What's good for the Nazi works for a jihadi

[cnorman18]

Op-ed in today's Washington Times

What's good for the Nazi works for a jihadi

President Obama was right when he declared after convening the post mortem on the Detroit debacle that "we have to do better." The simple fact is that $42 billion later, Americans do not feel much safer getting on an airplane than they did eight years ago. Despite the post- Sept. 11 upgrades in security, despite the long lines, the inconveniences of removing shoes and belts and coming soon to an airport near you - full body scans - we are not reassured that the next disaster is not lurking just around the corner. People are concerned we aren't doing enough to fight the enemy and we're still not sure we've fully identified the enemy.

The administration and its Republican critics are still arguing whether Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's Ft. Hood massacre constitutes an act of terrorism. That dispute is reflected in a larger debate of whether we are still in a "war against terror" and whether individuals like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should be treated as enemy combatants or read their Miranda Rights as common criminals.

But however that debate shakes out, there is an important move, that would cost little but could strike a blow against extremism and make our skies a little safer: The president admitted that the current watch list is inadequate. But America needs to immediately expand its terrorist watch list. Consider this fact: While the United States has a database of 500,000 individuals implicated in criminal activity, only 1,700 of those names are on the terrorist watch list banning entry into the United States. Compare that to the watch list developed by the U.S. Justice Department of suspected Nazi war criminals. Developed in the 1980s, 40,000 individuals were initially listed, but later the list expanded beyond 70,000 when the Office of Special Investigations on Nazi War Crimes (OSI) included the entire roster of the Nazi SS - and all others who belonged to groups that abetted genocide.

Most of those aging genociders are in their 80s or 90s today and the hunt for Nazi war criminals will soon reach its biological solution. But not so Islamist terrorism - only in its genesis - which is the scourge of all humanity at the dawn of the new decade. It is inconceivable that in fighting the existential threat of terrorism, that we can be operating with a list of only 1,700 people to bar from entering the United States. To better protect the flying public and to strike a blow against extremists who today regularly indescriminantly slaughter fellow Muslims, the Department of Homeland Security should take a page from the Nazi watch list and immediately add those who openly support and abet terrorism. In practical terms, it means immediately listing the many thousands of names of all known members and enablers of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Indonesia's Jemmah Islamiyah and other terror groups listed by the State Department and the European Union.

And there are others who never fired a bullet, or strapped themselves to a ticking bomb, who nevertheless deserve to be publicly placed on America's terror watch list. They include Al Jazeera's Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, whose online fatwa insists that Palestinian women have the right to attain martyrdom by blowing themselves up amidst Israelis. There is Omar Bakri Muhammad, who once claimed to be a recruiter for al Qaeda and organized the "Magnificent 19" (Sept. 11 bombers) in London. Jordan's Dr. Ibrahim Zayd Al-Kilani, who said this: "killing a transgressing American soldier" is an obligation and a kind of jihad. There are the followers of Indonesia's notorious Abu Bakar Bashir, Jamaica's Abdullah el-Faisel, and Libyan-born Abu Yaha al- Libi, who defends the "legitimacy" of violent jihad as a "religious obligation." And of course, Yemen's favorite American Anwar al-Awlaki who served as spiritual mentor and validator to Ft. Hood's Maj. Hasan and the Northwest Airlines terrorist.

We have no doubts that a simple e-mail to all U.S. embassies by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would flush out many more terror enablers. To be sure, errors will be made and anyone who stands accused of such activity must be given recourse to clear their names. It may also be true that not everyone who belongs to a terrorist group will become a suicide bomber, but let them suffer the consequences - why should Americans have to take that risk?

By compiling a true terror watch list, the United States and allies will reassure the shaken flying public that no one committed to terrorism against innocent civilians is aboard their flight. Such a policy will also help strengthen the hand of moderates across the Arab and Muslim world struggling against these extremists. And by providing the guardians of our borders with accurate and timely information about all those who promote and deploy terrorism against our nation, we can help co-opt the need to turn to blanket racial and ethnic profiling.

The time to act is now.

