Will misery love company, Murray?

If you've been listening carefully to Canadian stock market analysts, Canada is in the same boat as the Americans re the impending market collapse brought on by the sub-prime derivatives scam.

This has been reported by our media of course, but in a carefully guarded manner so as not to create the general alarm we see in the US.

If one thinks about it, however, why should we escape the predicament the US market finds itself in? Our stock market is fully integrated with that of the US, and we have even LESS requirements for transparency in Corporate dealings.

We have huge sub-prime losses in pension and other mutual funds, and Canadian banks are barely holding their own (but putting a brave face on it), while CIBC posts a $2.5 billion loss, necessitating a bailout by the Bank of Canada.

And in Canada the housing bubble is just beginning its inevitable slide, while some analysts predict other Canadian banks will soon be knocking at the Bank of Canada's door.

The brutal truth about annexation

I've said it here before and will say it again: the grim reality is that we'd fare better control over our affairs if we didn't have a proxy, excuse-making and deal-making government; direct participation in the United States political process. "BC nationalist" though I am, in terms of procedural and constitutional challenges to deals like the one's we're seeing, we'd have more luck as US citizens; and as a gaggle of several new states, eahc with two shiny senators. We'd also have a hope of American media coverage with all its investigative zeal. Canada's separateness as a post-colonialist fiefdom has been used to undermine it, thanks to the near-absolute authority of sitting governments and the even longer-sitting mandarins of the bureaucracy. The interests of the smaller and less-populated states have often been overridden with matter like water and energy, true; but states have powers to cut deals directly with otehr states; NAFTA perpetrated the protection of the sysstem of corruption and giveaway that has been t he essence of Canadian resource economics since day one. if the border's going to be open, open it, there's no point in further pretense.

An integrated security sphere was an inevitable consequence of 9/11. And core among security needs is a lockdown on a secure energy supply. Continental security, and continental energy security, are inseparable. Nice to oppose it in principle; but who's going to tell Washington different? Especially if it means breaking a treaty (if either McCain or Abama doesn't strike it first).

I'm not so sure, Skookum1

Yes, come to think of it, Skookum1, it was an American, Mark Twain, who said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the poltroon".

In many ways we are but a carbon copy of the US. but what about our Social Safety Net? Do we just give in to our colluding politicians, like some Third-World country? Are we willing to embrace their "might is right" foreign policies?

Is it impossible to overcome this scourge the neocons have unleashed upon us?

Patriotism has nothing to do with it

Not immediately with annexation - and I don't mean a "roll over and take it" deal but one where environmental/resource issues and things like native claims aall get reckoned into the constitutionalities, and we don't join as "one big state from the Gulf of Georgia to the Atlantic", but rather as at least five or six states (I don't think they'd go for making PEI a full state, for instance). Ten/twelve senators and a new whack of Congressional seats and electoral college votes - and the imbalance in the American polity, which would never be the same. Even right-wing voters up here hafve a sense of entitlement for social services; there would be severe and lasting effects on the US than there would be on the former Canada. Alberta might be a "red state" but nobody else would be.

I actually think that the rightist/GOP/corporatist agenda probably doesn't like the idea of outright annexation; it's too much to their advantage to have a pet government in Ottawa and no accountability to the Canadian public, and they're well of the pinko mentality prevalent in Canuckistan. It's the Democratic forces in the US, ironically, that would have the most to gain from our joining the Union...

Democracy Highjacked

Murray Dobbin is correct. Our previously functioning democratic systems have failed by being hijacked by the same techniques perfected by the Republicans. Canadians are trusting, law abiding, deferential and generous. This is why Canada was so civilized in the past 50 years (vs the USA's aggression).

That pacifism is being exploited by the dishonest, manipulative neocons now running Ottawa. And BC. And Alberta...

Our institutions were not designed to work with this new breed of neocons. It's that simple.

How to address this deeply destructive movement will take every ounce of hard work and brilliant thought possible. That's of course very frustrating because no-one thought we would have to reinvent democracy all over again. But apparently we were wrong.

Roll up your sleeves and let's get started.

Great article.

