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Book Review of Dick Morris and EileenMcGann, SCREWED! –How Foreign Countries Are Ripping America Off and Plundering Our Economy – and How Our Leaders Help Them Do It (Broadside Books, Harper Collins, 2012)
Raymond Richman, 6/9/2012

The movement toward world government has always had as it principal objective the weakening of the United State of America. As the authors state in their introduction, "A newly fashionable dogma of globalism –enthusiastic support for an economic and cultural view of “the world as one” – has supplanted a fundamental concern for the interests and needs of American citizens in the priorities of our national government."

The principal tool of the globalism strategy is international treaties.

In the G-20 whose decisions the US routinely agrees to is in effect a world legislature in which we have one vote and the European Union has five. The authors call it is “a German and French power grab.”  Moreover it includes countries like Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Argenina, S. Africa each with less than $1 trillion of GDP and  Mexico and Korea with $1 trillion. The IMF, largely financed by the U.S., “working through the G-20 .. sets the policies the Fed is obliged to follow.” We do not control our trade policies, the World Trade Organization does that. We don’t control land use policies, the global environmentalists do that.

The authors take a dim view of all the treaties proposed by unelected international bureaucrats, particularly the proposed Law of the Sea treaty which besides requiring that half the royalties from offshore drilling are to go to the UN, require the U.S. to share its offshore drilling technology and limit the freedom of the seas of the U.S. Navy and our fishing vessels and a treaty creating an International Criminal Court whose authority would be above our own Supreme Court focusing on genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression. Endorsed by 112 nations but mainly directed against the US. UN envoys to the Climate Change Conference in Durban, S, Africa, recently proposed a global climate court which would inter alia require nations to cut emissions and compensate poor nations. Guess where the money would come from?

The authors devote a chapter to China and allege that China’s strategic objective is to supplant the US as the largest and most successful economy in the world, to match and then ultimately supass our military power, to undermine our financial markets, and overtake our military and commercial technology. China is deliberately undervaluing its currency. We have on this site frequently criticized China’s use of mercantilist policies which it is permitted to get away with under World Trade Organization because she qualifies as an underdeveloped country. (We have proposed use of a variable single-country tariff, which we call the scaled tariff, whose rate varies rising as the trade deficit widens and declines as trade becomes balanced. We do not need to beg China to revalue its currency.)    

The authors criticize our policies toward Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia and recommend reducing our support for those regimes. They attack corruption at the United Nations and the ineffective loans made by the World Bank. Its aid, they write, “has succeeded in increasing the incomes of dictators, strongmen, military leaders, and tribal chiefs throughout the Third World, and particularly in Africa. But it has done nothing to advance these nations economically.” The World Bank has a staff of 10,000! Its head, American economist Robert Zoellick, receives an annual  compensation of $700,986. Ten other high officials, none of whom are Americans, receive salaries exceeding  $400,000. We would add: the latter’s salaries are “tax-free’!

The authors criticize our tolerance of the Chavez-Ahmadinejad alliance in our backyard. And they recommend closing down foreign lobbies often led by former Senate and House leaders.

The book is a wake-up call warning us that our elected leaders have been sacrificing the interests of American workers, American taxpayers, and endangering the security of the United States. Globalization is an attractive dream but we need to wake up and reassert American nationalism and sovereignty.