More Pirceless Insanity From The American Political Class - Small Minds Working On Small Objectives

- Annual amount of taxpayer money lost to fraud and criminal activity in the Social Security Program - $70 billion a year

- Annual amount of taxpayer money lost to fraud and criminal activity in the Medicare Program - $60 to $90 billion a year

- Annual amount of taxpayer money lost to fraud and criminal activity in the Medicaid Program - $30 to $40 billion a year

- Annual amount of taxpayer money lost to unnecessary and obsolete deployment of about 140,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, Japan, and Europe - $35 billion a year

- Annual amount of Congressional member earmarks that politicians wastefully dole out in exchange for re-election financial support - $16 billion a year

- Annual amount of savings by eliminating the dysfunctional, ill performing, and unneeded Federal government's Department of Education - $107 billion a year (Source: Cato Institute - Downsizing Government Project)

- Annual amount of savings by reducing the Federal government's civilian headcount by 200,000 people, back to the civilian employee level prior to Obama's inauguration - $20 billion a year

- President Obama's latest effort to trim excessive government expenses via reduction in government coffee cup purchases - Priceless

As always, you cannot make this stuff up. The above list of REAL expenses cuts via fraud and criminal activity reduction and unnecessary military and government bureaucracy spending comes out to at least $338 billion a year.

In the face of these pre-identified savings and a fast approaching $15 TRILLION national debt level, the President signed an executive order on November 9, 2011 that instructed the government bureaucracy to take the following steps:

• Reduced the amount of money Federal agencies can spend on promotional (T-shirts,coffee cups, pens, etc.) items to promote the work of their agencies. 
• Reduced the amount of government cell phones and computers to be purchased and issued to employees.
• Encouraged Federal agencies and employees to use video conferencing as a replacement for traveling.
• Reduced the size of the government executive vehicle fleet.

The President's objective is to eventually reduce government spending by $4 billion in these areas of government expense. $4 billion, pathetic. While a reduction in any unnecessary government spending is always a worthy goal, consider the $4 billion in light of the big picture:

• $4 billion is only 1.2% of the amount we identified above in potential savings.
• $4 billion is only .002% of October, 2011's monthly Federal government deficit.
• $4 billion is only .0003% of the expected 2011 Federal budget deficit.
• $4 billion is only .0001% of the expected 2011 Federal budget.
• $4 billion is only .0003% of the soon to be $15 TRILLION national debt.

As you can see, this executive order from the President can only be categorized as feeble. Again, I applaud all government spending savings but these meager levels should be attained by middle level management government employees. I certainly would hope the most powerful man in the world would be involved in more global areas of government efficiency, well beyond cutting back on coffee cup purchases.

How meager are these potential expense savings? Consider the impact if we scaled the above math calculations to an average American household's budget (about $50,000 a year):

• If the Federal government's 2011 budget deficit was equivalent to the average income of a typical American household, then Obama's $4 billion expense reduction would be equivalent to $1.54.
• If the Federal government's 2011 total budget was equivalent to the average income of a typical American household, then Obama's $4 billion in expense reduction would be equivalent to $.55.
• If the Federal government's national debt was equivalent to the average income of a typical American household, then Obama's $4 billion in expense reduction would be equivalent to $.13.

In other words, these proposed savings by the most powerful person in the world is equivalent, at most, to the cost of one Sunday newspaper per year.

Unbelievable insanity. And this passes for leadership in Washington. Two steps from "Love My Country, Loathe my Government" come to mind:

1. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years. This is the only way we can make any kind of substantial dent into Federal government spending and our national debt. This is the kind of bold leadership and initiative the President would be taking if he was a real leader. Worrying about coffee cups is neither leadership or effective.
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians. It is becoming pretty obvious that the current set of Washington politicians do not know how or are unwilling to make the deep and necessary cuts to spending that are needed to save the country. The saddest part of this observation is that many of these expense reductions can be done without alienating voters, only the criminals that defraud government programs and expense contractors that would see their business decrease as we reduce unnecessary military spending.

As today's title says, these are small political class minds working on small objectives. Unfortunately, given the issues facing the country today, we need broad imaginative minds working on large, strategic, and imaginative solutions. This dichotomy is what causes the insanity.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available, at http://www.loathemygovernment.com .It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.



Please visit the following sites for freedom:
 http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

Where Did Our Nation's Wealth Go?

I got to wondering the other day about what happened to all of our wealth. It is true that the United States still has the largest economy in the world. Our citizens, on average, are some of the wealthiest in the world. At one time, our wealth allowed us to dominate the world in so may areas include militarily, politically, diplomatically, economically, athletically, and culturally.


I am not sure I can make that statement of dominance today. One reason we may not be able to do that is we are much less wealthy, relative to our past, than we have been. Consider the many ways the government and the political class that operates it have allowed our nation's wealth to leak out of the country over time:


- Probably the biggest drain on our nation's wealth has been the political class' inability to develop and implement a coherent and strategic energy policy for the country. Despite the OPEC oi shocks from the 1970s that rocked the country and the economy, in 2011 we still have no energy policy that protects and retains the nation's wealth.


According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2010 the United States imported about 4.3 billion barrels of oil and petroleum products from other countries. These imports are needed because the U.S. economy goes through over 7 billion barrels a year. 

The political class has not found a way, or even tried to find a way, to close that gap over the decades, by either diversifying our energy sources away from petroleum or increasing domestic production to close or eliminate that gap of three billion barrels of oil. In fact, the gap has likely gotten larger since the 4.3 billion barrels of imported barrels is about twice what it was in 1980, according to the Federal government.


At $90 a barrel, 4.3 billion barrels a year roughly results in about $386 billion dollars of our wealth leaving our domestic economy annually. These hundreds of billions of dollars end up building the economies of other nations that feed our energy addiction, nations that are not always friendly to our interests or our safety.


