THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 1, January 1, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
MOVE OVER JEREMIAH!
ON ENTERING THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 2004:
A LOOK AT THE CHALLENGES THAT LIE AHEAD
By Alan Caruba
When I started writing these commentaries five years ago, I called them “Warning Signs” because I wanted them to reflect the many
problems either being experienced or which needed to be anticipated before they grew worse.
At the risk of sounding like some old Biblical prophet full of lamentations and foreboding, it needs to be said that, in 2004, there are
plenty of problems that we must address, not the least of which is the longterm effort to suppress and end the terrorism gripping the
world, thanks to the Islamic Jihad that began in the late 1970s. We can anticipate more “high alerts” in the year ahead.
One problem growing larger by the day is that of illegal immigration into the United States and, for incomprehensible reasons, the Bush
administration's apparent determination to make it worse. On December 9, the head of our Department of Homeland Security proposed
an amnesty for the eight to twelve million illegal aliens already here and, this month, abandoned the National Security Entry-Exit
Registration System (NSEERS) that required non-immigrant males from 25 terrorist-sponsoring nations to register with the U.S.
immigration enforcement authorities. Since its inception following September 11, 2001, NSEERS detained 14,000 lawbreakers while
registering 83,000 foreign nationals.
Illegal immigrants are draining American taxpayers just to pay for the costs of the illegals' hospitalization. The new Medicare
prescription drug plan includes a billion dollars to cover those costs. We should not be underwriting these costs, costs that are
estimated to be a minimum of five billion annually and, probably, a lot more. When illegals show up at a U.S. hospital, they should be
reported to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported. Imposing on the Medicare system the responsibility
of underwriting the costs of prescription drugs for illegal aliens will bankrupt the system, which is already financially troubled and
tottering on bankruptcy.
On the energy front, the cost of natural gas has experienced an 83% increase over the last 41 months. It has cost residential and industrial
consumers $111 billion dollars more during that period, and it will get worse. The U.S.A. is blessed with enormous natural gas reserves,
but, thanks to the environmental opposition, moratoriums on drilling remain in place. The same holds true for untapped oil and coal
reserves, both of which remain blocked. Meanwhile, our electricity distribution grid, built largely in the 1950s, is in desperate need of
upgrading and expansion. If not, look for more big blackouts.
The obscenity that is our nation’s educational system will continue to produce children and youth whose test scores, in virtually every
subject, will remain well below those of students in other nations. With America's public schools, in effect, controlled from Washington,
D.C., and with the U.S. Department of Education, in league with the National Education Association (the teachers' union), exercising
control over the schools in pursuit of an agenda of Leftwing political indoctrination and dumbing down of America's young people,
parents are at a loss to protect their children from the ignorance imposed on them. The grip of the USDOE and the NEA must be broken.
State and community control of schools must be returned. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution authorizes the present system of federal
control and direction of American education. Moreover, the coercive drugging of thousands of school children youth deemed to have
“attention deficit disorders” or of being “over-active” is downright criminal.
Property rights continue to be under assault by federal and state funded programs that put more and more of the nation’s landmass
under the control of the government or private environmental organizations. Homes and properties of private citizens are being seized
or controlled using such devices as the designation of wetlands, the Endangered Species Act, and “conservation easements”, among
others.
These are just a few of the problems that lay ahead.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Threat of Radical Islam
More on the Threat of Radical Islam
Immigration & Illegal Aliens
Energy, Environment, & Natural Resources
Education & America's Schools
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past col- umns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Na- tions vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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