Rabbi Marvin Hier is the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Center.

It's hard to see how anyone of any religion or any political persuasion could disagree with this.

[East of Eden]

Just to jump in for a moment on the "public sector" argument - it seems clear to me that EoE is talking about public servants at the policy-making level. When he speaks of those who have spent virtually their entire professional lives at that level, he has a point; many of these people have never actually had to run a company or meet a payroll, have never really been responsible for doing anything but talking. Of course, most of them are lawyers...

But that's hardly the whole of "government" or "the public sector."

The guy that fixes the pothole in front of your house is "government." The crew that picks up your garbage is "government." Police officers, from your local county constables to the FBI, is "government." If a crew of men and women on a big red truck comes and keeps your house from burning down, that's your government at work.

Those are proper functions of government. They aren't the reason we have a $1.5 trillion deficit in 2010.

Building inspectors, health inspectors, licensing agencies, air-traffic controllers, the Army's Corps of Engineers (who build and maintain dams and levees all over the US), doctors, nurses, and attendants in public (county) hospitals and VA hospitals, social workers and child-welfare workers, and on and on and on... Not to mention, as MY has, the soldiers and sailors and airmen and women in the armed forces. Now which of those groups is anyone willing to stand up and say is unproductive, a waste of taxpayer money, and all about nothing but shuffling paper and moving money around?

Here's a start:


Earmarks Rise to $19.6 Billion in CAGW's 2009 Pig Book

(Washington, D.C.) - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released the 2009 Congressional Pig Book, the latest installment in the group’s 19-year exposé of pork-barrel spending. The Pig Book revealed 10,160 earmarks worth $19.6 billion.

“Everyone in Washington has promised a new era of transparency and restraint in earmarks, from President Obama to the leaders of both parties in Congress,� said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “Sadly, the hard numbers from the 2009 appropriations bills tell a different story. The current Democratic congressional majority is following the same trajectory as their Republican predecessors. They came into power promising to cut earmarks, and made a big show of it during their first two years. However, as the 2009 Pig Book amply illustrates, pork-barrel spending is growing fast.�

While the number of specific projects declined by 12.5 percent, from 11,610 in fiscal year 2008 to 10,160 in fiscal year 2009, the total tax dollars spent to fund them increased by 14 percent, from $17.2 billion to $19.6 billion.

Much has been made of reforms that require members of Congress to identify earmarks they request and the intended recipients of earmarked funds, but CAGW uncovered 221 earmarks worth $7.8 billion that were funded in circumvention of Congress’s own transparency rules. These stealth earmarks were particularly prevalent in the 2009 Defense Appropriations Act, which included 142 anonymous earmarks worth $6.4 billion, a staggering 57 percent of the earmarked tax dollars.

The Pig Book Summary profiles the most egregious examples, breaks down pork per capita by state, and presents the annual "Oinker" Awards. All 10,160 projects are listed in a searchable database on CAGW’s website www.cagw.org. Examples of pork in the 2009 Pig Book include:

•$3.8 million for the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy in Detroit;
•$1.9 million for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service in Connecticut;
•$1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research in Ames, Iowa;
•$380,000 for a recreation and fairgrounds area in Kotzebue, Alaska;
•$143,000 for the Greater New Haven Labor History Association in Connecticut;
•$95,000 for the Canton Symphony Orchestra Association in Ohio; and
•$71,000 for Dance Theater Etcetera in Brooklyn for its Tolerance through Arts initiative.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.


Why should taxpayers in Phoenix pay for the Canton Symphony Orchestra?

Sorry. After being in both camps at one time or another, I find both the hard Left and the hard Right to be full of organic fertilizer, both of them more committed to their social agendas and prejudices than to either the facts or the people.

Both parties are to blame, but no president has blown the lid off like Obama is doing.

[MagusYanam]

This is where you screw up. I originally asked if you thought in HK they 'were' harmed by a lack of gov't intervention, meaning when British. The AEI link was a general response to this from you:

"I have lived in Finland, in England, in China and in Kazakhstan - all of which have mixed economies and social programs. I encountered no difficulty in making voluntary exchanges for goods and services in any of those countries, and neither did any of the people who sold those goods and services to me."

