In Brief...
World News Review
Contributors: Cecil Maranville and Darris McNeely
The Money to Select a President
Millions and millions of dollars are being collected and spent in the U.S. presidential bid. The most ever spent by candidates for president was $343.1 million in the 2000 election. The actual total of money spent was much higher, $528.9 million, which included general election public funding and convention public funding.
The rate at which money is being spent in this election cycle indicates that it will probably set a new record. As we go to press, the latest totals of funds raised for Senator John Kerry is $180 million. President George W. Bush raised $215 million for his reelection before stopping to raise funds for others.
There was a great ballyhoo over undue influence on candidates through large campaign contributions during the 2000 election cycle, which led to the U.S. Congress' passing of a campaign finance reform law. No sooner had the law taken effect than organizations and individuals began to pour money through loopholes.
One way is through groups supposedly not controlled by the political parties, such as MoveOn.org and The Media Fund, both opposing President Bush, which have spent about $25 million as of the end of May.
There are countless ways to rain money into a campaign. Linda Chavez, former union official and author of Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics gives us this shocking insight: "Unions spend [an] estimated $800 million [on the presidential campaign], much of it hidden in the form of salaries for union officials assigned to work on political campaigns, get-out-the-vote efforts, and other unregulated contributions" ("Union Influence," Townhall.com, June 16, 2004, emphasis added).
Opensecrets.org catalogs the money spent in the 2004 presidential election cycle up through the end of May. First consider nine unsuccessful candidates for the Democrat ticket:
• Howard Dean—$51.5 million.
• John Edwards—$32.4 million.
• Wesley Clark—$28.6 million.
• Dick Gephardt—$20.9 million.
• Joe Lieberman—$18.7 million.
• Dennis Kucinich—11.4 million.
• Bob Graham—$5.4 million.
• Al Sharpton—$687,000.
• Carol Moseley Braun—$600,000.
On their own quest for the White House:
• Lyndon Larouche—$9.3 million.
• Ralph Nader—$900,000.
• John Kerry—$120.4 million.
• George W. Bush—$150.3 million.
That comes to a little over $450 million, with more than five months and two major conventions to go. That does not include money spent on the races for the U.S. Senate and House openings, already nearly $360 million. And these figures do not include the actual cost of receiving, tallying and reporting the votes (or the cost of legal challenges, such as in Florida in the 2000 election cycle). Nor does it measure the amount of money spent by the news media reporting on the campaigns.
The actual cost of the 2004 election cycle will certainly exceed a billion dollars and likely more—much, much more. Saying it isn't so bad, Pete Du Pont noted: The U.S. spends twice to three times as much on potato chips as it does on political activity—merely 0.05 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product ("Hooray for Campaign Spending," Opinion Journal, wsj.com, July 11, 2001). He added that $100 million was spent in 1995 just to market Seinfeld reruns. (Not only does the amount of money spent on elections seem obscene, but the idea that so much is spent on potato chips and TV's "slop culture" is not cheerful either!)
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Saudi Arabia: Trouble Taming the Tiger
For decades, Saudi school children have been taught anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda. It was no fluke that 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were Saudi Arabian. A recently released Saudi intelligence poll shows that Osama bin Laden could have had thousands more volunteers. Taken just weeks after 9/11, the survey found that 95 percent of Saudi Arabians from ages 25 to 41—with college educations—supported the terrorist.
Clearly, the long-held premise that terrorists are poor and uneducated is no longer true.
Even Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah recently let slip an anti-Semitic remark, saying in a news conference after a terrorist attack on a Saudi oil refinery that the Jews were to blame. MSNBC reported the crown prince's statement: "Zionism is behind it. It has become clear now. It has become clear to us. I don't say, I mean... It is not 100 percent, but 95 percent that the Zionist hands are behind what happened."
The Saudi interior minister followed with this absurd claim: "Al-Qaeda is backed by Israel and Zionism" (Andrew L. Jaffee, "Saudis Blame Jews for Terror," June 19, 2004).
