Budget Cuts - No Sacred Cows

This is a challenge to all Americans...but especially to those who call themselves conservative...mostly because those who call themselves liberal really don't think there's a problem.  With the large deficit and debt our country faces, we must be willing to look at all areas of the Federal budget for potential spending cuts.  We must not be like so many others who say, "It's okay to cut those people's favorite program, but you can't cut mine." We must be willing to sacrifice our own "sacred cows."

For modern conservatives, one of the most sacred areas of governmental spending is the military budget. Providing for the "common defense" is, actually, one of the few, enumerated powers of the Federal government. We need to fund a strong and effective military that can carry out their constitutionally mandated role of defense.  But, if we are to be intellectually honest with ourselves, we must be willing to admit that it is possible that the government bureaucrats in military procurement could be just as untrustworthy as the bureaucrats in the rest of government.  After all, the Department of Defense is the only department of government that is not subject to outside audits.  Just maybe, there might be a little room for some waste and corruption there?  Maybe?

Beware the Military Industrial Complex!  Growing up I thought this was just some term that hippie, commie-freaks used to speak out against our military power...and they did.  But that is not the origin of the term or the warning.  It came from the farewell speech of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961.  Eisenhower, of course, was no stranger to the military, being a West Point graduate who became the Supreme Allied Commander of the European Theater of Operation during WWII, and a two-term President of the United States.  I think he knew a little about that of which he spoke.

While Eisenhower understood that, "A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction."  He recognized that the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" was new to America and that "the total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government."  It was Eisenhower who warned:

 "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

In 2001, during as Senate hearing, the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) questioned a requested increase in the defense budget by saying, "How can we seriously consider a $50 billion increase in the defense budget when DoD's own auditors say the department cannot account for $2.3 trillion in transactions in one year alone?"  As much as I disagreed with most anything the late king of pork, Senator Byrd said...when you're right, you're right. Then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, replied by saying, "It is...ah...I was going to say terrifying."  Rumsfeld continued:

"I doubt, to be honest, that people inside the department are going to be capable of sorting this out.  I have a feeling its going to take some folks from outside to come in and look at this, and put in place a process that over a period...and I regret to say, but I've seen how long things take...a period of years to sort it out.  And, I think it'll probably take the cooperation of Congress to try to get the system so you can actually manage the financial aspects of that institution, rather than simply report on things that have happened imperfectly."

Questioning the military budget does not, in any way, dishonor or disparage our men and women in uniform.  On the contrary, it values them more in that it insists that they not be used as pawns on a geopolitical chess board with the goal of accruing power and wealth to the members of the military industrial complex.  Our citizen soldiers fight to maintain safety and liberty of their country and the ones they love...not to prop up a corrupt government and their industrialist cronies.

Think about it this way, though many have claimed that the Gulf War and Iraq War were fought for oil...where is this oil we have fought for?  Oil supply is down, gas prices are soaring...it obviously wasn't a very successful venture, was it.  More likely, though,  it was fought to benefit the defense industry rather than the oil industry.  You see, if you have a very large stockpile of bombs, ammunition, and weapons systems, you really don't need to buy any more...unless you use up what you have.  For that, you need a war.  I'm just sayin'.

But, regardless of the relative merits of our actions in the Middle East, the defense procurement process has a large potential for fat and waste...as well as corruption.  Dr. Thomas E. Woods Jr. gives a little of the detail in the video below.  As you watch it, keep an open mind, maintain your intellectual honesty, and be willing to sacrifice your own sacred cows.

High Cost Government

Judge Andrew Napolitano speaks about the High Cost of Government Control in this country and the need to return to "first principles."

Rethinking the Role of Our Military

John Stossel had an interesting discussion with Christopher Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the CATO Institute concerning the current role of our military in the world.

"We have to rethink the purpose of our military," Preble said.  "Start from scratch.  Start from the core function, which is to defend the United States, and expect, and demand that other countries play the primary role of defending themselves and to police their respective regions."

Our defense budget is 20% of the overall Federal budget and growing every year. "We are spending more, in real terms today," says Preble, "than we did at the height of the Cold war...the height of the Reagan build-up...the height of the Viet Nam war...the height of the Korean war.  More today than at anytime during the Cold War."

