Okay, we’ve spoken about what kind of country we have and what kind of country some people want. The reality is recognizing what we have and trying to make what we have the best there is. The United States of America will never be a small country, at least I hope not, so why do small-minded people keep trying to make it one? Maybe because they just don’t understand that right now we are the biggest country in the world, (not land mass you idiot) with the biggest economy, the biggest military and the biggest responsibility to both its citizens and those of the rest of the world.
We can either abandon what we are, shut it down, pull the covers over our heads and sulk or we can act like the most important country in the world, accept our responsibilities and try to be what we actually are. To do that we have to create employment and we have to, eventually, balance the budget.
How do we balance the budget?
It’s very simple, we need more money and we need to spend that money in a more judicious manner. This means big changes in what we do and the way we do it. First let’s discuss a problem that drives Republicans nuts, spending money to make money. It makes them crazy because they absolutely believe that the way to make money is to cut taxes and cut expenses. At least that’s the way they expect the government to do it. If they tried that with their own businesses they would all be bankrupt before I finished this blog.
We’ve already discussed the trickle down economics idea, the cutting of taxes & expenses and how it just doesn’t work. It’s called “trickle down,” by the Republicans because they see those tax savings trickling down to small businesses where they will create jobs. Everybody else calls them “trickle down,” because like any leak, the money just runs down the gutter into the drainpipe and disappears into the sewer. It has never worked. It can’t. It’s bad business and worse government, so let’s look at the other alternative.
Spending Money to make Money:
Education:
In order to compete in a world economy we must compete in the world of education and like it or not education costs money. We need better science and math education for our kids, better technical education for our young people and a system of specific job re-education for those in our populace who have worked in industries that no longer exist. This is a large order but without it everything else we want to do is a waste of time. If we can’t compete intellectually we won’t compete at all, nothing we do will mean anything. That’s just the reality of the new world we live in.
Healthcare:
The second largest item in out current budget is healthcare, specifically Medicare, which along with Social Security is guaranteed to give Republicans acid indigestion. After decades of presidents trying and failing to pass some kind of comprehensive healthcare, Obama finally, in his first year, managed to get a bill into law. No it’s not perfect. Yes things should be fixed. And maybe it’s not even constitutional but the fact is, what we were living with before was absolutely, inarguably leading the nation into bankruptcy. We had to change and we did.
So instead of trying to help fix the first real positive healthcare step in the history of the country, the Republicans, in a shocking display of political negativism, launched an all out attack against it. This despite the fact that all non-partisan studies claimed it was an improvement and that it would ultimately save money.
I want to say that they did this without an alternate strategy, but of late, Congressman Paul Ryan has come up with a budget plan that after careful study has proved to be so inept that it has become an object of ridicule and a despicable betrayal of every American under the age of 53. It’s a complete sellout to big insurance, an industry that has proved unequivocally, that given the slightest opportunity, they will cheat their clients of every last penny on the table.
This is not the time to try to trash the President’s healthcare bill. This is the time to try to improve it and if the Republicans had any policy other then to hurt the administration, they would be doing that. What they are doing now, their desperate attempt to stop any kind of helpful legislation just because it comes from the Democrats or the President, is simply unpatriotic.
In a monumental miscalculation, they tried to get rid of it last month and it has backfired in a major way. Seniors, the group they had depended on to follow them, saw the reality and abandoned them in serious quantities. Even NEWT called it right-wing social engineering. Boy what a condemnation. Now Republicans are scrambling to see how they can abandon their stance on Medicare and still keep the far right fanatics from giving their heads and entrails to the Teabaggers.
Infrastructure:
The building and maintenance of infrastructure is the quickest way we can create much needed employment and the fact of infrastructure is the very basis for all industrial growth. I’m speaking here of everything from roads, bridges, bullet trains, ports, airports, dams and levees, to a new system of air traffic control based on GPS and a vastly expanded communications bandwidth. But infrastructure costs money, first, last and on a continuing basis. If we want to survive the future, if we want to prosper and continue to be a world leader we must create the basis for that success here and that basis is infrastructure.
