I just love lists...don’t you? Especially lists of 10...like The 10 Most Ugly... The 10 Most Beautiful...The 10 Most Egregious Outrages Against the American People...The 10 Most...get it? Well, this list burst past 10 in a flash...so, these outrages are not numbered...didn’t want to make you sick. Just read through as many as you can take before you get the urge to toss your cookies. Think of this list as a trip through the annals of the last seven and a half years of the long nightmare that is BUSH/CHENEY, and give thanks that it is almost over!

REMEMBER?

• Bush's Energy Policy: Big Oil's writing of it and refusal to divulge that participation ($200 barrel anyone ?)

• Plunge of the dollar

• Walter Reed poor in- and out-patient treatment (support our troops?)

• Military disability ratings: a 30% rating is the cut-off between receiving payments, staying within the military health-care system, and eligibility for family coverage and is now given out more rarely than before the beginning of the Iraq war, despite the large number of soldiers with severe injuries

• Despite backlogs and a 2005 budget that resulted in a $1.3 billion deficit, VA officials received $3.8 million in bonuses. About half a million went to officials who sat on the review boards giving out the bonuses.

• Trillions of dollars of skyrocketing deficit

• Slews of signing statement that flout our domestic laws and system of checks and balances

• Plamegate, Scooter Libby, and the infamous pardon

• Cooked intelligence and the Office of Strategic Plans/ Doug Feith

• No-bid contracts in Iraq, where Halliburton served up tainted food and water and overpriced gas as a thank-you to our brave troops

• Osama is still on the lam (why wasn't he captured in Tora Bora? He is one of the Bush crime family's bestest buddies!)

• The Military Commissions Act: torture, indefinite detention, and the end of habeas corpus

• K Street Lobbyists and Jack Abramoff

• Medicare: a MUCH bigger issue than Social Security left unaddressed

• Warrantless NSA wiretapping as Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card try to get the ailing and doped-up Ashcroft to sign off on their illegal domestic surveillance program

• Black prisons and extraordinary rendition to facilitate interrogation by torture

• Big budget deficits and vastly increased national debt going through the ROOF

• Tom Ridge and his colorful threat levels; Michael Chertoff and the general incompetence of homeland security; porous boarders

• Duke Cunningham

• Tom Delay, creator of the K Street Project

• Mark Foley, the ill-qualified chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children

• Tax cuts for the wealthiest, tax cuts for corporations, and tax cuts on capital gains; retention of the AMT, which hurts the middle class

• Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act: its principal feature was a reduction spaced over the 2001 to 2006 period in the 4 highest tax brackets, redistributing more wealth to the wealthiest while leaving those who could least afford it out in the cold

• Continued reliance on fossil and carbon based fuels, little movement on CAFE standards and conservation, and political interference in scientific reports

• Terri Schiavo

• Bill Frist making his famous (and erroneous) video diagnosis

• No vision for US health care (except the tacit vision of health care only for those who can afford it)

• Congressional investigations into the politicization of intelligence: Douglas Feith was running an intelligence operation that surely qualifies as illegal

• Marginalization of the UN

• Preventive war doctrine

• Colin Powell made the following statement on May 15, 2001, in congressional testimony: "It [Iraq] has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological, and nuclear--I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful." He contradicted these remarks on February 5, 2003, in his now infamous, reputation-killing, house-boy presentation to the UN Security Council on Iraq's WMD: "The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world."

• Condoleeza Rice's statement regarding Saddam Hussein on July 29, 2001, on CNN: "We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." On September 8, 2002, she contradicted this statement on CNN: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

• Dick Cheney's statement on April 15, 1994, at the American Enterprise Institute: "Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it--eastern Iraq--the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq." Cheney later contradicted these thoughtful remarks on May 14, 2007, on Fox News: "Al Qaeda has based its entire strategy on the proposition that they can break the will of the American people, that if they kill enough that eventually the U.S. Government will withdraw. They believe that...Al Qaeda has said Iraq is the central front in their war on the United States. You do not want to withdraw and give them a victory in Iraq."