- Another major wealth drain is due to the illegal drug market, primarily the Mexican drug cartels. According to a January 26, 2011 research paper developed by the Law and Public Policy group at the Wharton School at the University of  Pennsylvania, the Mexican drug cartels' revenue from the United States is between $35 and $45 billion a year. The majority of the revenue, according to several other sources, comes from marijuana but also includes amphetamines, cocaine and other illegal drugs.

We have seen Mexicans die by the thousands every year due to drug cartel violence. We have seen the police, judges, and government officials in Mexico corrupted by cartel money. And as a result of our politicians' forty year failed war on drugs, we have seen hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from this country into foreign gangs, who much like the oil exporting nations above, do not always have our best interests and safety in mind.

- While we have seen trillions of our wealth leak out over time because the political class has not acted and has not developed coherent strategies and plans for energy and drug addiction, the third major wealth drain has been the political class actually acting but acting poorly when it comes to military matters. We have deployed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops around the world over the past decades, most often in ill-defined and ill-executed wars or in places where there was no need to deploy them.

We have likely spent over a trillion dollars already in Iraq and Afghanistan with no clear, concise, and defined benefit in return. Between Europe, Japan, and South Korea, we have well over 120,000 U.S. troops deployed overseas or no reason at all, at a cost of probably over $50 billion a year. In return, the economy and the American public gets no tangible benefit, another leak of our wealth pool.

- According to the Cato Institute's government downsizing analysis, the American taxpayer would save over $100 billion a year of the U.S. Department of Education was eliminated. Why should it be eliminated? Consider the following "accomplishments" of the Department:

• A recent Associated Press article indicated that almost 25% of U.S. armed forces recruits could not fulfill basic language and math skills needed to enter the armed forces.
• Another recent Associated Press report showed that upwards of 40% of community college freshmen in this country need to take remedial courses in basic subjects before they can begin their college work even though most of them had high school diplomas.
• A whole host of international student testing initiatives show that U.S. students almost always trail dozens of other countries' kids when it comes to math, language, and science skills.
• And the latest bad news, a June 14, 2011 Associated Press report showed that only 13% of U.S. high school seniors have a solid understanding and knowledge of American history.

All of which raises the important question: couldn't the nation do just as poorly and not spend $100 billion every year to do so badly? Cato has done its investigative analysis and has shown that yes, the country can change and dramatically improve its educational policies and approaches without having a Department of Education, resulting in $100 billion a year in taxpayer savings.

If we add in additional waste that we have documented, waste that exists in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, we easily can see where over $200 billion a year leaks out of the productive area of the economy into the unproductive and often criminal areas of the economy.

So let's review:

- We allow about $386 billion a year to leak out to foreign oil exporters because the political class has not deployed an effective energy strategy.
- We allow about $40 billion a year to leak out to criminal drug gangs in Mexico because the political class has not deployed an effective drug addiction policy.
- We allow about $50 billion a year to leak out of the productive area of our economy because we continue to unnecessarily deploy U.S. troops around the world.
- We allow over $200 billion a year to leak out of the productive area of the economy due to an ill performing Department of Education and waste and fraud in our Federal social services programs.

If we add up these various wealth leaks out of the U.S. economy, we end up with a grand total of leaks worth about $679 billion a year. This figure does not include the more than trillion of dollars we have allowed to leak down the military drain that is Afghanistan and Iraq. It does not include the tax breaks we give U.S. companies to close domestic factories and move production to other countries. It does not include the tens of billions of dollars that illegal immigrants send back home to their countries, dollars that are not retained and spent in this country.

Thus, the $679 billion is probably a conservative estimate of how much our government and the politicians that run it allow these leaks to deplete our world and our economy every year. $679 billion is equivalent to an annual tax break for every American household of about $5,900, at a minimum. I believe that we would be much wealthier as a country if every household had at least another $5,900 a year in disposable income to spend as they see fit.

And the good news is that we would be just as safe as a nation, more economically independent, and probably raising smarter kids in the process. The steps to accomplish this wealth retention are laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," steps that address energy independence, education reform, military consolidation, and the changing of our political processes so that these processes eventually would produce elected officials that know how to fix a leak.

Until we take these steps, our wealth and our economy will die a little bit more each day, death by a thousand cuts. The problem with a thousand cuts is that eventually the leaks stop, not because they have been fixed, but because there is nothing left to leak out.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com

Celebrating Memorial Day: A Soldier Remembered

This post originally appeared on Memorial Day, 2010. However, the thoughts expressed then are just as relevant a year later as we honor those that have served and who are currently serving our country in our armed forces to protect ourselves and our freedom.

No political ranting and raving today. No pointing out how the politicians continue to screw up the country, constantly denying and depriving us of our freedoms and liberties to the benefit of their political careers. Today is a day of remembrance, of the millions of Americans that have served the country in the past and in the present, many times sacrificing their lives for our freedom and liberty. Please spend a few minutes today thinking of them in any way possible and remembering that many of our fellow citizens and family members are on the front lines around the world today, facing serious danger, but unselfishly protecting us.


One soldier in particular is on my mind today. My father served in World War II with the 203rd Engineer Combat Battalion. It is my understanding that the 203rd came ashore at Omaha Beach in June, 1944, served across France, was involved in the Battle Of The Bulge in late 1944 and eventually made its way into Germany. It was destined for the Pacific Theater but had those plans cancelled when Japan surrendered. He was honorably discharged in late 1945.


I say that it was my understanding because my father rarely spoke of the war, I had to find out this information from secondary sources. He did not brag about his service, he did not boast of the battles he may or may not have seen, he did not regale us with tales of heroism. It is also my understanding that he is not alone in this approach. Stories abound of similar attitudes among World War II veterans. They did what had to be done, often at great cost, to protect the country and the ideals it stands for. They did not consider themselves heroes, they just did what had to be done. They then returned to become regular citizens and got on with their lives. No egos, no self-centeredness, just a dedication to country and family.


