Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Peace dividend
As the cold war came to an end something called the Peace Dividend came into play. This was the extra money the government would have when the defense budget was cut. During the Clinton years the military was decreased from 2.1 million to 1.3 million. If we abruptly withdraw the troops from Afghanistan will this add to the unemployment? What jobs will be available for these servicemen. Will the money we save be applied to the deficit (ha) or will it go for more government programs. Will the money we paid the serviceman in salary put him on unemployment and pay for health insurance for some poor family.
Fisa
Just like the changes made by Clinton in the 90’s effected the home mortgage crisis of the past couple of years so did the changes made by the Church Commission of the 70’s effect our military actions of today.
For those who don’t remember the Church committee it was designed to rein in the power of the CIA as they had been caught using illegal tactics investigating US citizens. While this was well and good the committee went on to limit the activities of the CIA in foreign intelligence using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). It was not designed to effect activities outside the country but it did. The net result was that the CIA people no longer dealt with unsavory characters around the world and in the process lost valuable contacts which led to loss of valuable information.
Fast forward to today. People are questioning why the US did not know about the 9-11 disaster in advance or why we seem to be behind the curve on so many incidences. It is because we cut off our information channels years ago in an attempt to control the activities of the CIA which many thought were unacceptable. Even today the use of drones relies on observers on the ground and this requires that we have troops on the ground. Perhaps if we had more secret contacts we could be using them to find targets instead of our own troops.
Laws that are passed today may have negative effects many years from now. Even something like waterboarding may one day come back to haunt us. While we are taking the high ground today will we one day regret it.
For those who don’t remember the Church committee it was designed to rein in the power of the CIA as they had been caught using illegal tactics investigating US citizens. While this was well and good the committee went on to limit the activities of the CIA in foreign intelligence using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). It was not designed to effect activities outside the country but it did. The net result was that the CIA people no longer dealt with unsavory characters around the world and in the process lost valuable contacts which led to loss of valuable information.
Fast forward to today. People are questioning why the US did not know about the 9-11 disaster in advance or why we seem to be behind the curve on so many incidences. It is because we cut off our information channels years ago in an attempt to control the activities of the CIA which many thought were unacceptable. Even today the use of drones relies on observers on the ground and this requires that we have troops on the ground. Perhaps if we had more secret contacts we could be using them to find targets instead of our own troops.
Laws that are passed today may have negative effects many years from now. Even something like waterboarding may one day come back to haunt us. While we are taking the high ground today will we one day regret it.
Go along
During the 2010 elections, controversy erupted in the Delaware Republican primary for US Senate. The establishment candidate Michael Castle was challenged by Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell. Castle was the going away favorite to win the seat for the Republicans but when O’Donnell defeated him in the primary she was unable to beat the Democrat and the Republicans lost the seat. Establishment experts like former Bush advisor Carl Rove predicted this would happen and they were upset.
I bring this up to point out that most politico gurus want to win the seat regardless of what the candidate stands for and it is this idea I want to examine further. If you are a newly elected official it will not be long before you face your first real dilemma. A situation will arise where your personal beliefs will be in conflict with what your constituents believe. At that point you can either follow your heart and risk not being reelected or go with the crowd and be reelected or you can resign. In most cases the choice is to go with the crowd. The reasoning behind this is that if you are reelected you can have time to bring the crowd around to your way of thinking but if you are not reelected you lose the power that comes with office to make changes.
What happens over time is that you move the crowd slightly in your direction and the crowd moves you a good deal in their direction. The long term result is after many years you have moved so far away from where you started that you no longer have any strong personal convictions. You are always getting reelected but you are just going along to get along. All your bright eyed bushy tailed idealism is long gone and you are just another politician.
I bring this up to point out that most politico gurus want to win the seat regardless of what the candidate stands for and it is this idea I want to examine further. If you are a newly elected official it will not be long before you face your first real dilemma. A situation will arise where your personal beliefs will be in conflict with what your constituents believe. At that point you can either follow your heart and risk not being reelected or go with the crowd and be reelected or you can resign. In most cases the choice is to go with the crowd. The reasoning behind this is that if you are reelected you can have time to bring the crowd around to your way of thinking but if you are not reelected you lose the power that comes with office to make changes.
What happens over time is that you move the crowd slightly in your direction and the crowd moves you a good deal in their direction. The long term result is after many years you have moved so far away from where you started that you no longer have any strong personal convictions. You are always getting reelected but you are just going along to get along. All your bright eyed bushy tailed idealism is long gone and you are just another politician.
Guns
When guns are captured from criminals in Mexico they are examined and if it appears they might be from the US they are sent back to the US. Upon examining these returned guns it appeared that nine out of ten were made in the US. Using this information Hilary Clinton said:
EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
Later when more facts were available and all guns were checked the number that came from the US was 17%. By that time Hilary had made the argument that the drug problem was just as much the fault of the US as it was the fault of Mexico.
Shortly after that the AFT decided to send US made guns to Mexico hoping to keep track of these guns and lead them to the criminals. The operation was called Fast and Furious and some 2,500 guns were sent into Mexico. Unfortunately the government lost track of the guns and one of them was used to kill a border patrol agents.