• Failure to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians resulting from Bush's approach, which has been described as hands-off and disengaged

• Loss of US reputation internationally after massive post-9/11 world support

• Under-funding of basic research

• Poor performance--likely due in part to gross under-funding--within the FDA regarding drug testing and food safety

• Rampant cronyism

• Overuse and abuse of the National Guard and Reserves

• Increasing unpreparedness of US ground forces

• Skyrocketing problems with US balance of trade deficit

• Bush adviser Claude Allen arrested

• Ohio voting irregularities (hint: look to Kenneth Blackwell)

• Firing of US attorneys and the resulting cover-up in the Alberto Gonzales version of US rule of law: 1. Carol Lam, of Southern California, convicted Rep. Duke Cunningham and indicted the former No. 3 at the CIA, Dusty Foggo; 2. H. E. Cummins III, of eastern Arkansas, had been asked to investigate the Republican Governor in the neighboring state of Missouri. He announced that the investigation finished in October 2006 a month before the election but was fired anyway to make way for Timothy Griffin, an aide to Karl Rove who had been the principal opposition researcher in the Bush 2004 campaign; 3. David Iglesias, of New Mexico, angered Republican Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson when he refused to push for undeserved indictments of Democratic officials before the election after Domenici and Wilson inappropriately contacted him; 4. Daniel Bogden, of Nevada, similarly was replaced by Brett Tolman, who was crucial to bypassing Senate scrutiny of these appointments; 5. Paul K. Charlton, of Arizona, was investigating Republican Representative Rick Renzi for corruption; 6. John McKay, of western Washington, angered state Republicans for not fabricating voter fraud cases in the 2004 Governor's race which Democrat Christine Gregoire won by 129 votes; 7. Margaret Chiara, of western Michigan, was fired for reasons that are not clear. She was on the Native American Issues Subcommittee (NAIS) of US attorneys. It may have been to make way for Russell Stoddard, who had been languishing out in Guam as First Assistant Attorney after Frederick Black got demoted for investigating Abramoff's activities in the North Marianas; 8. Kevin V. Ryan, of northern California, is the only one of these eight who deserved to be on the list because he did run his office poorly. DOJ actually wanted to keep him on staff, but, since a federal judge forced the issue, his name was added to the list.

• Bush administration fought the 9/11 Commission and sought both to shape and limit testimony

• Failure to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations for 3 yrs

• Armstrong Williams

• Lack of action on Darfur

• Decimation of the Labor Department

• Conviction of David Safavian for lying and obstruction

• Presidential Daily Brief August 6, 2001--Bin Laden determined to attack in US--ignored by Bush and his administration

• EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman declared toxin-filled Ground Zero safe

• The Sago mining disaster, which inspired Bush to push for reduction in fines for safety violations

• Bush vetoes a stem cell research

• Leandro Aragoncillo in Cheney's office was accused of spying and pled guilty to unlawfully possessing secret US government documents. He was sentenced to 10 years on July 18, 2007.

• Attack on Plan B contraception

• Missile defense shield that doesn't work--it's a total white collar welfare boondoggle. So far, the only tangible result is that Vladimir Putin has used it as an excuse to introduce a new class of MIRV.

• Defunding overseas AIDS programs

• Selling creationist materials at the Grand Canyon gift shop claiming it was 6000 years old

• Bush has not attended a single funeral for any service-person killed in his wars

• False military reporting

• Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and the cover-ups at the top!

• Lawrence Franklin pled guilty to passing information on Iran to Israel

• Bush's assertion of his administration's right to open US mail in a signing statement

• Sub-prime mortgage crisis: a major plank of Bush's "ownership society" (no poor or middle class--and certainly no Blacks--need apply)

• Bush's connections to Enron and Ken Lay, who participated in Cheney's Energy Task Force

• Political interference in the Justice Department lawsuit against Big Tobacco

• No Child Left Behind: based on flawed and false data, a failed program that was chronically underfunded and capricious in its evaluations (not so ironically, one of Bush's brothers is making a killing on nationwide sales of standardized testing materials that are required under NCLB)

• Paul Wolfowitz, after his disastrous hyping of the Iraq war, did a McNamara and went to the World Bank

• The “lost” White House e-mails: not accident but policy. The White House had two e-mail systems, not one. It lost or destroyed many e-mails from both in deliberate and knowing violation of the Presidential Records Act.