I am an American

I am old enough to remember WW2. I am old enough to remember the great friendship between America and Canada despite our differences. (You are quite dotty up there!) But I look at you and England as America's greatest friends. And as with my best friend here in America, we are not always in agreement. I agree,though, with Murray Dobbin's assessment of the natural resources of Canada. They are yours and should not be shared without the involvement and approval of the Canadian citizenry. In future years, long after I am gone, you should be one of the earth's richest, self-supporting countries of the world. I may sound unpatriotic, (I am not), but the involvement of NAFTA agreements and the "floor" that is discussed allows the USA to drag its feet on its own needs for energy sources.
That said, Mr Dobbin's statement:
"The mimicking of a paranoid United States and the adoption of its crusade against the Muslim world?, frightens me. It shows a naive view of the threat of the infiltration of the Muslim word and its impact on our democratic systems. I may, of course, have interpreted his sentence incorrectly, but uncontrolled immigration and a too liberal attitude regarding changing our laws to accomodate theses other folks will most surely destroy both countries before the SPP/NAU ever comes to full enactment.
I should prefer that you remain our friends to the north, managing your own country, maintaining your own national pride, rather than becoming additional states in the USA.

Happy Canada Day.....

...how much longer will we be celebrating this?

Peter Dimitrov

Unless we use the revocation clauses in NAFTA - Canada is finished as an independent nation. As it is, it is essentially a colony- the energy (oil, gas, next hydroelectricity) supplier, as well as other commodities. What are some of the causes for this slide of continental integration - a multitude? But here is my list:

1) institutiional design of our governance structure - that places far too much authority in the Executive Branch of power to sign treaties, make appointments, authorize Order in Council's, a lack of checks & balances, no inclusion within the political system of balancing concepts such as 'subsidiarity' and proportional harmonization. What the Prime Minister or Premier says/wants happens, and cities, regions, other levels of government not recognized as having rights within the constitution - are out of lucl in the power game.

2) the capture of the Executive branch by the corporate sector, such that the legislative agenda is set to primarily benefit large publicly trading corporations and the majority shareholders.

3) insitutional investment funds, particularly pensions funds of some of the biggest unions in the country, who due to a lack of pension governance reform law, are not able to democratically control the investments of their monies.

4) corportions have all the "rights" of a natural person - which gives them the same human rights in the Charter that natural persons have: ie. freedom of expression, freedom of association, rights to privacy, rights to security of the 'person' - which makes it extremely difficult to have transparency and accountability.

5) monopoly capitialist control of the media, makes it very difficult, to counter the b.s. and propaganda constantly directed to the populace.

6) the internal dynamics of the dominant political parties...I am not even going to go there.

7) a largely new immigrant population, who are for the most party too busy getting settled in Canada, getting work, kids to school, learning some language skills, learning functional literacy skills to survive and do well in Canada, and political literacy for most is not high up on the list of priorities. - that is just the way it is - no fault here - but it takes a certain number of years to gain that political literacy - and with the media monopoly and b.s. that doesn't help

8) too much apathy, distraction, too much stress on the working people, and also on those living in poverty, and close to the poverty line.

Peter Dimitrov -Part 11

9) as to oil - if we were as bold as Norway, after we rescind NAFTA, we would nationalize ownership the entire energy sector...and make it provision of the constitution. As for reparation to the oil companies, consideration will have to be given to decades of tax breaks and the windfall profits they have been making - to reduce that sum to as close to zero as possible.

10) as for the world price of oil, I ask, why are Canadians and the entire world being compelled to pay the increased costs on oil resultant from: commodity speculators, and secondly due to the substantially weaking US$ - caused by Bush's trillions of dollars of debt - caused by his military adventures in Iraq, and thirdly, the windfall profits of the oil companies all the way along their vertical ownership of that sector - allowing them to take profits at each stage: profits at the production stage, refining stage, transport, marketing and retailing stage...resulting in such excesses as: last Q of 2007 Exxon's profit was 11.7 billion..for a year end profit of 40.6 billion. Now, at the end of 1st Q. 2008, profits were up 17% (on less production) totally 10.96 billion. What is happening world wide is unnecessary suffering imposed on all but the super-rich, for how long will Canadians put up with this inaction by pro-business ruling parties in Canada?