I never thanked my father for his service in the fight for liberty and freedom, not sure growing up that I fully understood the sacrifices he and others made for us. I would like to do that today, seventeen years after he passed away. I would also like to hope that our politicians eventually realize what great costs have been expended to keep us free and that they re-dedicate themselves to maintaining freedom, for all Americans in so many different ways. Making freedom the core of their service in politics and government should be their highest priority, not their re-election.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.loathemygovernment.com
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com

The Mexican Drug Cartel Terror Threat Continues to Grow: A Potential, Short Term Solution

Terror is a word that can take on various meanings and different connotations. Unfortunately, given the 9-11 terrorist attacks, we have tended to think only about Bin Laden-like terror threats over the past ten years. The reason why is clear: Bin Laden and his followers, in whatever form they took, were dedicated to destroying the United States in anyway possible and killing as many U.S. civilians and military personnel as possible in the process. This type of terror has occupied most of our attention.

This is not to say this is a bad thing, Bin Laden and his followers were, and will continue to be, a large threat. But at least most of their actions were stunted by sheer geography, thousands and thousand of miles and two vast oceans, geographic barriers to their terror plans.

However, there are other types of terror in this world and unfortunately, one type is growing in strength, violence,  and ferocity just south of our southern borders. For this type of terror we do not have the luxury and safety of geography, this terror is right next door.

Of course, we are talking about the drug cartel violence and situation in Mexico. We have blogged many times about the drug cartel situation and its associated violence in Mexico, they have been some of our most popular posts. And although, we have not revisited the issue for a little while, that does not mean things have settled down. In fact, based on the following press accounts, the situation and the potential for drug cartel violence to spill over into this country have grown significantly over the past month or so:

- In the April 29, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, an article described how sixteen police officers were arrested and connected to the killings of 145 fellow Mexicans. The police were accused of providing protection for the actual killers who are suspected of being from the Zetas, Mexico's most violent drug cartel. The 145 victims were bus riders who were kidnapped and then killed when the probably refused to join the cartel as gunmen or drug carriers.

The article reports that over 15,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico just in 2010. Serious stuff when innocent people are given the choice of either joining a criminal gang or being executed.

- A May 15, 2011 Associated Press report told how at least 27 Guatemalans were killed by assailants who in addition to killing them also decapitated most of the bodies. Police believe that these killings were related to a 2008 ambush of an alleged Guatemalan drug boss by the Mexican Zetas drug cartel. In that attack, the Zetas allegedly killed eight other people.

This activity is viewed as the Zetas' attempt to control international drug operations, not just Mexican drug operations. According to the article, Guatemala has become a major shipping point for illegal drugs headed for the United States.

- A May 26, 2011 Associated Press article reported that a gun battle between two rival drug gangs in a Mexican city left 29 people dead. The article reported that the gun battle took place along a highway and the scene was littered with fake military uniforms, bulletproof vests, hand grenades, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

In a related story within the same article, AP reported that Mexican military troops had been deployed after another gun battle between rival drug gangs had resulted in 1,200 civilians leaving their homes to find safety in the military guarded shelters in nearby towns. This was similar to an incident last November when 400 civilians left their homes and took refuge in surrounding towns to get away from cartel gun battles.

- A May 15, 2011 Associated Press article discussed another frontier when it comes to drug smuggling. The article reports that the Mexican drug cartels have moved some of their smuggling operations into Canada which also serves as a transport place to move the drugs into the United States. This is viewed as an easier way into the country because the U.S./Canadian border does not have as much anti-smuggling resources as the Mexican/United States border.

The article explained the preferred method of smuggling, namely small planes flying low into U.S. air space from Canada, land at a multitude of small airports along the border where they are met by their partners to unload the contraband form the plane. One example cited explained the the entire unloading operation took about 90 seconds and involved the smuggling of 175 pounds of marijuana and 400,000 Ecstasy pills. The efficiency and small footprint of the operation makes it almost impossible to stop.

- But drugs are not the only things being smuggled into the United States. A May 19, 2011 Associated press report described how 513 people from South America and Central America were recently found being transported in two tractor trailers. Their destination: the United States. Each had paid about the equivalent of $7,000 to an organized smuggling ring to get into this country. The United Nations estimates that this type of smuggling is about a $6.5 billion business annually. The article reports that 95% of Mexicans now crossing illegally into America were paying smugglers to help them get across.

The more disturbing fact was that included in the 513 people were not just poor people looking for work from South and Central America. The 513 people also included Nepalese and Chinese. Who is to say that for the right price, these smugglers would not consider smuggling in Bin Laden followers into the the United States. I am sure they could afford the $7,000 fee.

- An article in the May 20, issue of The Week magazine reported that a rally was recently held in Mexico to protest both the actions of the drug cartels and the government's military-like reaction to the cartels. The article stated that almost 14,000 people have been killed since the Mexican government began using its  military against the drug cartels.

Kidnapping, refugees, unspeakable violence (e.g. decapitations), smugglers of both drugs and human beings, crooked cops, etc., certainly a defined and dangerous source of terror. And all of these incidents occurred just within the past month or so and probably does not capture all of the terror-like actions of the drug and smuggling cartels. Again, this is happening right outside our borders, both our southern and northern borders. We do  not have that geographic safety afforded to us against Islamic terrorists.

Unless the political class and the government does something soon, there is little doubt in my mind that this form of drug cartel terror will intensify within Mexico and soon spill over into our country. Unfortunately, with the 2012 Presidential election process already preoccupying every politician, the odds of this terror infecting the United States is very, very high as our politicians become more and more distracted by their own political careers in 2012 vs. our safety.

"Love My Country, Loathe My Government" proposed a serious of steps that need to be taken to solve these intertwined problems of leaky borders, illegal immigrants, and the war on drugs. In order to do a comprehensive root cause analysis, formulate the proper solutions to these problems' root causes, sell solutions to the country, and execute the plans, time and focus is needed. However, I do not believe we have the time, given the growing violence and strength of the drug cartels or the focus of our politicians, given the 2012 elections.