• On December 14, 2004, President Bush awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, to General Tommy Franks, George Tenet, and Paul Bremer

• Aggressive proselytizing by Christian evangelical faculty and cadets at the US Air Force Academy

• Darleen Druyun, a principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force, pled guilty to fraud

• Jose Posada Carriles, terrorist who masterminded a Cuban airliner crash that killed 73, requested--and received--asylum in the US

• Lax security at US nuclear facilities and airports exposed by whistleblowers Richard Levernier and Bogdan Dzakovic; they were punished again with the case of Sibel Edmonds

• Stuart Bowen, Inspector General for the Bremer's CPA, documented that $8.8 billion had gone missing. Chronicled--and unchronicled--waste, abuse, and fraud of our tax dollars in Iraq. In the 2007 Defense appropriations act, an item was snuck in terminating Bowen's job, because, well, he was doing his job.

• Threatening witnesses (Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General Michael Elston acting, he says, on Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's orders to tell 3 of the 8 fired US attorneys to stay quiet or else)

• Preventing witnesses from testifying (Condi Rice directing Simon Dodge not to testify about his early identification of the uranium from Niger for Iraq documents as fakes and Rice's knowledge of this as National Security Advisor)

• Coaching of testimony known to be false by the coachers

• Testifying with severe “amnesia” (Gonzales, Kyle Sampson, Lurita Doan)

• Refusing to pursue contempt citations

• Attorney General John Ashcroft removed restrictions on domestic spying by the FBI in counter-terrorism investigations, including political and religious groups, without probable cause. Unsurprisingly, the FBI used its new powers (as it admitted on November 23, 2003) to spy on antiwar protesters.

• The State Department's top lawyer, William Taft IV, pointed out that non-observance of the Geneva Conventions could endanger American troops. Bush signed an executive order saying that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Taliban and al Qaeda detainees and further asserts his authority to suspend compliance with the Conventions in future conflicts.

• Despite numerous reports, no attempt was made to investigate up the military chain of command or the civilian political leadership of the Pentagon and the White House selling the war

• Twelve reasons and lies behind Duhbya attacking Iraq: 1. WMD lies; 2. Saddam Hussein behind 9/11 lies; 3. Saddam Hussein connected with al Qaeda lies; 4. “Fighting terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here” and other fear mongering; 5. Spread democracy (crock of lies); 6. Saddam Hussein was a “bad man” (as if Dubya isn't!); 7. Iraqi violations of UN Resolutions (Iraq has violated far fewer UN resolutions than Israel!); 8. The 1993 assassination attempt against GHW Bush (“Mine's bigger than poppy's!”); 9. Oil (the biggest true reason!); 10. Bases (read: imperialism, another true reason); 11. Defend Israel (another crock); 12. Bad intel (no cookie!)

• Bush's promise to veto an extension of the State Children's Health Insurance

• On September 11, 2007, the DOJ announced it would not pursue charges against three former corporate officers of Chiquita Banana, its CEO Cyrus Freidheim, general counsel Robert Olson, and board member Roderick Hills for paying $1.7 million in bribes to a Columbian paramilitary group, the AUC, from 1997 to 2004. The AUC is a right-wing death squad responsible for thousands of murders and is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

• Vice President Cheney's bizarre assertion that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) is not part of the Executive Branch...huh?

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I beg you to speak of Woman as you do of the Negro: speak of

her as a human being, as a citizen of the United States, as a

half of the people in whose hands lies the destiny of this Nation.

--Susan B. Anthony

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Events of 9/11--if You’re Not Convinced Either One Way

or the Other

Look, folks, we were attacked from within on September 11, 2001.Get over it and start reading about what really happened to us on that horrific day. Please pay special attention to Building 7, which wasn’t hit by a plane. Haven’t you wondered through the years why Building 7 came down? Hardly a word was spent on Building 7. Do your own research. I’ll give you a site to start with, but there is so much more: http://www.wanttoknow.info/050504davidraygriffin

David Ray Griffin wrote several books since 9/11/01...start by reading some of his work. He comes with impressive credentials.

