Imagine There's No Countries

Interesting that many of us thought the election of Barack Obama might signal the end of American Independence as we surrendered sovereignty to the United Nations.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that Obama has decided to give up American power to a group which doesn't even officially exist: The Group of 20 which is shorthanded to the G-20.

In an example of governmental inflation at its most dangerous, the G-20 was originally the G-6, then Canada was allowed to sit at the grownups table and it became the G-7. When the Soviet Union returned to being good old Russia, they were invited in and it became the G-8.

The G-20 is supposed to be a meeting of the finance ministers and central bankers of the 20 largest economies. But these G-X meetings have now become summits. The meeting in Pittsburgh last week, included a significant number of the heads of states who had been in New York a few days earlier for the opening of the UN and who decided to make the trek along the Pennsylvania Turnpike to spend a day or two in the Steel City.

And as an example of how far away from Central Bank business the G-20 has strayed, Obama chose that venue (flanked by the U.K.'s Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy of France) to accuse Iran of having a secret nuclear plant in the mountains near Qum, which is about 100 miles from Tehran.

Why make that accusation in Pittsburgh instead of New York earlier in the week? Because Obama knows he can never cede sovereignty to the UN, but he may be able to get away with the G-20 as the international Board of Directors dealing with everything from banking regs to global warming to human rights to labor law to … whatever.

Hey, Mr. Mullings?

Yes. You over there on the Right.

Isn't this like that Lenin song is coming true?

Vladimir? From 1918? The one that starts, "Someday there will be more Czars in the Obama White House than in all the history of Russia?" Snappy tune, that.

No, moron. JOHN LENNON. The one that goes, "Imagine there's no countries; it isn't hard to do…"

Ah. Yes. I do believe you may be onto something.

If Obama really wants to "fundamentally change America" what better way than to make America go away?

Obama knows America - even Air America - would never sit still for letting the United Nations make decisions for us. An organization which is dumb enough to allow countries like Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Russia to …

Wait. Let me ask you this. If I say "Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Russia" what's the first term to come to your mind?

Human Rights.

Really? Ok. I'm wrong. I was going to write "An organization which is dumb enough to allow countries like Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Russia to belong to the Human Rights Commission is not an organization we want to have any say in how America conducts its business."

Actually, an organization which allows a country like Comoros (a group of islands between the Eastern coast of Africa and Madagascar) to have exactly the same number of votes in the General Assembly as the United States is not one we will pay much attention (even as we pay a great deal of money) to.

However, sharing sovereignty with the 20 largest economies on the planet is a potentially saleable deal as long as Obama doesn't say "We are sharing sovereignty with the 20 largest economies on the planet."

You say things like, "We are establishing new rules for international banking which will avoid the problems of last September." One of those new rules will be an international reserve currency which does not have "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" printed anywhere on it.

Trade issues, labor issues, climate issues, telecommunications issues (which run directly into news media issues) are just the tip of the regulatory iceberg which the G-20 can control.

When you think about it, oil companies, auto, electronics, soft drink, softWARE, pharmaceutical companies … the list goes on and on of multinational companies who only care about borders to the extent they have to change their formulations or work rules to suit different jurisdictions.

If I were running a multinational company I would be in favor of a G-20 running everything so I could lobby just one group and have clear sailing to 80 or 90 percent of the world's consumers.

And we've been wasting our time worrying about Obama's relationship with ACORN.

I hope someday you'll join us; and the world will live as one

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A list of the G-20 countries, the lyrics to the John Lennon song, and the CIA Factbook entry on Comoros which will be on your mid-term, so you should read it. Also a Mullfoto from the Nationals game yesterday and a Catchy Caption of the Day.