You didn't mention HK in the above, and I didn't specifically mention HK in my link response, which was making the point that economic freedom is linked to prosperity and human rights.

Only you failed to make even that point, because I think I pointed out to you that a number of countries near the top of that list have highly interventionist or even partly-socialist economies: Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Denmark. So obviously this standard of economic freedom is not an argument against government intervention!

I'd like to see you say the things you do about our military to their face.

I defy you to produce one thing I have ever said on these forums to denigrate the military. My objections are not to the people who serve in the military, but to the civilian authorities and their chickenhawk cheerleaders who abuse them for imperial projects.

Take the phoney 'stimulous' program going on, where Obama commits generational theft by borrowing money we can't repay and passes it around, much of it to his political allies. For government to give someone $1, they have to take $1 from someone else. There is no net gain when you rob Peter to pay Paul. It's like trying to raise the level of the swimming pool by taking water from the deep end and putting it in the shallow end. Government doesn't produce anything, on the contrary their regulations and taxes are like a millstone around the economy.

This is such ******** I don't know where to begin.

[Edited by moderator. Watch the language.]

When governments invest money in public works projects, they are either using tax revenue or borrowing from the loanable funds market, which derives from the savings produced by citizens earning revenue. This is not theft, because private citizens are also free to borrow from the LFM and because the government has the obligation to levy taxes. Full stop.

On the other hand, when there is a recession and the demand curve in the labour market drops, you have increased unemployment and have to siphon off the surplus somehow in order to get production back up. The government can do this effectively. It's what got us out of the Great Depression - the surplus labour was either drafted into public works projects or into WWII, both of which were government-orchestrated.

And guess what? We could have ended up paying our way out of the expenses caused by the Great Depression, if Reagan hadn't bloated our national debt by spending on useless, depreciating boondoggles like SDI.

'Productive' is what someone like Bill Gates is. Starting with an idea he now employes 60,000 people and has served millions of people, and yet the left treats him like an enemy.

Sorry, but Bill Gates is one of the few wealthy people I have respect for, along with Warren Buffett. These are people who recognise that they need to give back to the society, whether through philanthropy or through activism.

The sad irony is that the self-proclaimed champions of the poor harm the poor most with their liberal policies of high taxation, regulation, minimum wage laws, etc. When the economy goes south, its those at the bottom of the economic rungs who suffer most, the rich aren't missing any meals.

Minimum wage laws are redundant, because workers as a whole sooner accept layoffs and capital re-purposing than wage cuts. That's why government intervention in the economy is considered necessary, to keep unemployment down.

If you had any knowledge of economics at all, you wouldn't dismiss The General Theory so easily.

They aren't the reason we have a $1.5 trillion deficit in 2010.

No, the vast majority of that particular distinction belongs to the Bush Administration, because - on a purely practical level - you don't freaking cut taxes when you declare war. You can have your guns, or you can have your butter. But you can't have both.

Also - and I'm partly to blame for this - this thread is now completely OT.

[cnorman18]

Just to jump in for a moment on the "public sector" argument - it seems clear to me that EoE is talking about public servants at the policy-making level. When he speaks of those who have spent virtually their entire professional lives at that level, he has a point; many of these people have never actually had to run a company or meet a payroll, have never really been responsible for doing anything but talking. Of course, most of them are lawyers...

But that's hardly the whole of "government" or "the public sector."

The guy that fixes the pothole in front of your house is "government." The crew that picks up your garbage is "government." Police officers, from your local county constables to the FBI, is "government." If a crew of men and women on a big red truck comes and keeps your house from burning down, that's your government at work.

Those are proper functions of government. They aren't the reason we have a $1.5 trillion deficit in 2010.