******

Secrecy is Repugnant, said JFK

According to author Alan Watt, it was because of the speech given by President John F. Kennedy to the National News Publishers Association at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City on 27 April 1961 that Kennedy was marked to die. Below is an excerpt of that speech.

"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society, and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it’s in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes, or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."

Hear that, Skull and Bones??

*****

FRAUD! FRAUD!

So let’s see...are American elections more or less corrupt than a third-world country? It depends on which third-world country. We don’t have the accuracy of a “purple thumb” system. Instead we have the diabolic Diebold voting machines. They’re ever so flexible.

Yep! We have the magic Diebold voting machines. C’mon, get your votes here. Hurry home afterward. Dream of sugar plums dancing in your head as you drift to sleep anxious to wake to a new president. Isn’t this exciting? But wait! As usual, the gremlins enter the voting machines during the night. Grrrr. With a simple flick of a switch, voila! The losers are winners! The winners losers!

Don’t believe me? Check out the Don Siegelman story. He was the Democratic governor of Alabama. Then there was an election. Siegelman won. But wait! Enter Karl Rove using the Diebold no-fail model. Voters woke to Republican Governor Bob Riley, not Governor Don Siegelman.

Siegelman bitched. Can’t have that, thought Rove. That’s unsportsmanlike. Siegelman was hauled off to Federal prison on trumped-up charges to keep him quiet. He served 9 months before his friends could spring him. Hey, I’m not making this stuff up. Google it.

Massive voter fraud in this country, folks. The Supremes think everything is just hunky dokey. Perfect. No changes required by us, they said. Voting is perfect in America...just perfect!

*****

NAFTA & CAFTA--the gifts that keep on giving...thanks to George H. Bush and Bill Clinton. Ever wonder why our American workers are sitting on their thumbs these days? Look up these two trade deals and how they hurt America.

North American Free Trade Agreement--A free trade area, established between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico in 1989, NAFTA aims to remove import tariffs and quotas on most raw materials and manufactured goods, and restrictions on trans-border financial services. The agreement also has proposals on health, pollution, and the use of renewable resources. With a population of around 360 million, NAFTA has a similar market to that of the European Union.

The Dominican Republic--Central America Free Trade Agreement, commonly called DR-CAFTA, is a free trade agreement (legally a treaty under international law but not under US law). Originally, the agreement encompassed the United States and the Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua and was called CAFTA. In 2004, the Dominican Republic joined the negotiations, and the agreement was renamed DR-CAFTA.

DR-CAFTA, NAFTA, and active bilateral Free Trade Agreements include Canada and Costa Rica. Panama has completed negotiations with the US for a bilateral free trade agreement (ratification of which is pending), and Belize is a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Haiti, also a CARICOM member, was expected to be given certain additional trade preferences with the US under the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act before Congress adjourned during 2006. Unfortunately, none of these free trade agreements contains any protections for the environment or the welfare of workers at home or abroad. They are equal exploitation opportunities.

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Land of the "Free":

What do we tolerate in America today?

Torture, for one thing. Financial snooping, wiretapping, physical checkpoints, fingerprinting, and various other forms of ID tech mania. And then there are the cameras--the ever present cameras. We are at the zenith of another shameful period in our brief history.

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Whoops--our double standard is showing!

The Washington Post, the New York Times, and most of the mainstream media have buried the lies, broken laws, torture, Iraq War malfeasance, incompetence, cronyism, etc. of the Bush Administration for the most part in the back pages of the newspapers (if printed at all)--and generally kept it off television news altogether. But it can't get enough of whether the former minister of a presidential candidate--who served his nation in the Marines, by the way--"loves America."

Is this a joke?

No, it's the "Made in America" racial double standard at work.