Tipping Point

Globalization has softened the borders everywhere to smooth the way for corporate domination. This is an illegal take over of resources for wealth creation now, at the expense of the public and our own future. Your not going to stop the wheels of global economics by re writing NAFTA or SPP but scrapping them would be a good start to realization that we're headed for disaster of unequalled proportions. When all life support systems are teetering in intensive care, it's only a matter of time for collapse. The math is simple, constant growth rates equals mass extinction. Have a real close look at what's lining up behind this global warming/carbon footprint facade. Besides Monsanto and Cargil taking over food production and distribution. Just behind the toxicity level, depleted fish stocks, loss of biodiverstiy and the ever increasing demand for more Dinsney and Big Macs. China and India comming on to the grid. The pharma lies about HIV and AIDS, and what is good for us and what is not. As if the herding of humans into urban feedlots wasn't enough of a clue, no wonder people will buy tickets to the hockey game and bobsled events of 2010. Anything but reality please, we're just not prepared for it.
Every day the tension builds. Behaviour is deteriorating daily, as stress sets in undetected, like the frog in the pot of water set to boil.... just have a look around you, it's pathetic. Go Dolphins! Please rise up and take your place as heirs to what's left of this fragile planet.

Did you vote for them to do this?

The citizens are outraged at the way the country is being given away. I did not vote for this to happen, my friends and family did not vote for it, my neighbours did not vote for it to happen. They tell me I live in a democracy. I always thought a basic principal of a democracy was the government did as the people wished.
What happened to Canada

What happened to Canada is

What happened to Canada is that the universities, the politicians and the people have swallowed Milton Friedman's fraudulent neoclassical market economic theory and now we, and the whole world, is committing suicide to fulfill the insatiable blackmail demands of the biggest legalized crime wave in human history.

Absolutely nothing can be done until this curse is removed from over humanity's heads.

When economic efficiency is defined as "The biggest profits for the lowest monetary inputs", and this is taught in our universities as a "science", while our politicians are selling us and our resources to fill the demands of this criminal idiocy, what else can we expect ?

So, stop crying over the effects and start going after the causes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

We have seen the enemy

"and "he" is us!"
Oh Darn! that could easily be misinterpreted. No pun intended. In fact I can not blame the Yanks nor the Canuck neocons. As pointed out above (or below, depending on how you happen to arrange your "comments") most folks have been educated to deal with 1950's economic theory - which had little bearing in reality even then! 'Course a few zingers have come down the pike since then:
1) Media control and manipulation - perfected more or less during the World wars but suddenly given access to television and now the Internet
2) "Silent Spring" and all that entails
3) "peak Oil"
4) Meltdown of the "House of Cards" - world wide "Stock Exchanges" as we speak
5) in the meantime the government, labouring under their outdated training, blunders forward dragging us (again no pun) along
Well! As far as I'm concerned this could not happen to a nicer bunch of people

shut off the taps, all of them

The solution is simple--serve the United States of America with a generous 90 days notice that ALL energy originating in Canada will cease to flow south. Additionally, terminate our partnership in NORAD, tear up the NAFTA and begin the nationalization of all US corporations operating branch plants in Canada. Bring the Army home from Afghanistan and pull the Navy out of the Persian Gulf. And that's just for starters. Let us remember that the biggest threat to Canada comes not from over the seas but from our so-called neighbour to the south.

The other shoe is a jackboot

The cupidity of such a notion is breathtaking; add in your observation at the end of that paragraph and tell me what's going to happen if we pull the 90-day ultimatum that you start the paragraph off with.

Who's going to stop them from marching across the border and securing their national security interests? Our old patron, Britain? Our new imperial power, China? (who'll be able to still buy our resources once the US owns them, and won't care). Mexico might back us up, for a few days but once the US military is done locking down Canada the full brunt of continental military/police power would be turned south.

You were thinking maybe Denmark was gonna help out if we told the Yanks to kiss it?

Kinda like Holland saying "Hey, Hitler, we can take you, c'mon, just try! What are you, chicken?"

Dear misterbill

I too am old enough to remember things.

I remember the 1950s in your great country. Even though your Constitution, one of the great founding documents of democracy in the world, absolutely guaranteed everyone freedom of political association, you were brought to so fear Communism that you persecuted your own people. You abandoned that freedom in fear of a system that, as it turned out, was on the verge of collapse.

I think somebody was lying to you, and you bought it, and freedom suffered.

Substitute "Communism" for "Muslim" in your statement, and it might have proceeded directly from the pen of one of those liars who stole your freedoms then.