So how do we pay for the healthcare, the education and the infrastructure? How do we pay for the necessary government loans or guarantees that, in the absence of action by the business and banking communities, (that have abandoned us after causing the economic crash through their greed or stupidity), must be forthcoming in order for these essential elements to be financed?
Where We Get the Money to Spend:
War:
Well the first place we have to look is budget cuts and the most bloated budget anyone will ever see is the U.S. military.
The biggest item in our current budget has to do with defense and military. Last year we spent $1.1trillion on our military. Right now most of our military planning and weapon design is aimed at a war we aren’t fighting anymore and may never fight again. Big invasions are out, there just isn’t anyone big enough to invade, not the old way anyhow. Clandestine operations are what we should be concentrating on and if we do we must then redesign our whole military strategy. This means cutting back on an enormous inventory of hardware like tanks, nuclear subs, large scale naval attack vessels, obsolete before they are produced fighters and bombers, etc. We need to redesign our armed forces to fight a 21st century war. They are now designed to fight in a 19th century manner.
Right now we are still fighting two wars without goals. Yes we’re winding down Iraq but we have to do it faster and more completely. We can have more influence there without the presence of troops than we maintain now. The war in Afghanistan is even more ludicrous. Who are we fighting, the Taliban to get rid of Al Qaeda? But Al Qaeda has no presence in Afghanistan and even if it did they could easily move elsewhere at a moments notice.
The fact is, there are Al Qaeda cells all over the Middle and Far-East and the way to attack them is not with mechanized armies but with the same kind of clandestine attack that killed their leader. We have to get out of Afghanistan instantly and completely. Let the tribes settle their own problems. They will be less of a problem that way than they will be if Karzai continues to stay in control. We are wasting trillions by having neither the correct military nor political strategy for either war.
And then there are the US troops based all over the rest of the world. We currently have approximately 516,270 troops stationed abroad in about 150 foreign countries. This includes 171,000 in Iraq and 134,000 in Afghanistan. That leaves about 211,000 troops in non-combat locations, the largest concentration in Germany where we keep about 54,000. Why? I mean, sure the foods good and the Germans do have a reputation for getting instantly aggressive, but come on, they should be back here, buying our goods, paying rent to our landlords and creating taxes on all that income and spending. The same goes for the other 157,000 troops in Japan, Italy, France, England, South Korea, The Philippines and everywhere else.
These other countries love having our troops deployed there. They spend a hell of lot of our tax money, money that now goes to fill the larders those host countries. We would be better off if those troops were here, working to rebuild our infrastructure. It wouldn’t be the first time. The Army Corp of engineers is responsible for much of the current infrastructure in this country and our non-combative troops were, in the past, actually used to build a lot of it, just to keep them busy. It makes sense.
We should be able to shave 20% off our military budget without sacrificing any of our defense capabilities. To do that we will have to create a leaner, meaner, more up-to-date combat force than we currently have and that might mean replacing a lot of the old thinking with new ideas. $220B would go a long way to reducing the debt.
We spend $80B in intelligence every year. That’s more than all the rest of the world combined and we are perpetually unprepared, The CIA didn’t see the fall of the Soviet Union, the revolutions in Eastern Europe, 9/11, Hussain’s non-existent arsenal of nuclear weapons, (at least that’s what Cheney says), the global financial crisis, and most recently the unrest in the Middle-East and North Africa. Could these events be predicted? Maybe not but if we had done our homework we would have at least been better prepared to deal with them when they did happen. International crises have a life, pretty much, all their own, but if we are to accept that premise, what the hell are we doing shelling out $80B to find out about them after they have happened. That’s what we have media for and it doesn’t cost one cent in taxes, it’s paid for by Bud Lite.
Coming on the tail of the big kill in Pakistan the intelligence community is riding high for almost the first time since WWII. Don’t let’s let the stars get in our eyes, we could easily cut 20% from the intelligence budget and still have a bigger system then the rest of the world combined. That’s another $16B. It adds up fast.