It's as racist as "nailing" Barack Obama for not wearing a flag pin, even though George and Charlie and Hillary weren't wearing flag pins at the Philadelphia debate--and McCain is not asked why he frequently doesn't wear one. The double standard on the flag pin is so glaring that most Americans can't see it in front of their own eyes; one need only look at the television screen to see that Barack Obama is not the only candidate or television moderator not wearing the Bush Administration symbol of patriotism reduced to the size of a miniature piece of tin.

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I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

--Susan B. Anthony

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Limbaugh's Hate Speech and the American Sheeple

Rush Limbaugh, help spread the news. Help the United States be a good little neighbor. We’re not itching for war with Iran. Us? No way! Or are we??

As sure as Limbaugh has a big, fat ass...as sure as he is on Oxycotin 24/7...we are itchin’ to start a war with Iran! Yes, IraN! And, unfortunately this miserable, corrupt administration will have its way before leaving office and the new administration will be left to clean it up like so much shit in a baby’s diaper.

American people are patsies! We accept anything. Limbaugh can incite riots.

We won’t question it. We are passive. Have any of you read 1984? If not, read it!

The American people won’t impeach Bush. They just won’t.

*****

10 MILLION White House emails are missing! Is that all? Probably not. They’re breaking the news gradually. Read on...

The following report is from

CREW--Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

12 Apr 2007

Washington, DC--Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today has released a report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act, detailing the legal issues behind the story of the White House email scandal.

In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005, and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today, “It’s clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law; the only question now is to what extent? The ever changing excuses offered by the administration--that they didn’t want to violate the Hatch Act, that staff wasn’t clear on the law--are patently ridiculous. Very convenient that embarrassing--and potentially incriminating--emails have gone missing. It’s the Nixon White House all over again.”

WITHOUT A TRACE covers the following areas:

Presidential Records Act (PRA)--enacted in 1978, the PRA requires the president to preserve all presidential records, which are defined as those records relating to the “activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of [the president’s] constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties...”

Bush Administration Policy--the Bush Administration has refused to make public its record keeping policy. A confidential source provided CREW with a 2002 document indicating the use of “non EOP messaging enabled mechanisms should not be used for official business.”

Bush Administration Practice--in the wake of the scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff and the fired U.S. Attorneys, e-mails were released showing that top White House staffers routinely used Republican National Committee (RNC) e-mail accounts to conduct official business. For example, J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Political Director, used an RNC account to communicate with the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales regarding the appointments of new U.S. Attorneys. Similarly, Susan Ralston, a former aide to Karl Rove, used RNC e-mail accounts to communicate with Abramoff about appointments to the Department of the Interior.

Violations:

1) The administration failed to implement adequate record keeping systems to archive presidential email records;

2) Two confidential sources independently informed CREW that the administration abandoned a plan to recover more than five million missing e-mails;

3) White House staff used outside e-mail accounts to conduct presidential business, ensuring that e-mails were not adequately preserved. In fact, former Abramoff associate Kevin Ring said in an e-mail to Abramoff that Ralston had told him not to send e-mails to her official White House account “because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.”

Hatch Act Excuse: The administration has claimed that Rove, Jennings, and other staffers use RNC accounts to avoid violating the Hatch Act. This is untrue. The Hatch Act prohibits White House staff from using official resources for purely “political” purposes. “Political” refers to the president’s role as either a candidate for office or as the leader of his party. E-mail communications regarding presidential appointments for U.S. Attorney and Interior Department positions clearly fall within the PRA as making appointments is an official presidential function and does not relate to the president’s role as party leader.

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REMEMBER THE VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA!

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The Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 12

The Federalist Papers were written and published during the years 1787 and 1788 in several New York State newspapers to persuade New York voters to ratify the proposed constitution. They consist of 85 essays outlining how this new government would operate and why this type of government was the best choice for the United States of America. The essays were signed PUBLIUS. The authors of some papers are under dispute, but the general consensus is that Alexander Hamilton wrote fifty two, James Madison wrote twenty eight, and John Jay contributed the remaining five. The Federalist Papers remain today as an excellent reference for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Constitution. The following one is attributed to Alexander Hamilton and is taken from the New York Packet, November 27, 1787. It is titled “The Utility of the Union in Respect to Revenue.”

