Ron Paul on Barney Frank panel for defense cuts, George Soros ties, Sustainable Defense Task Force, Institute for Policy Studies paper, Obama rule through executive orders

(Highlighting by Citizen Wells)

From FrontPageMag.com January 2, 2012.

“Ron Paul’s Soros Defense Plan”

“It was recently observed that Ron Paul was to the left of Obama on national security and the best evidence for that statement can be found when one year ago Ron Paul joined forces with Barney Frank on a proposal to gut national defense via a panel of experts, quite a few of whom were tied to George Soros.

In July 2010, Barney Frank and Ron Paul co-authored a Huffington Post article rolling out their Sustainable Defense Task Force. The Task Force “consisting of experts on military expenditures that span the ideological spectrum” would recommend a trillion dollars in defense cuts. The experts, however, didn’t quite “span the ideological spectrum” — more like float under it.

The panel of experts who would decide how to best gut national defense featured such independent thinkers as William D. Hartung of the New America Foundation. Hartung’s main expertise was appearing in “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire.”

Then there was Lawrence J. Kolb of the Center for American Progress and Miriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies. If you want to know what the Center, the Foundation and the Institute all have in common, it’s Hungarian and smells like stale cabbage and the death of nations.

The rather creepy Institute for Policy Studies issued a paper proposing that Obama act as king and rule through executive orders. The New American Foundation is not only backed by Soros but has his son on its leadership council. The Center for American Progress is run by the co-chair of Obama’s transition team and is, for all intents and purposes, the think tank of the White House. All three are Soros funded.”
“But why would Ron Paul allow George Soros that much power and influence over America’s defense policy? There are a number of possibilities. There is the possibility that Ron Paul just didn’t know and didn’t bother to do his research. Which is not much of a recommendation for the job he’s running for. There’s another possibility that Ron Paul knew and didn’t care, that he had no objection to being part of a left-right alliance against the “American Empire” with Soros. But there’s also a third possibility.

During the previous election, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) ran an ad praising Ron Paul for his position against the war. AAEI was an umbrella group for MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, SEIU, Americans United For Change, the National Security Network and others in the progressive bestiary. A number of those beasties were Soros groups.

I’m not one to dabble in conspiracy theories, but when Soros pays for an ad praising you during the Republican primaries and then you put his experts in charge of America’s defense policy, then maybe some questions should be asked.”

Read more:

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/02/ron-pauls-soros-defense-plan/

From The Hill July 11, 2010.

“Panel commissioned by Barney Frank recommends nearly $1T in defense cuts”

“A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out actions the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Measures presented by the task force include making significant reductions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has strong support from Defense Secretary Robert Gates; delaying the procurement of a new midair refueling tanker the Air Force has identified as one of its top acquisition priorities; and reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships instead of the 313 eyed by the service.
Shipbuilding has strong support in the congressional defense committees, which write the Pentagon bills. Efforts to reduce the number of ships would run into resistance from the Pentagon and the shipbuilding lobby.

Frank on Friday warned that if he can’t convince Congress to act in the “general direction” of the task force recommendation, “then every other issue will suffer.” Not cutting the Pentagon’s budget could lead to higher taxes and spending cuts detrimental to the environment, housing and highway construction.

The acceptance of the recommendations would depend on a “philosophical change” and a “redefinition of the strategy,” Frank said at press conference on Capitol Hill.

He said the creation of the deficit reduction commission offers the best opportunity for the reduction recommendations. Frank wants to convince his colleagues to write to the deficit reduction commission and warn that they would not approve any of the plans suggested by the commission unless reduction of military spending is included.

The task force has looked at various options to trim the Pentagon’s budget in order to reduce the deficit. Those include a reduction in Army and Marine Corps end-strength by cutting back on personnel stationed in Europe and Asia; and rolling back Army and Marine Corps personnel as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end.

The panel also looked into reforming military compensation, which could save about $55 billion; saving $60 billion by reforming the military healthcare system; and reducing recruiting expenditures once the wars wind down to preserve about $5 billion.

All of these recommendations would be expected to engender congressional opposition.

The task force also suggested canceling the V-22 Osprey program and the Marine Corps’s troubled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.

The U.S. nuclear arsenal would also be on the chopping block, under the panel’s suggestions.

The task force recommends reducing the U.S. nuclear warhead total to 1,050.

Launchers would include 160 Minuteman missiles and seven Ohio-class submarines with 24 missiles (each with five warheads).

The panel also recommends retiring the Air Force bombers — “the bomber leg of the nuclear triad,” which includes land-based missiles and nuclear submarines — and ending work on the Trident II missile.

Frank acknowledged Friday that making cuts to the military’s healthcare system, known as Tricare, would be a “non-starter” with his congressional colleagues. But he said that suggestions on how to handle the nuclear arsenal and missile defense could get a “great deal” of support on the Hill.

Frank requested the creation of the task force in cooperation with Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The Project on Defense Alternatives coordinated the work of the task force, which included the following members: Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives; Benjamin Friedman, Cato Institute; William Hartung, New America Foundation; Christopher Hellman, National Priorities Project; Heather Hurlburt, National Security Network; Charles Knight, Project on Defense Alternatives; Lawrence J. Korb, Center for American Progress; Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action; Laicie Olson, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; Miriam Pemberton, Institute for Policy Studies; Laura Peterson, Taxpayers for Common Sense; Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College; Christopher Preble, Cato Institute, and Winslow Wheeler, Center for Defense Information.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/102677-panel-commissioned-by-barney-frank-recommends-nearly-1t-in-defense-cuts-to-close-deficit

From WND, World Net Daily, November 8, 2010.

“SOROS GROUP WANTS OBAMA TO RULE BY EXECUTIVE ORDER”

“It was progressives who won the mid-term elections, particularly incumbents in a socialist-founded congressional caucus that emerged from last week’s ballots virtually unscathed, boasted an article published by the George Soros-funded Institute for Policy Studies, a Marxist-oriented think-tank in Washington, D.C.

The article recommends that President Obama govern from executive order to push through a progressive agenda.
“Progressives won in the 2010 mid-term elections,” wrote Karen Dolan, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, and director of the Cities for Progress and Cities for Peace projects based at the radical organization.

“The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus in the House Democratic Caucus at over 80 members, emerged virtually unscathed, losing only three members,” she wrote, in the piece published on the IPS website.

“By contrast, the conservative Blue Dog Democratic caucus was more than sliced in half from 54 members to only 26. Further, of the 34 conservative Dems who voted against Obama’s Healthcare Reform, a mere 12 won re-election,” she wrote.

Dolan declared that “our work is now finally beginning.”

“The veil of a happy Democratic governing majority is finally lifted. We didn’t have it then; We don’t have it now. But what we do have now is a more solidly progressive bunch of Dems in Congress and a president presumably less encumbered by the false illusion that playing nice will get him a date with the other team.”

She went on to recommend that progressives “throw our support unabashedly behind the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and let’s push Obama to finally do the right thing through as many Executive Orders as we can present to him.””

http://www.wnd.com/2010/11/225829/