In order to get around these problems, I would propose the following, short term band aid fix in order to stave off this terror threat:

1. First, I would recall the tens of thousands of U.S. troops we currently have stationed around the world that are serving no strategic or military purposes. This would involve bringing home the 84,000 U.S. troops stationed throughout Europe, the 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea, the 30,000 troops stationed in japan, and the 50,000 or so U.S. troops in Iraq. Bringing these troops home would not compromise our nation's effort to counteract Islamic terrorism abroad.
2. The United States border with Mexico is about 2,000 miles long.
3. The number of troops being brought home would total about 194,000.
4. These troops would be deployed into three eight hours shifts of about 67,000 troops per shift.
5. At any one time during a 24 hour day, there would be 67,000 trained U.S. troops lined up along the Mexican border, facing south, with the mission of blocking the smuggling of people looking for work, drug cartel refugees, and contraband both into and out of the country. This would be the equivalent of putting one soldier every 50 yards along the border.
6. This type of deployment would relieve some of the U.S. border agents who would be moved to the northern border to handle the more difficult job of intercepting contraband coming in from Canada.

This would help seal our borders from illegal activity, would certainly be less costly than deploying these 194,000 troops all over the world, would not compromise our other anti-terror efforts, and would at least temporarily restrict the wealth, growth, and influence of the drug cartels.

In the meantime, the steps regarding illegal aliens, leaky borders, and drugs form "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" would be undertaken to come up with a long term solution to this problem. Long term options to be explored would include the legalization or decriminalization of drugs, increasing or decreasing the penalties for drug dealing and usage, increasing drug abuse treatment research and services, exploring how other countries deal with their drug cultures, etc.

Until our political class has the will, focus, and brains to attack these problems, we need to secure the borders from this ever growing, ever present terror threat. Failure to do so may eventually result in a 9-11-like debacle that far away terrorists unleashed on this country. The Mexican drug cartels apparently do not hesitate when it comes to murdering, butchering, and kidnapping their own countrymen, I doubt they would have any problems doing the same to any American if it served the cartel's interest.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.loathemygovernment.com
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com

The Mess That Is And Will Be Libya

I did not listen to President Obama's Libya speech last night. To be honest with you, I have come to a point in my level of respect for the man that is at an all time low. I just do not believe anything he says, either because he leaves out facts, is a hypocrite, refuses to man up to his responsibilities, or is an insult to the Constitution and the rule of law. Thus, many of you might feel that I have no right to criticize his speech regarding his Libyan actions.

However, I did do a lot of reading and follow up today of what he said from a variety of sources. If any of the following assertions on my part are incorrect, then please feel free to correct me, I am honest enough to admit my mistakes. With that said, here are my very serious problems with the President unilaterally, at least within this country, allowing our military forces and budget to be drawn into another Middle East hornets' nest:

- I cannot understand how the President was able to militarily attack a sovereign country without the approval and consent of Congress. This Libyan issue has been brewing for a long time, he had plenty of time to properly involve Congress in the action and planning. He did not. Rather than answer to the American people through Congress and the Constitution, he answered the call of the United Nations and the Arab League. This is not the way things are supposed to get done in this country. He answers to us, not foreign organizations.

Consider an excerpt from a New York Times column several years ago:

"Congress, the Constitution and War: The Limits on Presidential Power "

By ADAM COHEN - New York Times, 2007


But the Constitution also gives Congress an array of war powers, including the power to “declare war,” “raise and support armies” and “make rules concerning captures on land and water.” By “declare war,” the Constitution’s framers did not mean merely firing off a starting gun...In giving Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution gives it authority to make decisions about a war’s scope and duration.


The Founders, including James Madison, who is often called “the father of the Constitution,” fully expected Congress to use these powers to rein in the commander in chief. “The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” Madison cautioned. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

Very well put, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Monroe. By vesting the question of war in Congress, as Monroe stated, it keeps the country's delicate balance of checks and balances in place. Congress authorizes war, funds war, and determines the scope and duration. None of this happened in this instance of attacking a foreign government. No matter how despicable the actions of this foreign government might be, there is a process to follow and Obama ignored it outright.

- Following up on Alan Cohen's article, he was writing to discredit the very similar actions of Bush and Cheney in Iraq. This is where the big hypocrisy comes in. If these words from the New York Times were appropriate to use against Bush, how are they not appropriate to use against Obama? Where is the moral outrage the liberal portion of the country expressed when Bush attacked Iraq? It appears to have been muted or no-existent as Obama attacks Libya, a country that even the high ranking members of the President's administration admits holds no military, security, or strategic value or threat to the United States.

In fact, you could make the point that since Sadaam Hussein had already killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, including the poison gassing to death of thousands of Kurds in just one day, Bush as as justified going into Iraq militarily as Obama has justified going into Libya to prevent the killing of the rebels. It was pretty clear that Hussein was in the daily business of killing his own people and would have killed many more if Bush had not attacked.

Let me be very clear. I was against the Bush move into Iraq from the very beginning and I am not trying to justify that action now. I am just pointing out that if military intervention in the Middle East is justified to prevent civilian massacres, as Obama has done to justify his Libya actions, then he and anyone else cannot condemn Bush on these grounds.

- Which brings us to another aspect of Obama's logic. If he intervened in Libya to prevent a massacre, why has he not intervened in Darfur, Sudan. According to most sources I have referenced, the Sudanese leader, Omar Al-Bashir, and his henchmen are responsible for over 300,000 deaths and the displacement of about 2.6 million civilians.

This is a humanitarian disaster far larger than Libya and is a disaster the political class and Obama have know about for years. Why has Obama not involved us in this situation, that appears very similar to the Libyan situation: madman ruler massacres his own people. Who gets to decide where the we intervene?

