health plans (and currently many health plans do cover abortions), so I guess in a convoluted way that could be seen as gov't assisted abortion. But abortion rights groups worry that with this ban in place, that will encourage private insurers to drop coverage of abortion, because why should they when their gov't-subsidized competitors aren't? So I guess abortions will still be legal, but you will pay out of pocket (assuming the bill passes in current form).

And it's not like Obama would veto this huge bill (and the main mission of his presidency) over a polarizing issue like abortion.

Don't believe the hype

1) Cash for clunkers

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_bi_ge/us_cash_for_clunkers

Of the $3B in federal subsidies for vehicle trade-ins, almost 1/3 went to old truck/SUV to new truck/SUV swaps (that not only guzzle more gas, but also have dirtier emissions than compact cars). There were 677,000 trade-ins in total, and 1/7 of those were for new vehicles getting less than 20 mpg. Preliminary data show that the average trade-in mpg was 16 and the average new vehicle mpg was 25. So there were 137M registered passenger cars in the US in 2005, and let's say the number is the same today. If 677K vehicles were traded in, at an average mpg improvement of 56%, the CARS program improved the American auto fleet's fuel economy by 0.28%.

The most common trade was an older Ford F-150 pickup for a new model (at a whopping 1-3 mpg savings to the planet), which happened 8,200 times. There were even $500M in deals where the new vehicle got the same or WORSE mileage than the traded in "clunker", supposedly in violation of the program rules, but nevertheless still happened. The gov't is currently investigating. But hey, Ford and GM posted improved profits recently, and the recovery underway! On the green side of things, GOP senators on the Environment Committee boycotted discussions on the climate change bill, but Chairwoman Boxer passed it anyway.

2) Bill Clinton honored with statue in Kosovo

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091102/wl_nm/us_kosovo_clinton_statue_2

The recently independent Kosovar Albanians honored their "savior" and champion Bill Clinton with a bronze statue and boulevard in his name at their capitol. First off, it was highly dubious for the US/EU/UN to grant autonomy and recognize breakaway regions at risk of ethnic cleansing such as Kosovo and East Timor, yet ignore the Ossetians, Chechens, Palestinians, Kurds, and others in similar predicaments elsewhere. But I suppose Indonesia has 17,000 islands, so losing one won't hurt too much (and Timor doesn't have much oil), and we just wanted to punish Serbia for its actions in the 1990s. Secondly, what was the deal with the mostly-forgotten Kosovo war anyway? In 1999, The ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on who you ask) revolted against the Serb government. Albanians attacked gov't buildings and the Serb minority in Kosovo, and of course the Serb military and paramilitary gangs retaliated harshly (but not much worse than Sherman in Atlanta). Clinton and his defense secretary William Cohen made the media rounds to justify NATO intervention, claiming that "hundreds of thousands" died in genocidal attacks, akin to Rwanda or the Holocaust. Of course than number came out of thin air, and later investigations of human remains in the region uncovered ~2,000 corpses, and not all were Albanian or victims of genocide. But despite some protests, Congress gave the green light. NATO dropped the hammer on Serbia with 78 days of air strikes, including cluster bombs (weapons now rejected by most of the civilized world besides Israel, the US, and Russia), until the Milosevic government finally capitulated (at the behest of Russia). 10 years later and billions of dollars spent, Kosovo is still a dirt-poor near-failed state, there are still 14,000 Smurf peacekeepers there (including 1,000 Americans), organized crime has flourished, and Yugoslavian refugees have flooded Western Europe, so hardly a success story of American nation building. But better than Afghanistan and Iraq I suppose.

But what you may not know, and most mainstream media ignore, is that the NATO bombing campaign also killed hundreds of civilians and barely diminished Serbia's military capabilities. In fact, the bombing angered Serbs and accelerated ethnic cleansing against Albanians in some instances (the NYT estimated 4,600 Albanians killed AFTER the NATO bombing commenced). And after the Serb withdrawal from Kosovo, the "hands off" UN forces were unable to stop the vengeful KLA from brutalizing the Kosovar Serbs. It's quite possible that as many Serbs were killed/raped/displaced in the war as Albanians. But we sided with the Albanians because we didn't like Serbia for causing all those problems in Bosnia some years back, and Milosevic was a grotesque strongman. Serbia was misbehaving and challenging the credibility of the US and NATO in post-Cold War Europe, so we had to respond with violence, even if it upset our wary ally Russia (historically a supporter of Serbs) and destabilized Eastern Europe with a humanitarian crisis. The attached reports from the libertarian Cato Institute (yes I know, consider the source, but at least they had the courage to tackle the subject) give more details.

After the Serb surrender, Clinton said that we "did the right thing in the right way". But now we are indefinitely responsible for Kosovo stability (a gloomy prospect), which gives the people and their leaders little incentive for reconciliation and development for a better, truly autonomous future (the same quandary exists in Iraq). Maybe doing nothing was unacceptable, but war and bombing usually kill all hope of a diplomatic solution and increase hatred, not decrease it. And let's be honest, we bombed because we didn't think the Yugos were worth American blood, but attrition bombing can't stop non-uniformed thugs from killing innocents. If the UN left today, probably nationalistic/ethic violence would resume, so we have really painted ourselves into a corner. So yeah, Clinton was all smiles in Pristina at the statue unveiling, like Bush on the aircraft carrier. Why do they always seem to erect more statues of short-sigted, self-righteous warlords than true peacemakers?