It is Time to Pass FDR's Second Bill of Rights

FDR's Second Bill of Rights

The Second Bill of Rights was a proposal made by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on January 11, 1944 to suggest that the nation had come to recognize, and should now implement, a second bill of rights. Roosevelt did not argue for any change to the United States Constitution; he argued that the second bill of rights was to be implemented politically, not by federal judges. Roosevelt's stated justification was that the "political rights" guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness." Roosevelt's remedy was to create an "economic bill of rights" which would guarantee:

A job with a living wage

Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies

A home

Medical care

Education

Recreation

Roosevelt stated that having these rights would guarantee American security, and that America's place in the world depended upon how far these and similar rights had been carried into practice. Watch our greatest President as he delivers his historic address to the people of the United States. Too ill to give his State of the Union address in Congress, he delivered it over the radio nationally from the White House.



Unfortunately, FDR died in 1945 and the hopes for the Second Bill of Rights being implemented died with him. Over the next decade, the power of the banks, corporations and the military industrial complex grew tremendously and threatened the American way of life. At the end of his Presidential term in 1960, President Dwight David Eisenhower warned the American people of the coming dominance of the military industrial complex.



On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the coup d'etat was accomplished, and the Neocons took power in this country, and untold billions were re-directed to corporate interests at the expense of the American people. Capitalism had won; Democracy had lost. Here is the speech that led to JFK's assassination:

I urge everyone to see Michael Moore's new movie: Capitalism, a Love Story.











Copyright @ 1998-2009
All Rights Reserved

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Cutting Defense Spending is Key to Saving the Economy

Global Empire

At the end of his presidency, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a warning to the American people to be wary of the newly created "military-industrial complex". Although the wars (WW2 and Korea) were over, our economy had become forever changed due to our reliance upon the tools of war to sustain us. Now we have reached this point. It is truly incredible. The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic" (Metropolitan Books).

Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial "footprint" and the militarism that grows with it. It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual inventories from 2002 to 2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure Report, there has been an immense churning in the numbers of installations.

The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up.

Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's "worth" is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners.

The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords.

These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.

The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure.

It is time for America to convert from a nation of war to a nation of peace. Untold billions could be saved by closing just half of the bases we maintain worldwide. Our entire philosophy must change and President Obama is the perfect messenger to deliver that philosophy to the world. It's now or never.

source: GLOBAL RESEARCH










Copyright @ 1998-2009
All Rights Reserved

The Fall of the American Dream

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

How the Military-Industrial Complex Has Trashed America

At the conclusion of his term in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was very concerned that the alliance of the military and major corporations had placed America in a very dangerous position that could lead to future policy based upon what is best for the military-industrial complex, not for the American people or its economy.  He tried to warn us, but we didn't listen.  Now, the American economy has been intentionally bankrupted with trillions stolen by Corporate America, much of it through its alliance with our military and their "no-bid" misadventures around the world.

Now, with the economy near a great depression, President Bush has our military ready to take to the streets of America to "maintain order".  Never in our history have our freedoms been so endangered or have we ever been this close to a true fascist regime.  We came close in the early 1930's when Prescott Bush and JP Morgan were almost successful in planning the assassination of FDR and the takeover of a fascist regime.  Only the valiant and heroic efforts of General Smedley Butler prevented that from happening.  Now, some 80+ years later it appears that George W Bush has brought his grandfather's dreams to near reality.

This footage comes from an excellent documentary called "Why We Fight."