But the problem isn’t just wasted money; it’s also wasted opportunity. We send billions to unstable governments that will fold the minute they have some opposition, mainly because they don’t have the support of the people they govern. I know that deciding who to back and who to oppose is often a very complicated decision but the answer is usually the reason why we are hated by so many people in the Middle East. Better intelligence would lead to better decision making in this all important area.
With all the money we are spending and with the global importance, (oil) of the countries of the Middle East, North Africa & Pakistan, the CIA had almost no Arabic or Farsi speaking agents until the Iraq War. How is this possible? And to add to that stupidity they had not cultivated any local, native contacts because of a congressional edict that forbad them from employing criminals or foreigners from countries that we considered unfriendly. What kind of idiocy is this? Those are precisely the people you need in your covet network. Do the words Lucky Luciano, Mafia and invasion of Sicily mean anything to the morons in congress that that dictated this ridiculous position? Do any of them read history? Do any of them know what it is? Do any of them read at all?
Drugs
I know, this would normally be a non-starter but I have come to realize that there are enough intelligent people out there, people whose minds are not closed to good workable ideas, that I must bring it up.
Right now this country spends $40 billion a year on the already lost war on drugs. That’s $40 billion that doesn’t include the cost of incarcerating 2,424,279 people who are currently serving time on drug charges. That’s one in every 99 adults in the country. That’s ludicrous! In 2010 we arrested 1,663,582 people on non-violent drug charges. These figures are insane. There are more people using drugs in this country than were drinking before prohibition and the joke is that there would probably be less drug usage if it were legal. I mean, let’s face it, the appeal to kids is the illegality, the danger of it. If you don’t get that, you’re just brute stupid or you have your head in the sand.
In the state of California alone, it’s estimated that $1.4 trillion could be raised if marijuana were regulated and taxed. That’s one state! Legalizing drugs would create no more problems than do the legalizing of alcohol or gambling and like ending prohibition it would provide a deathblow to any number of illegal activities here, and in many other countries that supply us.
So why not? About ninety percent of the people I speak to are asking the same question. This includes many who are as far Right as the law allows. So who’s against it? Well, probably a lot of religious people especially Evangelical Christians and others who see it as a moral wrong. I’m not going to get into that argument because it’s a very long book but let me just say that to me, the moral wrong is allowing a situation to exist that feeds illegal enterprise, including terrorism, that destroys lives and drives young people into prostitution to pay the exorbitant fees for the illegal product and which generates a situation where the law is flaunted on a regular basis. The stoner, living in his room, blasted out of his mind, is certainly a social problem but just as certainly not a moral one. By the way, I’m not Bill Maher, I don’t partake. Eighty billion in enforcement and incarceration plus at least a trillion in sales taxes is not to be sneezed at.
Taxes:
So that leaves taxes. Yes they have to go up but just as certainly they have to be fixed. Our current system is a disaster. It must be simplified and it must be made more equitable.
We pay one of the lowest personal tax rates in the world and we get as much or more from it than any other country. We pay one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world but no company actually comes close to paying the higher rates.
And yes, the rich must pay a larger share than the poor. Why? It’s not about fair it’s about balance. It’s about living in an equitable country. The old axiom about the survival of the fittest works well in the animal kingdom but we aren’t animals, at least not most of us. And the fact is that the fittest do survive the best, but that doesn’t mean that no one else should have an acceptable life.
A guy who makes ten million a year should pay more taxes simply because the additional taxes will not impact his lifestyle at all. There is only so much any person can spend. After that it’s just a matter of being a pig.
The guy who makes fifty grand and has three kids is living at subsistence level. More taxes will really hurt his ability to enjoy his life. So what does it hurt if the millionaire kicks in a little more than he does, thereby allowing the poor guy to actually have a life? Maybe if the rich guy has a heart he’ll even get some kind of kick from knowing he helped someone have a nice life.
Hey guys, it’s what defines the difference between humans beings and animals. Which do you want to be?