An editorial piece from the Christian Science Monitor tries to answer this question:

A Christian Science Monitor opinion piece echoes this idea, stating that the Obama Doctrine is bad foreign policy because it leaves the U.S. in an open-ended commitment in Libya, while confusing the standards for intervention in foreign countries.



“Under the Obama Doctrine, it appears that the U.S. is committed to putting troops in harm’s way and bearing the heaviest financial costs as long as the coalition of NATO and selected Arab states want U.S. troops,” the piece states. “Simply, by compelling an open-ended commitment under international control and limited tools to resolve the conflict, the Obama Doctrine and the Libyan campaign are not good foreign policy.”

- "Not good foreign policy," that sums it up pretty well. No one has any idea what our foreign policy is. When will the United States take similar action? The President of Yemen has had his snipers gun down dozens, if not hundreds, of protesters. How many does he have to kill before Obama unilaterally commits us to another military action.  Do thousands of Yemen civilians have to die, tens of thousands?

The leaders of Bahrain has killed dozens of their civilians. When does his government and country get subjected to U.S. military strikes? Syria has killed dozens of its civilians. When and what is their tipping point? How about Iran? Heck, while we are at it, China has been doing a pretty good job of suppressing freedom and has a horrible human rights record against its own civilians. When do we tell them enough is enough? The policy leaves these questions so open ended that it is no longer a policy or strategy, it is a reflex action.

- If Obama's Libya excursion is in fact a reflex action, then we could be in trouble. Remember Reagan's Middle east reflex action when he went and stationed U.S. ground troops in Lebanon for similar humanitarian reasons in the early 1980s? Hundreds of Marines were killed by one of the earliest Middle East suicide bombers that no one in the Reagan administration foresaw as a problem. The unforeseen problems to this reflex action in Libya are not likely to end much better.

- Apparently the President did not answer even basic questions last night in his report to the American public:

• How long is this likely to last?
• How much is this military action likely to cost?
• How much is the follow up humanitarian effort likely to cost and who will operate and pay for that?
• Does the President understand that many Americans are upset that he appears to be taking his marching orders from the United Nations and the Arab League and not the American system of government? How does he explain that perception or misperception?
• When will the Arab League, who reportedly asked for our intervention, start kicking in money, men, and materials?
• The President says this operation will be turned over to international control. What in the world does that really mean? Who is really in charge, who will be in danger, who will be paying for all of this, etc.
• How does the President explain the disconnect of saying that the military action was only to protect civilians but credible news reports indicate the military action is taking out Libyan infrastructure and military assets nowhere close to the rebels?
• And the biggest question of them all, if the rebels succeed, what are the likely consequences and what is a post Qaddafi regime likely to look like? Is it possible that the replacement government could be a hostile one?

None of these points say that from a humanitarian perspective, we should not have intervened. However, 1) the process was bad in that it did not adhere to over two hundred years of Constitutional processes, 2) with all of the unanswered questions, this does not look like a strong foreign policy, it looks like a knee jerk reaction, 3) the financials have not been thought through or shared, something that a government hemorrhaging billions of dollars a day now has to consider, 4) the hypocrisy of criticizing Bush for a similar action in Iraq, no matter how wrong it was, is overwhelming, and 5) the nebulous nature of when and why we would militarily intervene elsewhere confuses an already muddied and dynamic situation.

Bottom line: this is a crap shot of a military action and if history holds any clue to its outcome, these Libyan dice are loaded with unforeseen consequences, unforeseen expenses, and unforeseen mistakes.

P.S. While the American political class and government has been busy funding and executing this non-strategic and non-threatening Libyan action, the governments in China, India, South Korea, and dozens of other countries in the world have been going about the business of improving their economies to the detriment of our economy.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

Looks Like Ike Was Right After All

I found it interesting that two recent articles about our military establishment recently leaned heavily on the thoughts of former President Dwight David Eisenhower. As many of your should know, one of Ike's lasting catch phrases was the "military-industrial complex." His fear was that the military and the industries that support the military may grow in power and statue over time, and predicted (correctly) that these entities would cause the nation to spend more on defense than was actually necessary.

The first article was written by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. He described the modest reform goals that Defense Secretary Gates is trying to put in place in order to streamline and make the armed forces more efficient. Unfortunately, he has been opposed by a whole spectrum of parties including politicians whose home districts/states may lose the support of Pentagon dollars, defense contractors, the military establishment, and lobbyists. Why is Gates looking to make these moves? Consider some of the statistics from Mr. Zakaria's article:

• Military hardware costs are spiraling out of control with the cost of one new Navy destroyer costing between $2 and $3 billion a piece to build while the cost of just one new bomber costs $2 billion per plane.
• While the private sector of the economy has stripped away levels of management to become more efficient and responsive, the Pentagon management levels have grown considerably, from seventeen layers a decade ago to about thirty levels of redundant management today.
• We now have almost 1,000 general and admirals in our armed forces, up 13% in the past 15 years, even though the number of people in our armed forces has shrunk over the time period.
• Every management layer at the Pentagon is larger than it was during the height of the Cod War. As an example, the article cites a study from Professor Paul Light of NYU where he estimated that there were 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense in 1960 and there are 530 today.
• There are more military musicians in the military's marching bands than there are members in the State Department's Foreign Service.
• The Pentagon has ten times as many accountants than the State Department has Foreign Service officers.
• In a recent speech Gates questioned whether or not we needed to spend the money for an additional 100 fighter jets when we already have over three thousand such aircraft, do we really need to build more multi-billion dollar Navy ships when we already have a navy that is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which are navies of our allies, and whether we need to build more billion dollar stealth fighters when by 2020 we will still have 20 times as many such fighters as China.