To the People of the State of New York:

THE effects of Union upon the commercial prosperity of the States have been sufficiently delineated. Its tendency to promote the interests of revenue will be the subject of our present inquiry.

The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares. By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness. The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer all orders of men, look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils. The often agitated question between agriculture and commerce has, from indubitable experience, received a decision which has silenced the rivalship that once subsisted between them, and has proved, to the satisfaction of their friends, that their interests are intimately blended and interwoven. It has been found in various countries that, in proportion as commerce has flourished, land has risen in value. And how could it have happened otherwise? Could that which procures a freer vent for the products of the earth, which furnishes new incitements to the cultivation of land, which is the most powerful instrument in increasing the quantity of money in a state could that, in fine, which is the faithful handmaid of labor and industry, in every shape, fail to augment that article, which is the prolific parent of far the greatest part of the objects upon which they are exerted? It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one, among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement, is to lead men astray from the plainest truths of reason and conviction.

The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates. Commerce, contributing to both these objects, must of necessity render the payment of taxes easier, and facilitate the requisite supplies to the treasury. The hereditary dominions of the Emperor of Germany contain a great extent of fertile, cultivated, and populous territory, a large proportion of which is situated in mild and luxuriant climates. In some parts of this territory are to be found the best gold and silver mines in Europe. And yet, from the want of the fostering influence of commerce, that monarch can boast but slender revenues. He has several times been compelled to owe obligations to the pecuniary succors of other nations for the preservation of his essential interests, and is unable, upon the strength of his own resources, to sustain a long or continued war.

But it is not in this aspect of the subject alone that Union will be seen to conduce to the purpose of revenue. There are other points of view, in which its influence will appear more immediate and decisive. It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation. Tax laws have in vain been multiplied; new methods to enforce the collection have in vain been tried; the public expectation has been uniformly disappointed, and the treasuries of the States have remained empty. The popular system of administration inherent in the nature of popular government, coinciding with the real scarcity of money incident to a languid and mutilated state of trade, has hitherto defeated every experiment for extensive collections, and has at length taught the different legislatures the folly of attempting them.

No person acquainted with what happens in other countries will be surprised at this circumstance. In so opulent a nation as that of Britain, where direct taxes from superior wealth must be much more tolerable, and, from the vigor of the government, much more practicable, than in America, far the greatest part of the national revenue is derived from taxes of the indirect kind, from imposts, and from excises. Duties on imported articles form a large branch of this latter description.

In America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties. In most parts of it, excises must be confined within a narrow compass. The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. The pockets of the farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly yield but scanty supplies, in the unwelcome shape of impositions on their houses and lands; and personal property is too precarious and invisible a fund to be laid hold of in any other way than by the imperceptible agency of taxes on consumption.

If these remarks have any foundation, that state of things which will best enable us to improve and extend so valuable a resource must be best adapted to our political welfare. And it cannot admit of a serious doubt, that this state of things must rest on the basis of a general Union. As far as this would be conducive to the interests of commerce, so far it must tend to the extension of the revenue to be drawn from that source. As far as it would contribute to rendering regulations for the collection of the duties more simple and efficacious, so far it must serve to answer the purposes of making the same rate of duties more productive, and of putting it into the power of the government to increase the rate without prejudice to trade.

The relative situation of these States; the number of rivers with which they are intersected, and of bays that wash there shores; the facility of communication in every direction; the affinity of language and manners; the familiar habits of intercourse; all these are circumstances that would conspire to render an illicit trade between them a matter of little difficulty, and would insure frequent evasions of the commercial regulations of each other. The separate States or confederacies would be necessitated by mutual jealousy to avoid the temptations to that kind of trade by the lowness of their duties. The temper of our governments, for a long time to come, would not permit those rigorous precautions by which the European nations guard the avenues into their respective countries, as well by land as by water; and which, even there, are found insufficient obstacles to the adventurous stratagems of avarice.

