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Past is Prologue

  • Posted on June 24, 2011 at 1:41 pm

My mind works in mysterious ways.  I decided to take the “Way Back Machine” ride.  On the news yesterday there was much talk about what President Obama said about troops coming home from Afghanistan.  It sounds like too little, too late to me.  I was thinking about something I heard recently about the cost of the wars.  The amount I remember is two billion a week.  That is one hefty sum which led me to the internet to do some research.  I came across a recent document from the Congressional Research Service entitled, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11.”   http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

Inside this document there is Table 1 that breaks down the yearly cost.  I highly suggest looking at the document as there are some strange things within it.  Considering these figures, I went on to look up some other information as it pertains to the U.S. National Debt and I came across some interesting old articles.  http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

The cost to continue these wars is staggering.  On CSPAN yesterday morning Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat from Ohio, said that it costs $400.00 a gallon for gas for those troops on the front line in Afghanistan.   http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63407-400gallon-gas-another-cost-of-war-in-afghanistan-

If you read this article you will also discover that it costs a billion dollars for a thousand troops.  Just think about that!

The day before, I also heard Senator Manchin from West Virginia say that the Chinese are mining copper in Afghanistan.  They benefit from our troops in the area but they don’t pay for them!  What are we mining?  Probably more terrorists that hate us!  Representative Kaptur also had a discussion with President Obama.  She wants to take 1% of the defense budget and put it into a jobs program.  She wants to utilize unused bases around the country to start these programs for rebuilding communities hit hard by these economic times.

What I’m trying to get at are a couple of different things.  First of all the Republicans have taken back the tax level for the wealthy to the fifties.  (They have said it’s not just for the wealthy but that we all benefit.)  As a woman, I used to joke about how the Republicans want to take us back to the fifties.  However, it is no joking matter.  Back in 1999 for the first time in 25 years, the US Government planned to reduce the size of the national debt.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/411973.stm

Towards the end of the Clinton term in September of 2000 he said this, “Like our Olympic athletes in Sydney, the American people are breaking all kinds of records these days. This is the first year we’ve balanced the budget without using the Medicare trust fund since Medicare was created in 1965. I think we should follow Al Gore’s advice and lock those trust funds away for the future.”

Everything was looking promising.  Of course we all now know how much fun everyone made of Gore’s “lockbox” statement.  There is more here on what he had to say on the subject and it is worth remembering considering the current state of things.  http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/al_gore_social_security.htm

So, what changed everything?  As far as I can tell there were four episodic things that changed the direction of our country.  First were the 2000 election and the decision by the Supreme Court.  Second were the Bush tax cuts.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration

Third was the tragedy of September 11th.  Finally, fourth were the decisions to go to war and remain entrenched in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya for basically ten years.  Now some would say I forgot about the sup-prime mortgage problem.  However, I think like dominoes, when you put in motion all of the other things, well, shit happens!  It’s like what came first, the chicken or the egg?  In my mind the Bush tax cuts have put an unbelievable strain on our country that can be felt across the nation.  We feel it on our roads, in our schools, and worrying about our jobs.  While many people may think they want to keep their tax cuts, most are probably not thinking about the true cost of those cuts and who benefits the most.  The tax cuts are tricky because they have embedded into them something for families.  So, when the wealthy get their big cuts, people with children are probably okay with it because they get their cuts as well.  Most people don’t think about how those cuts have cost our country in so many ways.  As the federal government does less and less for us, they push more and more back onto the states.  We all know the result of that, cuts and more cuts locally.

States seem to be getting desperate.  I learned about “Project 60” proposed by the governor of Idaho.  Hmm, what could that be?  There is talk on the internet about a Chinese company building a self contained city and bringing their own workers over.  Could we be that desperate?  Here is the message from Governor Otter.  http://www.project60.idaho.gov/message.html

I went to the Project 60 PDF file.  The link is on the page.  Embedded into the nice brochure is this:

Establish an Idaho EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program which grants visas to foreign nationals investing $500,000-$1,000,000.