Now consider an article by Boston Globe writer Peter Canellos, that was summarized in The Week magazine in the August 27, 2010 edition:

• Our current defense budget of $700 billion is six times larger than our nearest competitor.
• Our current defense budget is more than the next 18 largest defense budgets of other nations.
• More than $130 million of lobbyist money is spent ever year in an attempt to maintain and grow the country's spending on military hardware and other expenses.

Looks like Ike was right after all. We have allowed ourselves as a nation to build and maintain defense capabilities, and the resulting bureaucracy that goes with it, far beyond what is essential for our national defense. Just look at the numbers: a navy bigger than most of the rest of the world's navies combined, twenty times more fighters than our next nearest competitor, a bureaucracy that is bigger and more bloated than any time in our past, a $700 billion defense budget that costs each American household almost $7,000 a year to maintain, etc. The household income of the vast majority of the world's households is less than $7,000 a year whereas we spend almost $7,000 per household just for the Pentagon. It is out of control.

Think about how much better off we would be as a nation if we could cut that Pentagon budget in half. We would immediately inject $350 billion into the consumer economy if we could get half of that $7,000 per household expense back into the hands of our citizens. And this would not be a one time, ill-fated Obama stimulus-like plan, this would be an annual, ongoing $350 billion back into the economy that citizens could spend as they see fit, increasing our freedom of personal choice.

How could we attain this 50% reduction? The following steps, many of which are described in detail in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would be a great start:

• We need to realize that current, major U.S. troop deployments around the world are from another era and another time, and that these deployments are not longer strategic to our defense and should be terminated immediately. South Korea is now a very strong, democratic nation. Let them fight their battles with North Korea without the 30,000 or so U.S. troops presently stationed there. We no longer need 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, bring them home since 1) Japan is unlikely to attack Pearl Harbor again and 2) 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan would be no match for the 2,000,000 million Chinese troops if anything should happen in the Far East. There is no longer an Iron Curtain so stationing upwards of 60,000 U.S. troops in western Europe is no longer needed.
• Once these troops were returned home, all armed services recruiting would be stopped and the military vacancies and needs would be filled by the returning troops from Japan, South Korea, and Europe.
• The remaining 50,000 troops in Iraq need to be pulled back home also, as promised by the current President in his campaign rhetoric.
• We need to immediately stop producing hardware that we have no use for. The current size of our navy and our air forces needs to be frozen at current levels and that production be done for replacement of existing hardware, not the expansion of existing hardware volumes. A longer term plans needs to be implemented that starts reducing the hardware needs over time for only what is needed.
• A five year plan, as proposed in Step One of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would also be implemented in the Pentagon bureaucracy where the size of every Pentagon organization is reduced 10% a year for each of five years in order to get the military's management streamlined and more efficient.

This type of reduction in spending for defense will be very difficult to do. It has been fifty years since Ike issued his military industrial complex warning and since then, President after President has followed John F. Kennedy's lead, where in his inaugural speech he promised to "pay any price, beat any burden, meet any hardship" in defense of freedom. Unfortunately, based on this type of sentiment, the price has gotten very high, the burden on our economy has gotten very onerous, and the hardships continue to mount for no reason than to feed the interests of the military establishment and the politicians that support them. We have gotten to the silly stage now where we just waste money for the sake of tradition, i.e. we have always wasted money in this area.

It is time for the silly season to end and for our civilian military leadership to take back control of the Pentagon budget. We cannot afford this unwarranted military spending any more (remember how the same problem caused the collapse of the Soviet Union). The real question is whether our political class has the gumption to do their duty relative to the Constitution and civilian control of the military or they will fold their cards, as usual, in order to protect their re-election chances.



Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

On The Eve Of (Financial ) Destruction - Part 1

One of the great protest songs from the late 1960s was Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction." The song came to mind today while reading an Associated Press (AP) report describing Obama's 2011 Federal budget. His proposed budget calls for a record breaking spending level of $3.8 TRILLION and a one year deficit of $1.56 TRILLION. In other words, his budget will require the Federal government to spend 40% more than the expected tax revenue it will collect. Obviously, the government will have to borrow money from any individual or nation who will lend it to us, sinking the country's financials deeper into debt. Further, he expects the deficit to "shrink" to just under $1.3 TRILLION the next fiscal year.

Let's do some math:

• If each U.S. household had to pay for the $1.56 TRILLION deficit, the cost per household would come to about $12,000 per household. This would be above and beyond the taxes needed to cover the non-deficit portion of the budget.
• If we look at last year's deficit level, this year's deficit level, and the proposed deficit for the next two years, the political class in Washington is expected to overspend its tax collections by about $5.7 TRILLION. On a per household basis, this comes to about $44,000 per household.
• As discussed in previous posts, the Obama administration has proposed to freeze spending levels in some Federal government areas, claiming that this action will save about $250 billion over the next ten years, or about $25 billion per year. If those savings ever materialize, the $100 billion savings over four years would result in each American household theoretically getting back $769 in savings. The $769 in savings represents less than 2% ($769/$44,000) of the additional taxes that are going to be required at some point to pay for the deficit spending of Washington.
• Many U.S. household will not even save this much since Obama's budget proposal calls for letting the so-called Bush tax cuts expire when they come up for renewal.
• The cost over the next decade, according to the proposed budget, would be about $8.5 TRILLION. If you add in the $2.8 TRILLION deficits from the past year and this year. the total deficit spending of the political class could be $11.3 TRILLION or a whopping $87,000 per household. As mentioned in a previous post, the government is notorious for underestimating costs, this $87,000 estimate is probably understated.

Looks like Barry McGuire was right, he just got the cause wrong, we are on the eve of destruction. We are on the eve of destruction from a financial perspective. As the deficit gets bigger and bigger, the available credit and capital required to support that deficit will drain money out of the private credit markets. Businesses will find it harder to get affordable credit and loans to expand, stifling employment growth. As the deficits get larger, those buying the bonds to support the deficit spending will require higher and higher returns as the risk of default accelerates, causing the deficit to get bigger even faster, sucking even more capital out of the private sector. Taxes must go up eventually for everyone, not just the rich, to feed the deficit beast in order to avoid or delay a government default, taking more wealth out of the economy. With less disposable income, households will purchase fewer products and services, further depressing the jobs market.