In France, there is an army of patrols (as they are called) constantly employed to secure their fiscal regulations against the inroads of the dealers in contraband trade. Mr. Neckar computes the number of these patrols at upwards of twenty thousand. This shows the immense difficulty in preventing that species of traffic, where there is an inland communication, and places in a strong light the disadvantages with which the collection of duties in this country would be encumbered, if by disunion the States should be placed in a situation, with respect to each other, resembling that of France with respect to her neighbors. The arbitrary and vexatious powers with which the patrols are necessarily armed, would be intolerable in a free country.

If, on the contrary, there be but one government pervading all the States, there will be, as to the principal part of our commerce, but ONE SIDE to guard the ATLANTIC COAST. Vessels arriving directly from foreign countries, laden with valuable cargoes, would rarely choose to hazard themselves to the complicated and critical perils which would attend attempts to unlade prior to their coming into port. They would have to dread both the dangers of the coast, and of detection, as well after as before their arrival at the places of their final destination. An ordinary degree of vigilance would be competent to the prevention of any material infractions upon the rights of the revenue. A few armed vessels, judiciously stationed at the entrances of our ports, might at a small expense be made useful sentinels of the laws. And the government having the same interest to provide against violations everywhere, the co operation of its measures in each State would have a powerful tendency to render them effectual. Here also we should preserve by Union, an advantage which nature holds out to us, and which would be relinquished by separation. The United States lie at a great distance from Europe, and at a considerable distance from all other places with which they would have extensive connections of foreign trade. The passage from them to us, in a few hours, or in a single night, as between the coasts of France and Britain, and of other neighboring nations, would be impracticable. This is a prodigious security against a direct contraband with foreign countries; but a circuitous contraband to one State, through the medium of another, would be both easy and safe. The difference between a direct importation from abroad, and an indirect importation through the channel of a neighboring State, in small parcels, according to time and opportunity, with the additional facilities of inland communication, must be palpable to every man of discernment.

It is therefore evident, that one national government would be able, at much less expense, to extend the duties on imports, beyond comparison, further than would be practicable to the States separately, or to any partial confederacies. Hitherto, I believe, it may safely be asserted, that these duties have not upon an average exceeded in any State three per cent. In France they are estimated to be about fifteen per cent., and in Britain they exceed this proportion. There seems to be nothing to hinder their being increased in this country to at least treble their present amount. The single article of ardent spirits, under federal regulation, might be made to furnish a considerable revenue. Upon a ratio to the importation into this State, the whole quantity imported into the United States may be estimated at four millions of gallons; which, at a shilling per gallon, would produce two hundred thousand pounds. That article would well bear this rate of duty; and if it should tend to diminish the consumption of it, such an effect would be equally favorable to the agriculture, to the economy, to the morals, and to the health of the society. There is, perhaps, nothing so much a subject of national extravagance as these spirits.

What will be the consequence, if we are not able to avail ourselves of the resource in question in its full extent? A nation cannot long exist without revenues. Destitute of this essential support, it must resign its independence, and sink into the degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events. In this country, if the principal part be not drawn from commerce, it must fall with oppressive weight upon land. It has been already intimated that excises, in their true signification, are too little in unison with the feelings of the people, to admit of great use being made of that mode of taxation; nor, indeed, in the States where almost the sole employment is agriculture, are the objects proper for excise sufficiently numerous to permit very ample collections in that way. Personal estate (as has been before remarked), from the difficulty in tracing it, cannot be subjected to large contributions, by any other means than by taxes on consumption. In populous cities, it may be enough the subject of conjecture, to occasion the oppression of individuals, without much aggregate benefit to the State; but beyond these circles, it must, in a great measure, escape the eye and the hand of the tax gatherer. As the necessities of the State, nevertheless, must be satisfied in some mode or other, the defect of other resources must throw the principal weight of public burdens on the possessors of land. And as, on the other hand, the wants of the government can never obtain an adequate supply, unless all the sources of revenue are open to its demands, the finances of the community, under such embarrassments, cannot be put into a situation consistent with its respectability or its security. Thus we shall not even have the consolations of a full treasury, to atone for the oppression of that valuable class of the citizens who are employed in the cultivation of the soil. But public and private distress will keep pace with each other in gloomy concert; and unite in deploring the infatuation of those counsels which led to disunion.

PUBLIUS