Coming from average citizens, these statements would be unsettling. Coming from the head of the government and a chief aide, they are deeply disturbing.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism were undoubtedly in keeping with the thinking of the Arab peoples of the 1950s. It seems natural for poor people to hate the prosperous. Slandering others—especially Jews—undoubtedly seemed harmless. Strengthening nationalism through denigrating other nations that were traditionally unpopular was the easy way, and the Saudi government chose the easy way.
It allowed, encouraged and funded the radical Islamist Wahhabi sect. When the sect evolved into a threat to the sprawling self-indulgent Saudi royal family, the government continued funding the Wahhabis as virtual protection money. "We will fund you to take your radical actions to other countries; just leave Saudi Arabia alone" seems to have been the understanding.
For the very same terrorist attack that Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah blamed the Jews on Saudi TV, the Saudi government told the Western press that the culprits were al-Qaeda: One message for the folks at home; another for the West. That is, the government has wanted it both ways: anti- and pro-American.
In this cozy little world, back in 1990 Osama bin Laden (living in Saudi Arabia at the time) actually offered his forces to the royal family to help it remove Saddam Hussein's invading troops from Kuwait.
Throughout the decades of teaching little children to hate the United States and Israel—throughout the decades of funding radical Islamic ideas—Saudi Arabia was also an ally of the United States. It made that plain to all Arabs by allowing a U.S. base on its soil in the 1991 Gulf War.
Now the tiger has returned home to attack its keeper. The Saudi's duplicity began to backfire after the United States pressured the kingdom to expel bin Laden in 1994. His al-Qaeda terrorists are now attacking Saudi Arabia from within.
So, we have a truly bizarre phenomenon: Anti-Semitic, anti-American terrorists are attacking Saudi Arabia for being pro-America and therefore pro-Israel, while the Saudi government officials blame the Jews (and therefore America) for the terrorists' attacks.
The Saudis are sitting on a ticking bomb—a nation of people schooled in prejudice and terrorists who no longer honor their protection money. Increasing unemployment and decreasing government handouts make the nation ripe for revolution.
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A Shrinking Wheat Belt?
There was a time in the American plains when the wheat harvest was so abundant that the silos and barns were filled to overflowing. The grain was piled in the streets of small farming towns till it could be shipped off to market. The scene has changed in recent years as America's role as the world's dominant wheat producer has diminished.
According to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, the United States now claims just one quarter of the world wheat export market. Other nations with cheaper land and labor have become better at farming and are taking advantage of falling trade barriers. Some economists predict that within 20 years America may no longer be a net exporter.
Terry Zetterlund, the loan officer at Great Plains Bank in Eureka, South Dakota, advises clients to get out of wheat if they want to stay in business. "We aren't the big player anymore," he says.
America's agricultural balance of trade is being pressured by the country's growing appetite for largely imported foods such as olives and avocados. If current trends continue, the United States might run an agricultural trade deficit by the end of the decade, according to calculations by economists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana (June 18, 2004).
In a historic reversal, wheat is again pouring out of the Black Sea region of Russia. Long a sleeping giant with an abundant supply of cheap, fertile soil, Russia is now putting that land to work through political and market reforms. Combined with neighbors Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Russia will supply 11 percent of the world's wheat exports over the next 12 months, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Some economists see the region controlling 20 percent in about a decade.
A series of events beginning with the Crimean War in the mid-1800s altered the Russian farming climate, resulting in the migration of farmers to the American plains where similar growing conditions enabled them and their descendants to grow America into the "world's bread basket."
Two years ago a U.S. drought diminished its wheat crop, allowing Russia to temporarily pass it as the leading wheat exporter. America has recovered, but USDA economists say Russia's wheat production could soar 30 percent within a decade if it adopts further reforms. That would pressure U.S. exports to places like the Middle East.
Drought, competition and other factors are placing the American wheat farmer into riskier positions. The wheat belt is being drawn tighter.
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