Your Constitution still guarantees freedom of Religion, if I remember rightly, but the fear reflected in your statement convinces me that it's maybe no longer all that true.

A great tragedy, this attack on freedom. Greater since it comes from its greatest hope.

Do you think maybe somebody is lying to you again?

Cui bono, sir. I recommend you apply Occam's razor to that fear.

Outrage?

You'd better believe it, Mr. Dobbin. When we go to the pumps, only to find there is no gas, because the US needs the oil, or when we have to ration electricity, and heating fuel for much the same reasons, only then will the abstracts we call NAFTA and SPP hit home.

We are not a population that readily acts in advance of disaster. That is what we expect our governments to do, as our representatives. That our political parties have all been highjacked is yet another abstract we have not yet come to grips with. The most common phrase any one person in this country of ours is more apt to utter, would be: "Well, the government should ......... (fill in the blank)."

We do not form militias with the intent to overthrow our own government (or to at least keep some kind of check on the unlimited power it can and does, gather unto itself). We do not have in our history a Jefferson, who posited that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing".

Yet, what you are advocating, Mr. Dobbin, can be nothing less than rebellion. Rebellions are fomented by a small number of the population, as opposed to mass protests which require the cooperation of great numbers of the general population. We would only arrive at the latter when some common deprivation pushes us together.

We are simply not prepared to support or reject something we can't yet see on the horizon.

One of the most amazing

One of the most amazing facts of the human mind is its bottomless gullibility, dismissing unwelcome news. Like people who still maintain that there's no global warming, because to admit it, would hinder their scewball economic theories.

Here we have the North Pole opening up, huge areas of Antarctica melting and breaking off, the interior of BC is devastated by the pine beetle, because we didn't have -40 since 1995, but there's no global warming, because the Fraser Inst. says so.

I happen to be in daily contact with top scientists in the field, who have been aware of and warning about the disastrous consequences for many years. Even the Pentagon admitted it years ago, warning what damage the stopping of the Gulf Stream could cause.

By the way, did you know that the Germans were winning WW2 even on May 4, 1945? I heard the broadcasts. But then something happened..........

Here's an article, one of many, every day from all over the world from Britain:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/26/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

They were!

Not to get sidetracked but on "By the way, did you know that the Germans were winning WW2 even on May 4, 1945?" They were! What happened was that Hitler invaded Russia and Stalin became an ally of the U.S. out of convenience. If it had not been for the slaughter on the eastern front by both Hitler and Stalin the outcome would have been different. The world stamped out Nazism but Communism under the Stalinists got another 60 years. I sometimes wonder which option had or would have had the greatest body count.

Canada will survive if we elect a truly nationalist party to govern us.

Canada voted these fellows into office

Oh all you misery-mes. Did voters who put Martin and Campbell, etc. in their chairs really not think that they would trade away Canada?

Now that they are busy dismantling our great Country like we knew they would, why do you think you have a right to complain?

These neo-cons haven't changed their spots, you know. This was their colour long before you elected them. But you fell for all that law-and-order posturing and that "family values" tripe, and the business model paradigm for how a country should be run.

But how can anyone blame you? You have dumbly succumbed to the world view that the manipulated media have beamed into your homes for the last few decades. The view that Canada's cooperative and (hush!) socialist and caring society is weak and inefficient.

You have happily handed the reigns of power to the fear-monger profiteers. And now you worry that they are only concerned about profit? Ha! I laugh in your general direction!

We regret that Canadians aren't built for revolution. For short of a swelling public movement to oust this cohort of despots, we are stuck with 'em.

Better pray for Electoral Reform - some flavour of Proportional Representation - because unless this comes to pass, you have been bilked and cheated forever of what we once took as our Canadian Birthright!

bilgladstone

And there is that "government should do......." again. It isn't in our government's interest to bring about electoral reform, because (as you rightly pointed out) things are working just fine with them.

The only way to effect reform on an elemental level is through rebellion, plain and simple. I have yet to see a petition work, except on peripheral matters (peripheral that is, to the government's agenda, as demonstrated by what they do, and not by what they say).

I suppose a Gandhi-like non-violent protest would be effective, but just how do we get two Canadians to agree on anything -- then to commit themselves to action on that agreement?