Building inspectors, health inspectors, licensing agencies, air-traffic controllers, the Army's Corps of Engineers (who build and maintain dams and levees all over the US), doctors, nurses, and attendants in public (county) hospitals and VA hospitals, social workers and child-welfare workers, and on and on and on... Not to mention, as MY has, the soldiers and sailors and airmen and women in the armed forces. Now which of those groups is anyone willing to stand up and say is unproductive, a waste of taxpayer money, and all about nothing but shuffling paper and moving money around?

Here's a start:


Earmarks Rise to $19.6 Billion in CAGW's 2009 Pig Book

(Washington, D.C.) - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released the 2009 Congressional Pig Book, the latest installment in the group’s 19-year exposé of pork-barrel spending. The Pig Book revealed 10,160 earmarks worth $19.6 billion.

“Everyone in Washington has promised a new era of transparency and restraint in earmarks, from President Obama to the leaders of both parties in Congress,� said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “Sadly, the hard numbers from the 2009 appropriations bills tell a different story. The current Democratic congressional majority is following the same trajectory as their Republican predecessors. They came into power promising to cut earmarks, and made a big show of it during their first two years. However, as the 2009 Pig Book amply illustrates, pork-barrel spending is growing fast.�

While the number of specific projects declined by 12.5 percent, from 11,610 in fiscal year 2008 to 10,160 in fiscal year 2009, the total tax dollars spent to fund them increased by 14 percent, from $17.2 billion to $19.6 billion.

Much has been made of reforms that require members of Congress to identify earmarks they request and the intended recipients of earmarked funds, but CAGW uncovered 221 earmarks worth $7.8 billion that were funded in circumvention of Congress’s own transparency rules. These stealth earmarks were particularly prevalent in the 2009 Defense Appropriations Act, which included 142 anonymous earmarks worth $6.4 billion, a staggering 57 percent of the earmarked tax dollars.

The Pig Book Summary profiles the most egregious examples, breaks down pork per capita by state, and presents the annual "Oinker" Awards. All 10,160 projects are listed in a searchable database on CAGW’s website www.cagw.org. Examples of pork in the 2009 Pig Book include:

•$3.8 million for the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy in Detroit;
•$1.9 million for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service in Connecticut;
•$1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research in Ames, Iowa;
•$380,000 for a recreation and fairgrounds area in Kotzebue, Alaska;
•$143,000 for the Greater New Haven Labor History Association in Connecticut;
•$95,000 for the Canton Symphony Orchestra Association in Ohio; and
•$71,000 for Dance Theater Etcetera in Brooklyn for its Tolerance through Arts initiative.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.


Why should taxpayers in Phoenix pay for the Canton Symphony Orchestra?

See, that's a pretty good example of what I mean by "prejudice." I see nothing wrong with ANY of those projects; I once lived near a pig farm, and I can tell you that THAT project is richly warranted.

For the record, the US gives the LEAST government assistance to the arts of ANY industrialized nation. In public schools, music and art programs are the first to go in times of budget cuts. The prejudice of the Right against "artsy-fartsy" programs and social welfare programs that DO work is what I mean; more about prejudice and social agendas than the facts, or the people.

Sorry. After being in both camps at one time or another, I find both the hard Left and the hard Right to be full of organic fertilizer, both of them more committed to their social agendas and prejudices than to either the facts or the people.

Both parties are to blame, but no president has blown the lid off like Obama is doing.

Remains to be seen. He's certainly setting records in spending, along with his Congress, but whether or not these programs will work hasn't been determined yet. It's a real test of the liberal agenda; let's see what happens. If the economy is great and Al Qaeda no longer a substantive threat in 10 years, his Administration will be considered a success.

The Right is prejudiced against secularism, minority rights, the arts, sexuality, religions other than Christianity, foreigners, public-service workers, labor unions, and on and on and on. The Left is prejudiced against businesspeople, entrepreneurs, Southerners, rural and small-town people, conservative religious people, gunowners, the military, anyone with money who isn't a leftwing media star (Streisand, Clooney, Penn, et. al.), and likewise on and on and on. To leftists, rightwingers are ignorant, bigoted and provincial yahoos; to rightwingers, leftists are arrogant, conceited snobs who think they know better than the "rabble" (an idea that would have shocked the Founders to the core).