Preble contends that we are not fighting the Cold War any longer and that we do not need the same level of presence or spending that we did during that time.  We do not need troops in Korea and Germany any longer...who are we protecting them from?  "We've frightened ourselves and we've taken on the responsibility of doing for other governments what they should do for themselves," said Preble.
 
I think he makes some very good and reasonable points.  There is no Constitutional basis for being the policemen of the world or providing "humanitarian" military intervention anytime people we like are being killed.  I struggle a bit with what our responsibility to come to the aid of our allies, but I agree that what we are doing now is not correct and must be rethought from scratch. 

Watch the interview for yourself.  Let me know what you think.

Budget Cuts Across the Board!

With all of the discussion about deficits, debt and government budgets, we see all of the usual suspects coming out of the woodwork to cry that you can't cut THEIR thing...THEIR thing is the most important of all.  Apparently, if we even cut 1% of the budget, terrible, terrible things will happen.  Children will starve to death, old people will be made homeless and all infrastructure and public safety services will fail..."real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria"*

The facts are that, as seen in the chart to the left, the median household income in the U.S. has gone up 29% in inflation adjusted dollars since 1970, while Federal government spending has increased by 242%...with no end in sight. And we are supposed to believe that there is no fat at all in the Federal budget to be trimmed.  They need every penny of tax dollars they can get, and more.  Trust them, they say.  They only have your best interest in mind.

In a previous post, Why Feed the Pig, I lay out the reasons why it doesn't make sense to launder our tax money through Washington D.C.'s leviathan bureaucracy to fund our country's infrastructure.  They add no value to the process and use our own money to buy votes.  But there are many other examples of monumental fat and waste across the spectrum of government.  Dr. Thomas E Woods, Jr. documents many of these in his latest book, Rollback.

Let's look at one of the touchiest subject of all, welfare programs.  Even if you take as fact that everyone...or at least most everyone...on welfare today absolutely need and "deserve" it. The system itself is bloated and inefficient beyond repair.  As Dr. Woods points out:

"Another way to approach it is to recall that at least two-thirds of the money assigned to government welfare budgets is eaten up by bureaucracy.  Taken by itself, this would mean it would take three dollars in taxes for one dollar to reach the poor.  But we must add to this the well-founded estimate of James Payne that the combined public and private costs of taxation amount to 65 cents of every dollar taxed.  When we include this factor, we find the cost of government delivery of one dollar to the poor to be five dollars."

Is this an efficient...or even sane ...use of your tax dollars?  Where there is such a huge amount of bureaucratic overhead, there is fat to be cut.  But, you see, that fat represents a block of people who's product and trade is to put people on and maintain welfare programs.  To protect themselves, they perpetuate the myth that any money cut would directly remove food from the mouths of the poor, health care from the elderly, and safety from the children.  This is all about maintaining the status quo.  "We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!"**

This does not even deal with the fraud and misuse of the systems or whether all of this welfare spending even provides us with what it promises.  Ask yourself if poverty and crime rates are better or worse as a result of all of the so-called Great Society programs.  The answer is that things, by all objective measures have gotten worse, not better.  Don't we have a right to expect that our taxes are being used in an effective manner?  Dr. Woods offers another insightful point on this issue:

"What if poverty, crime and social dysfunction had been very high before the Great Society programs were instituted and then were dramatically reduced?  Can we doubt that its advocates would have attributed the decline in these features of inner-city to the government's wise new programs?  Yet when things work the other way, and the inner-cities become almost unlivable after these programs were introduced, we're hastily assured that the one has absolutely nothing to do with the other."

But what about Education?  Surely there is no fat to be cut here!  It is all for the children, after all.  Well, here again, the truth is different from what those who would protect their fiefdoms would tell you.  Just ask yourself if it is a necessity for high schools to have AstroTurf on their football fields or computerized white boards in their class rooms?  Boards not even found in my son's computer engineering classes at  the university.  But any talk of cuts in education inevitably leads to claims that teachers will be fired and quality of education will fall.