Apparently, the Obama administration does not get it, even though they received a good kick in the pants a few weeks ago in Massachusetts. When a Republican can take over Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in a state like Massachusetts, you know the ordinary American is not happy. They are not happy about this administration's deficit spending, bailing out of banks, insurance companies and car companies, and the expansion of big government at the expense of freedom and control over their own lives.

In response, this administration continues on a reckless spending spree, still thinking that spending an additional trillion or two on a fatally flawed health care reform plan is a good idea, wasting billions of dollars on earmarks and wasteful pork barrel projects, continuing to expand our military presence around the world, and offering token spending freezes on only a portion of the Federal budget. The proposed $25 billion a year savings is less than 1% of the total $3.8 TRILLION budget. It is less than 2% of the just the deficit amount from this year. Pitiful.

What could be done to help Obama reduce the deficit? There are any number of suggestions listed in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:"

• As we have stated previous, the U.S. currently has over 50,000 troops stationed in Germany, almost 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, and about 30,000 troops stationed in Korea. These deployments are from another age and time, we can no longer afford to garrison these types of troop levels around the world. In his Afghanistan speech, the President claimed that it costs about a million dollars a year per soldier to deploy them in that country. If we assume that the cost is less than that in non-fighting zones (say we arbitrarily reduce the $1,000,000 cost down to $600,000) then by bringing back the 130,000 troops we have just in Germany, Korea, and Japan, we could save about $78 billion a year, every year going forward. We could reduce the size of our military and focus those remaining forces where they are needed to fight terrorism. Additional savings could be found by reducing the thousands of active troops we have in countries such as Spain, England, and other European countries. (Step 30 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government").
• One of the primary attractions of voting for Obama the candidate was his promise to get us out of Iraq as soon as possible. That promise has not been fulfilled as of today and worse yet, he has vowed to keep 50,000 troops in that country for the foreseeable future. If we go conservative and use the $600,000 estimate per year per soldier, the savings of getting everyone out of Iraq would be about $30 billion a year. (Step 30)
• We need to review all military costs we are shouldering for other nations and determine if paying all of the costs is worthwhile or cost effective. The perfect example of this type of cost savings was reviewed in an article from the New York Times that was reprinted int he St. Petersburg Times this past Sunday. It described the missile defense system that the Obama administration is deploying in the Persian Gulf to protect the world from the threat of Iranian missiles. If we are protecting the world, specifically oil rich nations in the Persian Gulf, how about we ask those nations to pay for the privilege of being protected by our missle defense system? They can certainly afford the likely billions of dollars it will cost to permanently deploy the system, why shouldn't they pay for it? There are probably hundreds of these types of programs where we pay for everything to the benefit of others. Those times are over, we cannot afford them any more.
• As mentioned in previous posts, Obama the candidate promised to keep wasteful earmarks below 2,000 per year, the same levels as early in the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the current Federal budget, that President Obama signed in the fall, has over 11,000 earmarks, wasting tens of billions of dollars every year. One way to get this problem under control is to institute a rule that no Federal spending, project, or program would be funded unless it materially affected a large number of residents in at least five states. If a program did not meet this criteria, it would not be done or it would be funded by state and local governments in the states where the project would be implemented. In this way, the Federal government would not be building farmers' markets in Kentucky, building bike trails in Michigan, or do any other wasteful programs such as these. (Step 44)
• Social Security will soon not be able to pay its benefits from the taxes it collects. Thus, fair and financially sound actions are required to get this expense stream under control. These actions should include raising the retirement age, changing the funding requirement for the program so that the program is funded as it goes (depriving the political class from raiding the Social Security trusts), and reducing Social Security benefits based on the wealth level of each American. People such as Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet are too wealthy to receive a monthly Social Security check. In order to keep the system and its financials solvent, benefits for the wealthy should be cut to provide for those that are not wealthy (Steps 10, 11, 12)
• Benefit and retirement perks for future Federal employees need to be reduced. Since most Americans do not currently get both a pension and access to a 401k retirement plan (in fact, many, many Americans have access to neither), it is not fair for future Federal employees to get both. Thus, the Federal employee pension system should be phased out over time with new employees having access only to a fair 401k type retirement option, putting them on a par with most other Americans. (Step 9)
• Every government agency needs to do a ground up review of all of its expense lines and programs. Many Federal programs take on a life of their own even when their original purpose has disappeared. There is great redundancy across multiple Federal entities that could be reduced along with the corresponding budgets. We need to do a basic business and functional analysis of all government functions, giving each department and agency an aggressive budget reduction (say 10% a year for five years) in order for the hard cuts to be made in nonessential expenditures. (Step 1)
• Rather than increase funding by deficit spending, the Federal government needs to self fund itself by wringing fraud out of the big programs such as Social Security and Medicare. If you are losing dollars from fraudulent activities, increasing spending is likely to increase the waste lost to fraud. An investment in additional policing resources for Social Security and Medicare should pay many dividends in government spending savings. (Step 5)
• An independent panel, without politicians and without lobbyists, needs to be formed, and staffed by smart Americans like we did with the Manhattan Project, the Apollo space mission, the military base closing commission, etc., which would take a comprehensive look at how to reduce the escalating health care and Medicare costs, currently about half a trillion dollars a year. The past year has proven that the political class is incapable of creating fair, effective, and cost reduction national health care legislation. (Step 28)

The above nine ideas would go a long way to getting the Federal budget under control. I am sure that other, smarter people could come up with many other smart, insightful ideas for getting the government's growth contained. Unfortunately, no one in the political class has shown the bravery to tackle such a task, leaving us all on the "Eve Of Destruction."