Ed, I happen to side with your assessment of a warming climate. The debate over whether it is man-caused, or merely man-exacerbated, is moot. And the polar ice sheet doesn't melt if it is cooling; nor does the permafrost. Nor do glaciers disappear (unless of course the overall precipitation that feeds them has been affected)
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0160412005000553

Deep integration

Murray Dobbin and posters have effectively summarized the problems that face us as Canadians. Now the question is: what can we do to stop our slide into the economic and social disaster that is the American nation today? It is useless to rely on our governments to protect our sovereignty because they are actively involved in integrating our resources and our security with a country that is in steep decline.

The American national debt now stands at $ 9.37 trillion, increasing at the rate of $1.33 billion every day since last September, according to the nation debt clock at http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Their citizens have seen a constant erosion of their Constitution, drastically reducing their rights and subjecting them to surveillance and arrest on suspicion, with no rights of habeas corpus. Read the Military Commissions Act to see what rights they have lost - it is deeply disturbing.

What can ordinary citizens do? Does anyone have suggestions for effective actions we concerned Canadians can take in the face of the disasters that face us? How can we stop the moves to hitch our wagon to a falling star?

Ed says...

"Things we're flooded with, imported from China, are not "cheap", the real costs are only transferred on the ecology and future generations, killing them with pollution, hunger and illnesses we have yet to see."

Once a price is put on carbon, this will change. Imports from "dirty" economies will have to have carbon tariffs added in order to protect "greener" economies.

The model of dirty foreign production for export to our consumer marketplace will have to change.

This is one area in which the "free" enterprise system may actually accelerate a good thing.

No wonder conservative, oil-based Premieres don't want to monetize carbon emissions.

Amazingly there was an

Amazingly there was an interesting article in the Vancouver Sun on this topic and beyond. It's titled "Civilization's Golden Era Is Teetering on Collapse" by Hans Tammemagi and can be viewed at

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2eeece50-285f-4c4b-bb37-2d053d04d4e8

He looks at the depletion of oil and the dangers our global society faces.
I find it amazing that our provincial gov't has just allowed a pipeline to be built to export natural gas out of the country. I wonder if the exporting companies will pay the new gas tax.

Rick, there was a

Rick, there was a relatively healthy distribution between cities and rural in the 50s, but then came the criminal, Chicago School Neoclassical Market Economic Theory, topped up by US bank deregulation in the 80s, and in Canada's case in 1991, giving the multinational corporate mafia the necessary scriptural weapons for world colonization with the power of imaginary toy money.

Called "wealth creating foreign direct investment", and "globalization", the biggest crime waves in human history. Still being taught in our universities. The Chicago School is now planning a $200. million Milton Friedman department to further even more the forcing on of this criminal theory on the already self destructing world.

I started reading economics in 1982 and by 1985 discovered that the whole thing was pure BS and monumental crime, based on the fraudulent accounting system and definitions of Economic Efficiency, the GDP, Growth and Productivity figures.

Until the teaching of this crap remains unquestioned and unchallenged, we can scream blue murder about the loss of our sovereignty,country, democracy, food and oil supplies, nothing can, or will be done.

This is why I developed and copyrighted my
Principle for the Application of Physical Efficiency to Economics in 1991, only to establish the date. I have no financial interest in it. As a matter of fact, Murray Dobbin had one of the earliest copies of it, as I was contributing to his Reform Watch magazine at the time.

With the application of physical efficiency to economics we can see that the lowest resource and energy inputs into products and services will always be the lowest costs which prevents their misuse by false theories.

The present monetary figures used in economic calculations are not realities, but forcibly induced temporary perceptions, leading from one disaster to another, the total loss of democracy, decision making powers and enslavement.

Now tell this to our politicians on either side of the nut ladder and they'll faint.

I don't even mention economists as the vast majority of them are a lost case of mental warp.

Ed Deak.

Hear ye, hear ye ... ya hear me??

Tired of the Li said:

They tell me I live in a democracy. I always thought a basic principal of a democracy was the government did as the people wished.
What happened to Canada

In my view, there's a basic answer to what's going wrong not just in Canada but throughout the world. In my view, it's the job of the press to keep the citizens fully informed of the issues of the day. And the media are not doing that. They're turning into propaganda machines.