So, as with the welfare issue, let's examine the relationship of educational spending to quality of education, as measured by test scores.  If  an increase in spending would correlate to better test scores, the Educrats (educational bureaucrats) may have a case.  But in fact, it seems, according to statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics, as compiled into the chart above by the Cato Institute, increased spending has no distinguishable effect on test scores.  From the data represented by this chart, a case could reasonably be made that we could cut inflation-adjusted spending back to the level of 1970 without negatively affecting test scores.

Again Dr. Woods points out that while education spending has skyrocketed, "in 2003, the federal government found only 13 percent of Americans at or above age sixteen to be proficient in reading prose, following written directions, and carrying out quantitative tasks."  Is this an acceptable return on your education dollars?

And how about one for the "Far Right?"  Military spending.  No patriotic American could suggest that we can or should cut military spending, right?  Surely if we cut defense spending our brave and deserving warriors and their families will go without food and basic necessities.  At least this is what the leaders of the, as Dwight D. Eisenhower called it, military-industrial complex would have you believe.

A big problem with assessing fat in military spending is that the Department of Defense is not subject to audit.  That fact alone should raise huge red flags.  A department of the government responsible for approximately 20% of the federal budget with no audits; no chance of abuse there, huh?  Add to this the manner in which Defense Department procurement is carried out through cost-plus and fixed-fee contracts, rather than sealed bids like most of the rest of the rest of the country operates and you get an environment primed for gross inefficiencies at best and massive fraud at worst.

These issues are not Republican issues or Democrat issues.  They have come about and been defended by the actions of both parties.  It is issues like these, and many others, that have lead to incredibly bloated and feckless juggernaut we call government.  There are no departments, no bureaus, no offices of government that do not have considerable fat that can be cut...and without adversely affecting their stated missions.

The problems of our economy, the deficits and crushing debt, are far to large and intricate for our politicians to sort through with a fine tooth comb.  They are also too fraught with political pit falls.  But, it is up to our representatives to solve the problems.  So what should they do?

I believe that the only workable solution is to make cuts, by a given percentage, across the board...all budgets.  Congress should mandate that the heads of each governmental department come up with plans to cut their budget by the proscribed amount.  This mandate would come with the direction that no vital services will be cut.  There is to be no "playing politics."  The bureaucrats should be put on notice that this is a mandate from the people and failure to make the cuts in an appropriate way will mean that heads will roll...starting at the very top.  This method will take control back from the bureaucrats and avoid the appearance of any political favoritism.  Republicans and Democrats could come together in a bi-partisan manner and proclaim the real dangers we face if the cuts are not made.

I think that as a first step, the budget could be cut by 20%.  After this, Congress could begin to look for whole departments that could be eliminated.  The Department of Education, which has only been around since 1979, adds little or no value in actually providing education to our children.  As we have seen above, they have also not been a positive influence on test scores.  Department of Energy?  What good has that done?  Soaring oil prices and no viable alternative sources of energy.  Well, you get the point.

All of these bureaucracies claim that they could indeed do what they are tasked with...if only they had more money...and control.  Well, they have had more than 40 years to try.  I say times up and remind you of Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

One more quote from Rollback.  This one brings home the ridiculousness of our current situation:

"Every year $250 billion is borrowed from China so the U.S. government can play superpower. (Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan was more blunt: 'A country whose financial affairs are in the hands of foreigners is not a superpower.')"

* from the movie Ghost Busters (1984)
** from the movie Blazing Saddles (1974)

Osama Bin Laden: Dead

Bye bye, bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, head of the al Qaeda terrorist network, is dead.  GOOD! We should be happy that the man responsible for the death of thousands of innocent people through directing cowardly acts of terrorism has been killed.  We should be thankful for the dedication of the hundreds of people in our military and intelligence organizations...for the skill of our Navy SEAL warriors who took him down. 

Last night in President Obama's speech, he said, "Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we've made great strides in that effort. We've disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support. And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot."

But, then, he would have you think that nothing really happened until HE got there: 

"And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda.. I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden...I met repeatedly with my national security team...And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice."  And on it went. "I've made clear, just as President Bush did...Over the years, I've repeatedly made clear that we would take action...These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief..."