The real tragedy is that both of those perceptions are so largely accurate.

[MagusYanam]

Remains to be seen. He's certainly setting records in spending, along with his Congress, but whether or not these programs will work hasn't been determined yet.

The numbers would call into question your pronoun use, I believe. Yes, records certainly are being set in terms of spending, but they would have been set regardless of who inherited the White House and thus the 2009 and 2010 budgets.

The Right is prejudiced against secularism, minority rights, the arts, sexuality, religions other than Christianity, foreigners, public-service workers, labor unions, and on and on and on. The Left is prejudiced against businesspeople, entrepreneurs, Southerners, rural and small-town people, conservative religious people, gunowners, the military, anyone with money who isn't a leftwing media star (Streisand, Clooney, Penn, et. al.), and likewise on and on and on. To leftists, rightwingers are ignorant, bigoted and provincial yahoos; to rightwingers, leftists are arrogant, conceited snobs who think they know better than the "rabble" (an idea that would have shocked the Founders to the core).

Sorry, that reminded me of this, and this.

I completely agree with your characterisation, by the way.

[East of Eden]

I defy you to produce one thing I have ever said on these forums to denigrate the military. My objections are not to the people who serve in the military, but to the civilian authorities and their chickenhawk cheerleaders who abuse them for imperial projects.

Why do they enter the military at all if ours is used in such an unalloyed series of 'abuses' as you allege?

This is such ******** I don't know where to begin.

[Edited by moderator. Watch the language.]

When governments invest money in public works projects, they are either using tax revenue or borrowing from the loanable funds market, which derives from the savings produced by citizens earning revenue. This is not theft, because private citizens are also free to borrow from the LFM and because the government has the obligation to levy taxes. Full stop.

On the other hand, when there is a recession and the demand curve in the labour market drops, you have increased unemployment and have to siphon off the surplus somehow in order to get production back up. The government can do this effectively. It's what got us out of the Great Depression - the surplus labour was either drafted into public works projects or into WWII, both of which were government-orchestrated.

We recovered from the Great Depression in spite of FDR and the New Deal, not because of it. In 1931 in the midst of the Great Depression and the middle of the Hoover administration, the unemployment rate was 17.4%. Seven years later, after more than five years of FDR and hundreds of new government programs, and after more than a doubling of federal spending, the national unemployment rate was - 17.4%. As economist Jim Powell pointed out in his book, 'FDR's Folly', "From 1934 to 1940, the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2%. At no point during the 1930s did unemployment go below 14%. Even in 1941, amidst the military buildup for WWII, 9.9% of American workers were unemployed. Living standards remained depressed until after the war."

The Dow Jones Ind. Avg. sank to 250 under Hoover. By Jan. 1940, after seven years of the New Deal, the market had collapsed to 151. It remained in the low 100s through most of Roosevelt's terms and didn't return to its 1929 levels until the 1950s. At the same time, federal spending as a percent of GDP went from 2.5% in 1929 to 9% in 1936 (before the wartime spending began). In other words, the part of the total economy controlled by Washington increased by 360% in seven years without providing a discernable benefit to the economy. Obama is repeating FDR's mistakes. Not surprising from someone who's never met a payroll, and is clueless about job creation.

Even liberal professor Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in the college textbook, 'National Experience', that "Though the policies of the Hundred Days had ended in despair, they had not produced recovery....The New Deal had done remarkable things, especially in social reform, but the formula for full recovery evidently still eluded it."........"The collapse in the months after Sept. 1937 was actually more severe than it had been in the first nine months of the depression, or, indeed, than in any other period in American history for which statistics are available. National income fell 13%, payrolls 35%, durable goods and production 50%, profits 78%. The increase in unemployment reproduced scenes of the early depression and imposed new burdens on the relief agencies."

And guess what? We could have ended up paying our way out of the expenses caused by the Great Depression, if Reagan hadn't bloated our national debt by spending on useless, depreciating boondoggles like SDI.