There was an attempted cover up and it looks like the head of the ATF will lose his job.
Up to this point what I have stated is factual. Now I will move into speculation. Some people who are biased against Hilary suggest that she encouraged this operation in order to back up her claim that many guns come from the US. We will see how this evolves over the next few weeks. Some have suggested that if the economy continues to trend downward and Obama looks vulnerable that Hilary might challenge him for the nomination in 2012. These same people think that if it looks like Hilary might consider this the Obama administration will leak that it was Hilary who encourage the ATF to move these guns into Mexico. Is this dirty politics or what?
EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
Later when more facts were available and all guns were checked the number that came from the US was 17%. By that time Hilary had made the argument that the drug problem was just as much the fault of the US as it was the fault of Mexico.
Shortly after that the AFT decided to send US made guns to Mexico hoping to keep track of these guns and lead them to the criminals. The operation was called Fast and Furious and some 2,500 guns were sent into Mexico. Unfortunately the government lost track of the guns and one of them was used to kill a border patrol agents.
There was an attempted cover up and it looks like the head of the ATF will lose his job.
Up to this point what I have stated is factual. Now I will move into speculation. Some people who are biased against Hilary suggest that she encouraged this operation in order to back up her claim that many guns come from the US. We will see how this evolves over the next few weeks. Some have suggested that if the economy continues to trend downward and Obama looks vulnerable that Hilary might challenge him for the nomination in 2012. These same people think that if it looks like Hilary might consider this the Obama administration will leak that it was Hilary who encourage the ATF to move these guns into Mexico. Is this dirty politics or what?
Tea Party
There are many reasons attributed to the rise of the Tea Party but I think they can all be put into one category called corruption. We have politicians who are influenced by lobbyist, we have CEO’s who have huge benefits because the sit on each other’s board and give raises to one another, we have government agencies in bed with the people they regulate, we have Wall Street bankers using inside information to pad their pockets, we have political action committees (PAC’s) using money to influence elections, we have big unions using dues to elect people who will repay them with taxpayer money, and finally we have elected officials who say one thing to get elected and do another thing when in office.
For many years this type of behavior went ahead without challenge but the people finally got fed up and begin to speak up. At first these people were not considered a threat to the establishment when Pelosi referred to them as astroturf, but they soon realized that this group was not business as usual. The 2010 elections were a wakeup call to those in office and the slow economy has more and more people listening to these Tea Partiers. These people do not see themselves as members of a political party but rather as citizens concerned about the overall morality of the country. They believe that the America they grew up with is disappearing and they don’t like it.
For many years this type of behavior went ahead without challenge but the people finally got fed up and begin to speak up. At first these people were not considered a threat to the establishment when Pelosi referred to them as astroturf, but they soon realized that this group was not business as usual. The 2010 elections were a wakeup call to those in office and the slow economy has more and more people listening to these Tea Partiers. These people do not see themselves as members of a political party but rather as citizens concerned about the overall morality of the country. They believe that the America they grew up with is disappearing and they don’t like it.
War poll
Polls show that the American people are getting tired of the war in Afghanistan. I believe the reason for this is a misunderstanding between the civilian leadership and the military leadership. It is up to the President to set out the strategy and the military to determine the tactics. For example, suppose the President would say to the generals that we want to destroy the poppy fields and encourage the farmers to grow food products. The generals would then respond by saying we can do that and we will need 50,000 troops and two years. The failure in Viet Nam was a lack of strategy and we are in the same situation in Afghanistan. Obama told the generals what he wanted them to do and they said they need 60,000 troops and Obama said you can have 30,000 and they accepted that. They should have come back to the President and said if you are only sending half what we need then you must change your strategy. McChrystal tried to do this but the President would not meet privately with him for six months so he went ahead with the 30,000.
This same thing happened in Viet Nam. General Westmoreland asked for 100,000 troops and President Johnson sent 36,000 and the general accepted that. Unless the strategy was changed this was a mistake and we seem to be making the same mistake again.
This same thing happened in Viet Nam. General Westmoreland asked for 100,000 troops and President Johnson sent 36,000 and the general accepted that. Unless the strategy was changed this was a mistake and we seem to be making the same mistake again.
Stimulus
On February of 2009 the Obama administration passed the Stimulus Bill of 787 billion dollars. They predicted that passing this would keep unemployment below 8% but then it went to over 10%. They responded by saying that the economy was worse than they expected even though he had previously stated that the economy was the worst since the Great Depression. Last week the president said that he had created 2 million jobs in the past 15 months and attributed this to the stimulus. Assuming that is true we do the math and discover that each job cost the government $390,000. This does not count the second stimulus called QE2 which passed last November for 600 billion more. If this is the way we create jobs and we currently have 15 million people unemployed we must spend 5 trillion more to get jobs for these people. The fed has printed up 2.5 trillion in the last two years so I guess they could print up another 5 trillion. The reason I am going through this exercise is to point out that the average person does not have to analyze the situation to know that there is something not right about just printing money and handing it out to friends to spend. You can just use your common sense and know that this is going to lead to some serious problems not the least of which is inflation. I know that the average working stiff can see through this charade.
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