I ended up at this blog today and I am wondering about all of this.  http://wallstreetpit.com/78558-who-really-owns-america-now

One guy called in on CSPAN yesterday and he stood out because of what he said.  He called us a “plantation nation”.  The wording could have been slightly different than that but I do remember the plantation reference.  He basically feels that business in their pursuit of all things global have made out country and its citizens into a plantation like setting.  We are like a slave nation.  We are the good little worker bees and big business is the owner of the plantation.  He wants the slaves to revolt!  Our children are being told that they are going to have to compete globally.  I don’t think the wages in China are going to bring our own wages up here.  There is no loyalty any more to country.  The loyalty seems to be to business.  Business will go wherever they can produce their product cheaper.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be better but the bottom line is the bottom dollar.  If business can use programs like “Project 60” to import cheaper labor, they will do it.  That means that all of us that thought our jobs couldn’t be out sourced to another country better start thinking about the past and how it relates to the future.

“Mourning in America” and Other Lies

  • Posted on September 22, 2010 at 7:15 pm

It’s pretty obvious from the following chart showing the national debt that President Obama inherited hell.  Whether you like him or dislike him is irrelevant.  This is the hell he inherited as president.

This morning I was greeted with this Republican ad on TV.

I noticed a few things about it.  One, it was very “white”.   I also noticed the play on the word “mourning” as though we are mourning the death of our country.  What most people might not realize is this is an old ad that has been remade.  The Republicans today aren’t very “forward” thinking.  They also aren’t very creative.  They are trying to be clever with their little “word” game.  They would like us all to remember the Reagan years with some kind of loving memory.  The original ad used the word “morning”.  Here it is.

It too is a very white ad,  as though that’s what America is all about.   You know “white” people getting married and living their lives in peace.  It mentions the interest rates as being half what they were.  This is a boldface lie.  I had a place purchased at that time and the interest rate was a whopping 14%.  Another thing that is interesting is the national debt.  If you look at the chart above, you will notice that the national debt began it’s very sharp upward swing under President Reagan.  Conservative Republicans talk in this recent ad about a smaller, more caring government.  Caring government and Republican rule is almost like an oxymoron.  The two don’t even belong together.  Under the first President Bush we had a “thousand points of light”.  If  people were having hard times, I guess they were supposed to find one of those thousand points of light..  I think most people would prefer a job to begging any day of the week.  If you look through the past several years of Republican rule, government spending and the national debt has been anything but small.  You can see both of these charts larger if you just click on them.

The new ad portrays this idyllic life that we could have with a smaller more “caring” government. .  Republican rule has brought us much chaos and to add to it a resurgence of poverty in America.  The true “mourning” should be for the death of the middle class and for the poverty stricken that have lost so much under Republican rule.  During the second Bush presidency we had tax cuts for the wealthy and two wars that nobody wanted to pay for.  The end result is a huge pile of national debt, most middle and poor people with stagnant wages or no job at all.  This is just reality.  The numbers don’t lie.  Republican rule is a rule where there are tax cuts for the wealthy and a minimal amount for everyone else.  Republican rule is just a nightmare and someone needs to point this out when these ads are run on TV that just are false.

I noticed that it is a special group creating the ad, probably a 527 advocacy group for the wealthy for all we know.  Trust me the wealthy have a different agenda than the rest of us!  This is the group that’s pushing this latest ad.

http://cftr.org/default.aspx

They’re all pretty much Reagan people.

http://cftr.org/about/default.aspx

Here are just a few of the people involved in the making of this ad.  The main thing I notice is how closely they are tied to Republican governing.

Craig Shirley, CEO Shirley and Banister

Bill Pascoe, runs a conservative blog and was Alan Keyes campaign manager in 2004 (That’s when Alan ran against Obama for the senate.)

He says, “Penance for all the wrongs I’ve committed during the course of a professional career in and around politics.”

Cleta Mitchell is a partner in Washington D.C. office of Foley and Lardner LLP

Diana Banister is Vice President of Shirley and Banister Public Affairs

Republicans also grow government.  If you will look closely at the following chart you will notice that there was a sharp climb in government growth and % of GDP spent on government growth in the early eighties under President Reagan.  You should also notice the sharp decline in those same expenses under President Clinton.  The climb starts back up under President Bush.

I’m tired of those Republican lies that I seem to be hearing in this latest ad.  Those Republicans don’t seem to have any trouble spending my money or yours.  I say talk is cheap.  They can tell me all they want about having smaller government.  The only one in recent years that has actually had a smaller government is President Clinton and he’s a Democrat.