Conrad Black, Lord Black in the Cross-Hairs, is a good example. His aggressive media empire served his own purposes. And he's not the only media baron who wanted Canadians to take a sharp right turn, as Lord Black did with National Post. This isn't democratic. This isn't even fair or smart or enlightened. It's the fulfillment of the Law of Unintended Consequences until the population divides into FOR or AGAINST and spend their careers squabbling.

But it remains every leader's secret dream (if they can't buy their own media outlets) to have a corporate press so compliant that it obligingly turns against its own citizens, keeping them in thrall to the strong man's agenda. Berlusconi in Italy who, like CanWest in Canada, owns almost every news outlet, seems to have no trouble getting re-elected. Canada which once had a Tommy Douglas now keeps electing Mulroneys and Harpers and we wonder how that happened.

If Canada is to survive as a fair-minded nation, I believe that citizens will have to become much more vocal and visible.

BC Mary

The scenario is something like this:

- Remove any joie de vive from the general populace (best achieved by maintaining a constant state of tension and uncertainty);

- Turn the media into one giant "Entertainment Tonite" to replace the naggingly empty feeling a lack of purpose imbues in the citizenry;

- foster the impression of dependency on centrally-controlled infrastructure, and of a helplessness in attempting to circumvent "big brother" in a futile attempt at some independence;

- promote thorugh endless repetition the new truisms:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

and that bring sus to the presnt time.

Possible Solutions.

While I agree with much of what is being said here, I believe that we the citizens must stand up as well. And loudly.

We need to organize protests and speak of our outrage of the actions made on our behalf by this corrupt government. It's really the only way. To just post possible solutions such as the dissolution of NAFTA and the prevention of energy flowing south is not going to do anything. We have all grown too complacent towards this government. It's time we did something.

The key part of the way a democracy should be run is to have the voice of the people heard by those in power. The government exists to serve the people. The government does NOT exist to sell us out like this to the U.S. It's disgusting.

Canada already gone

Since the days of Mulroney, Reagan, Thatcher and the NAFTA agreements, Canada has slipped out of Canadian hands. Rather than question can it be saved, ask can you get it back.

Every town over 10,000 people has a McDonald's, Dairy Queen, Walmart, Starbucks, Canadian Tire (now American owned), Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Chevron, Exxon...the list goes on and on. The print and TV news media is but in a few hands and televison (cable or Internet) is dominated by American channels and programs. So sit back have a Coke and enjoy...or get active, get very very active.

The Deluge and Dubai

Perhaps it's not accidental that where the first urban civilizations were regularly wiped out by floods, indeed the region where the myth of the Great Flood in the western tradition is believed to have its very roots, is going to be where the newest and most moderne of all cities of all time will be the ones swallowed by the sea as a consequence of the very wealth that build those towers.

Those who have read Kafka's Parables and Paradoxes will recognize that theme.

How many floors of the al-Burj will be flooded out in a hundred years (if human civilization 'as we know it" makes it that far)? As for the low-lying tract condo housing, with all those nice lagoons - what're they gonna do, build a sea wall and gates at the Strait of Hormuz to keep the rise in the oceans out? Or what?

Rather poetic justice and like I said not all that accidental when you think about it....well, at least it's symmetrical beyond being simply ironic....

Rather like the Rocky Mountain rivers drying up (and the aquifers too), and thereby hurting the water-supply for the oil-producing province/states....

Maybe God does have a plan for neoconservatives.....

jeez

Great article. Refreshing to actually read about an important subject in the news.

It will take mainstream newspapers and TV shows to educate the public on the subject which they are fully failing at right now, with a few exceptions.

deluded by media

When I read the comments to this and similar articles, I am continually gobsmacked by how Canadians use American phrases as though they are part of Canda's heritage.

"We the People" comes from the US Constitution:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

"Of, by, and for the people" comes from from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

"To Serve and Protect" is a motto universally used by police forces in USA and Canada: First appeared in Toronto in 1812. Made into popular idiom through American TV shows: Dragnet and Adam 12. This motto may have actually begun in Canada!

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" is an inscription on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty.

"No Taxation without Representation" unifying proclamation of the Thirteen Colonies first used by Reverend Jonathan Mayhew in a sermon in Boston in 1750.

"These are the times that try men's souls." Thomas Paine

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." Zig Ziglar