He did spend two short paragraphs thanking and recognizing the "countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who've worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome."  And also "the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country" who he said have "borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day."

Truth be told, Obama had little or nothing to do with this victory.  It has been a long 10 year slog by the intelligence, counterterroism, and military personnel.  Obama just happened to be in office at the time.  So while he is quick to blame all of his problems on his predecessor, George W. Bush, he seems more than willing to assign himself credit for something that was in the works through most of the Bush administration.  But, I guess this is not much different than what many politicians do...and that's the problem.  We need Leaders, not politicians.

I do agree with parts of his speech, especially when he said. "The cause of securing our country is not complete."  Bin Laden is dead!  Good.  But he is just one man...an important man to the cause of radical Islam, no doubt...but, one man only.  So while I'm happy that this murderer is gone, I worry that, to his followers it will be a martyr's death with a martyr's cause.

Federally Sanctioned Molestation

When is enough, ENOUGH?  How much more must our privacy be violated?  The systems and procedures used by the TSA for airport screening have just gone too far.  If you want, or need, to travel by air today, you are given the choice of either submitting to a full-body scan of your naked body, or to a good groping by a TSA employee.  Not much of a choice, in my book.

There seems to have been no good reason for this increased violation of our privacy....no escalating threats, that we were made aware of, that would necessitate these tactics.  They just said, "Hey, we have these machines that can take a picture of your body through your clothes...so we're going to use them."

Former Miss U.S.A., Susie Castillo, went through a particularly invasive groping in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on April 21st.  After choosing the line that was not going through the full-body scanner, because she travels a lot and does not want all of the radiation, she was told that she either had to go through the machine or get a pat down. She opted for the pat down, which turned out to be so invasive that it brought her to tears, feeling as if she had been molested.  Castillo made a video in the airport after the incident (below).  "I completely feel violated," she said. "This woman, she touched my vagina four times."

The Fourth Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."  This is certainly unreasonable.  We must put an end to this violation.  We must not be made to choose between the ability to freely travel and being molested.

"I'm crying", said Castillo, "because, I'm just really, really upset that as an American, I have to go through this...and I do feel violated." 




Thanks to The Tenth Amendment Center.

Obama Releases Long Form Birth Certificate - Finally!

The Wall Street Journal reports that Barack Obama has FINALLY released his long form birth certificate.  If he would have just done this two years ago, we wouldn't have had all of this non-sense.  I have said all along that he brought all of this on himself by not just releasing it.

Now maybe we can stop having to hear from Donald Trump.  Of course he is taking credit:

"I'm taking great credit and you have to ask the president, 'why didn't he do this a long time ago? Why didn't he do it a long time ago?' When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn't he do it? It's shocking. It's shocking," 

Let's not have this issue again in the future.  We need laws in place that specifically details what we mean by "natural born" and requires proof of that status.  I posted on this in a previous post. 

The End of the "Age of America"

From MarketWatch.com

Brett Arends of MarketWatch.com reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently released a forecast that China's economy will overtake the U.S. economy by 2016 ending the"Age of America."  Only a short five years ago.

Arends states that, "According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy."

Attempting to put this in perspective, Arends says., "The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities."   He adds, "What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun."

Responding to Arend's article, the IMF said that it disagreed with his analysis of their data and that the U.S. economy “is currently 130% bigger than China, and will still be 70% larger by 2016.”  But regardless of the exact time...we're losing ground very quickly.

Stephen Green, however, see the whole thing a little more optimistically and actually calls Arends article "ghoulish." In an article for Pajamas Media, Green points out that while "the yuan is weak because China wants it to be, fueling an export-driving boom that has taken China from a backwater to a major power in 30 years." And that, "the U.S. dollar plummets because nobody in D.C. can implement a policy to make it do anything else — and the resulting inflation threatens us with a double-dip recession." He believes that "America enjoys other strengths China lacks."

Some of the strengths that Green points to are who each country count as friends: China - basically North Korea and Burma.  The U.S. - India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.  He also points out that China's "economy still suffers from faux-communist distortions. From uninhabited, brand-spanking-new 'ghost cities,' to a financial sector that would make Tim Geithner blush." I recently watched this telling video documentary by SBS Dateline (Australian TV) that shows the ghost cities of China and the obvious results of socialist, centralized planning run amok.