Completely irresponsible to call it a 'boondogle' when Iran and others are working on nukes and missles. BTW, the misery index (inflation rate + unemployment rate) dropped under Reagan from 19.99% to 9.72%. I think that helped the poor.

Sorry, but Bill Gates is one of the few wealthy people I have respect for, along with Warren Buffett. These are people who recognise that they need to give back to the society, whether through philanthropy or through activism.

Businesses already give back by providing employment, valued goods and services, and paying taxes.

Minimum wage laws are redundant, because workers as a whole sooner accept layoffs and capital re-purposing than wage cuts. That's why government intervention in the economy is considered necessary, to keep unemployment down.

So why didn't it work when FDR tried it, as shown above?

If you had any knowledge of economics at all, you wouldn't dismiss The General Theory so easily.

No, the vast majority of that particular distinction belongs to the Bush Administration, because - on a purely practical level - you don't freaking cut taxes when you declare war. You can have your guns, or you can have your butter. But you can't have both.

Speaking of having no knowledge of economics, tax cuts don't cost money, they increase Federal revenues. This happened under Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Bush.

Also - and I'm partly to blame for this - this thread is now completely OT.

I'm done if you are.

[East of Eden]

[quote="cnorman18]See, that's a pretty good example of what I mean by "prejudice." I see nothing wrong with ANY of those projects; I once lived near a pig farm, and I can tell you that THAT project is richly warranted. [/quote]

Let those impacted by the pig farm deal with it, not someone seven states away.

For the record, the US gives the LEAST government assistance to the arts of ANY industrialized nation. In public schools, music and art programs are the first to go in times of budget cuts. The prejudice of the Right against "artsy-fartsy" programs and social welfare programs that DO work is what I mean; more about prejudice and social agendas than the facts, or the people.

Neither the left or the right should be giving handouts to their pet projects. I'm a fan of the arts, but don't think the Federal government should be subsidizing them, or professional sports teams for that matter.

Real artists don't need handouts.

[MagusYanam]

Why do they enter the military at all if ours is used in such an unalloyed series of 'abuses' as you allege?

In my grandfather's case, it was to get an education and escape being a poor tenant farmer in the deep South. For a lot of present-day soldiers the situation is much the same.

We recovered from the Great Depression in spite of FDR and the New Deal, not because of it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... o_1940.svg

Sorry, but this is not borne out by the evidence. Many economists of the time were convinced that the recession of 1937 was caused by a premature end to Keynesian stimulus - and, surprise, surprise, when Roosevelt instituted his controversial $5 billion plan in 1938, the GDP began bootstrapping itself upward again. It was largely because of the capital investments made under the New Deal that the economy was able to weather the end of WWII and prosper throughout the 1950's. This was seen in the decades afterward as a vindication rather than a repudiation of Keynesian policy - so much so, in fact, that the the Republicans opposing Roosevelt and his successors ran on reforming rather than scrapping the New Deal (that is, until Barry Goldwater came along).

Completely irresponsible to call it a 'boondogle' when Iran and others are working on nukes and missles.

... which, even if they were capable of launching them, SDI would only be able to stop on paper. Just ask the people who knew what they were talking about.

Speaking of having no knowledge of economics, tax cuts don't cost money, they increase Federal revenues. This happened under Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Bush.

That is absurd; taxes are revenue. Tax cuts, therefore, cut revenue and increase government borrowing. Only the most desperately dissonant supply-side cultists believe otherwise. Indeed, the numbers I have provided show that the huge deficit we face now is very significantly a product of Bush's deficit spending.

Now, deficit spending is not in itself a bad thing if you can expand the PPF in sustainable ways to pay it back. But you have to ask yourself what's worth going into debt over - money-drain client states, a bloated, dysfunctional national security bureaucracy and defensive systems that don't work, or research, education, green technology and infrastructure?

[East of Eden]

In my grandfather's case, it was to get an education and escape being a poor tenant farmer in the deep South. For a lot of present-day soldiers the situation is much the same.

Patriotism doesn't factor in huh? Another backhanded slap at the military. There are a lot more other cushy government jobs available that don't risk your life.