So while China may not be as strong as some might make it out to be, it is rather disheartening  that we have allowed ourselves to fall back so badly that we are now being compared in this way with communist China.  Socialism never works in the long term...whether it's done in China or in America.

Gas Prices

$2.03/gallon! That was the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in April of 2009...$2.03.  Yesterday, the national average cost was $3.84/gallon...with no end in sight for the cost increases.  Many are talking about $5 or $6 dollars a gallon coming THIS SUMMER!  This will cause an increase in cost of all other goods and services across the economy.

There are, of course, many reasons for these hikes...trouble in the Middle East, OPECs control over world-wide gas prices, and maybe even some small amount of oil company greed.  But, the biggest single cause of this crisis...and it is a crisis...is government!  Under pressure from so-called environmental lobbyists, our federal government has made it nearly impossible to explore or drill for new sources of oil in our own country.  What other country cuts themselves off from their own natural resources?  And abundant natural resources was a major factor in the growth and greatness of our country, since before it's beginning.  Now we cut ourselves off from these vital resources and ransom ourselves to foreign powers who would like to see our destruction...INSANITY!

Chart by GasBuddy.com - 4/25/11

  American Solutions provides the following facts about oil and natural gas reserves within our own borders and territorial waters:

• America has about 86 billion barrels of oil and more than 400 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas located offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, but the Obama
administration has either banned or delayed drilling for most of these resources.
• In the Green River shale formation in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, America has an
estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, which is three times the proven reserves of Saudi
Arabia. Federal law prohibits drilling for most of these resources.
• In the Bakken oil shale formation in the Dakotas, there are an estimated 20 billion
barrels of oil.
• In one small area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), there are an estimated
10 billion barrels of oil. Federal law prohibits drilling in this area.
• In the Marcellus shale formation in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, there
could be as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the largest natural gas field in
the world.

And, we have a history, when allowed to explore and retrieve these types of reserves, of finding even more than first estimated.  How much better off would we be if we would only loosen ourselves from the shackles of foreign oil?  We could much better ensure our own national security.  Because we would have our own oil, we could stay out of sticky Middle Eastern entanglements.  Lower energy costs could spur growth in industry, and, therefore, jobs.  This would all help in the recovery of the economy.

Sure, in the long-run, we should develop alternate sources of energy, but we cannot stop the wheels of our society today based on the hopes of unproven, inadequate so-called green energy sources of tomorrow.  We must drill safely...we must drill cleanly...but, for our economy, security and our future, DRILL WE MUST!

And, by the way, I don't see anything in the Constitution that gives the Federal government the power to ban States from benefiting from the natural resources within their own borders.  Yet another good case for State nullification of Federal laws.


So, over the next weeks and months...as you pump more and more expensive gasoline into your vehicles...as the cost of food, clothing, services and entertainment go up, up, up...as you begin to curtail your activities due to costs...ask yourself if it wouldn't be nice to have a president who was a little friendlier with the oil companies and had some kind of clue as to what it takes to fuel our economy again.

Blindly Toward War

In this interview on Russia Today, Michael Scheuer, former CIA intelligence officer and Chief of the Bin Laden unit, offers some unique and informed opinions about U.S. and NATO dealings in the Middle East.  What he has to say is sobering and more than a little frightening.  He believes that a very realistic possibility of war with Iran will necessarily lead to reinstatement of the draft in the U.S.

The only reason that the U.S. has been able to interfere in the internal affairs of so many other countries over the years is that we have allowed the Federal government to consolidate and centralize its power and reach far beyond its Constitutional power to defend the country.  Very little of what we have done in the past 100 years has been strictly for defensive reasons.

And, contrary to what the Left and their media sycophant media drones will tell you, it is the Progressive Left who has lead us into the most wars in the past 100 years.  This is because of the power it gives them to consolidate their power even further.

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes and armies are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people...[There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and....degeneracy of manners and morals....No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." ~ James Madison

Will we be lead blindly to war?