Sorry, but this is not borne out by the evidence. Many economists of the time were convinced that the recession of 1937 was caused by a premature end to Keynesian stimulus -

That's the Keynesian explanation. Milton Friedman tended to assign blame to the Federal Reserve's tightening of the money supply in 1936 and 1937. Austrian School economists such as Ludwig Von Mises assigned blame to inflationary bank credit encouraged by Central Banks as the best explanation.

Completely irresponsible to call it a 'boondogle' when Iran and others are working on nukes and missles.

... which, even if they were capable of launching them, SDI would only be able to stop on paper. Just ask the people who knew what they were talking about.[/quote]Your article is 25 years old. Here's a recent one showing it does work: http://purelypolitical.newsvine.com/_ne ... initiative

The Soviets took SDI seriously enough it was an important bargaining chip in Reagan's Cold War victory. Funny how Democrats are suddenly penny-pinchers when it comes to national defense.

That is absurd; taxes are revenue. Tax cuts, therefore, cut revenue and increase government borrowing. Only the most desperately dissonant supply-side cultists believe otherwise. Indeed, the numbers I have provided show that the huge deficit we face now is very significantly a product of Bush's deficit spending.

Spending originates in Congress. The Bush tax cuts increased government revenue's by stimulating the economy, as happened under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. Raising taxes has often reduced revenues. Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent. One of the causes of the depression was one of the largest tax increases in American history. The Revenue Act of 1932 raised income tax on the highest incomes from 25% to 63%. The estate tax was doubled and corporate taxes were raised by almost 15%

BTW, you like to point out what other industrialized nations do. America's corporations suffer from a federal corporate tax rate of 35%, close to 40% with state taxes. This is the second-highest rate in the industrialized world, just a bit behind Japan, which may cut its rate soon. The European Union cut its average corporate tax rate from 38% in 1996 to 24% in 2007. Germany and Canada each recently adopted a top corporate rate of 19%, with Canada's slated to fall further to 15%. India and China have lower corporate rates as well.

Now, deficit spending is not in itself a bad thing if you can expand the PPF in sustainable ways to pay it back. But you have to ask yourself what's worth going into debt over - money-drain client states, a bloated, dysfunctional national security bureaucracy and defensive systems that don't work, or research, education, green technology and infrastructure?

I prefer national defense before further enriching the teacher's unions and the bloated, dysfunctional education system. Look, government is about waste.

[Wyvern]

That is absurd; taxes are revenue. Tax cuts, therefore, cut revenue and increase government borrowing. Only the most desperately dissonant supply-side cultists believe otherwise. Indeed, the numbers I have provided show that the huge deficit we face now is very significantly a product of Bush's deficit spending.

Spending originates in Congress. The Bush tax cuts increased government revenue's by stimulating the economy, as happened under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. Raising taxes has often reduced revenues. Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent. One of the causes of the depression was one of the largest tax increases in American history. The Revenue Act of 1932 raised income tax on the highest incomes from 25% to 63%. The estate tax was doubled and corporate taxes were raised by almost 15%

EoE are you actually trying to say that the revenue act of 1932 caused the great depression which started in 1929? And here I was thinking it was caused by the collapse of a highly speculative and largely unregulated stock market.

[Goat]

That is absurd; taxes are revenue. Tax cuts, therefore, cut revenue and increase government borrowing. Only the most desperately dissonant supply-side cultists believe otherwise. Indeed, the numbers I have provided show that the huge deficit we face now is very significantly a product of Bush's deficit spending.

Spending originates in Congress. The Bush tax cuts increased government revenue's by stimulating the economy, as happened under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. Raising taxes has often reduced revenues. Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent. One of the causes of the depression was one of the largest tax increases in American history. The Revenue Act of 1932 raised income tax on the highest incomes from 25% to 63%. The estate tax was doubled and corporate taxes were raised by almost 15%

EoE are you actually trying to say that the revenue act of 1932 caused the great depression which started in 1929? And here I was thinking it was caused by the collapse of a highly speculative and largely unregulated stock market.

It is proof positive of the time machine effect, where cause follows event.