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.

Obama's Budget Freeze Proposal - Why Bother?

The initial news seemed to be good out of the Obama administration: the President finally got it and was freezing the Federal budget over the next three years in order to begin coping with the huge budget deficits. The good news lasted for about an hour when the following became evident:

• The freeze would not apply to the biggest parts of the Federal budget (military, Social Security, medicare) so the total Federal budget would likely increase even though he was freezing portions of it.
• I initially read the plan as saving $250 billion a year, not bad/not great but at least a start. However, it turns out the President's plan would save $250 billion over ten years or only about $25 billion a year.
• Despite budget deficits exceeding a TRILLION of dollars each year, he is talking about saving a few dozen billion each year. Last year's total Federal expenditures were $3.5 TRILLION and thus, if we saved $25 billion last year, the percentage reduction would have been less than one percent (.7%).
• Last year the Federal budget deficit was $1.4 TRILLION so the $25 billion in savings would have reduced the deficit by only 1.8%. Thus, the title of this blog: "Why Bother?"

Let's put these numbers in the context of a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that came out today which estimates that the 2010 budget deficit will be about $1.35 TRILLION, marginally better than the 2009 budget deficit. Thus, Obama's spending freeze would have the same negligible effect this year as last year. The report also estimates that unemployment will stay the same at around 10%, it well improve just a little next year and this year the U.S. economy will grow only 2%. If these numbers are right, the budget deficit is unlikely to improve due to higher payroll taxes from falling unemployment.

Some more bad news. If the estimates are right, then in two years the political class would have spent about $2.75 TRILLION more than it took in via taxes, financing the difference with bonds. If you divide the $2.75 TRILLION by the number of households in the U.S., then an average household is on the hook for about $21,000. In other words, to just pay off the deficit from this year and last year, every American household would have to write a check for an additional $21,000 each.

More bad news. Let's do some rough math. Last year the Federal government had revenue of $2.1 TRILLION but spent $3.5 TRILLION. If the unemployment rate had been zero last year, i.e. the 10% of workers looking for jobs actually found a job, then you could roughly guess that government revenue would have gone up by about 10% since those that were unemployed were now paying taxes. Thus, the $2.1 TRILLION would go up about 10% and result in $2.3 TRILLION, still leaving a deficit of $1.2 trillion. If you believe that true unemployment rate is closer to 20%, as some experts claim in order to take into account those people that have stopped looking for a job, than if by some miracle all of those in the 20% got a job and started paying taxes, the Federal government revenue would rise to about $2.5 TRILLION, still leaving it with a deficit of one TRILLION dollars. In other words, even if everyone in the country got a job and started paying taxes, it still does not look like we could easily eliminate the annual deficit, spending is that out of control.

To the President's credit, several days ago he proposed assembling a sixteen member bipartisan panel to come up with a deficit reduction plan. the panel would put together a plan throughout 2010 that would be voted on by Congress later this year. This was the good news and was consistent with the oft-mentioned recommendation of this blog that an expert panel approach is the only way to get Congress out of the way of progress. Numerous times we have cited the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Space mission, the Grace Commission, military base closing commission, etc. as independent panels that made real, positive changes in the country. However, to my surprise and disappointment, the Senate has already voted down the idea and has not come up with a replacement plan fro deficit control.

A few final observations:

• Spending is truly out of control and there appears to be no fortitude, urgency, or intelligence in Congress to do anything about it.
• Non-government economists are right in predicting that failure to get the budget under control will result in higher taxes, higher interest rates, sluggish or no economic growth, credit shortages as the government sucks up all available resources to fund the deficit spending impacts, and a continual devaluation the dollar.
• You cannot get the budget under control without hitting all of the budget lines, unlike the Obama plan that touched only a subset of the budget items and froze those budgets, did not shrink them. An easy first step, as proposed in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," is to sharply reduce our military commitments overseas. Stationing 47,000 troops in Japan, 30,000 in Korea and over 50,000 in Germany serve no strategic purpose. Bring them home and you can make a significant dent in military spending without a detrimental impact on security. Deep cuts in ALL areas are required.
• Late last year I hypothesized the theory that President Obama had lost control of the Presidency and that a small handful of Democrats in Congress were now running the show (Reid, Pelosi, etc.). I think the past few days have proven that the President is rapidly approaching lame duck status. Although his efforts to get the deficit spending under control were definitely on the meager side (freeze only a subset of government functions and put a panel together to come up with a deficit reduction plan), it appears that neither of those efforts will get any traction from Congress. While 53 Senators voted to make the deficit reduction panel a reality (60 votes were needed for passage), including 16 Republicans, 23 Democrats defied the President and did not vote to support the panel idea.

Truly scary situation. The reality is right out there in front of the political class but they are either unwilling or unable to face the reality and make the tough choices. Failure to act and get spending under control will have dire consequences for generations to come and Obama, he of the 70-80% approval rating of 12 months ago, now seems incapable of doing anything about it.



Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.

Afghanistan Math - Part 3 (And a little more)

This is the last time we will discuss Afghanistan for a while. There are just too many other areas to discuss where the political class continues to waste away our tax dollars, our freedoms, and our credibility as a free nation. Today's post is based on an AP report from Brussels where NATO announced that some two dozen countries will send an estimated 7,000 additional troops to Afghanistan next year. As with the previous two posts, let's do some math:

• The 7,000 additional troops is a boost of about 18% over current troop levels from other nations. The U.S. increase is over 40% more than current levels.
• The 7,000 increase consists of 5,500 firm commitments and 1.500 possible commitments. If only 5,500 show up than the increase is only 14% above current levels.
• Britain, which suffered through fatal terrorism transit attacks several years ago has pledged to send an additional 500 troops. The United States has six times the population of Great Britain but is sending 60 times the number of additional troops.
• If 7,000 additional non-U.S. troops are sent to Afghanistan and they come from 24 countries as stated in the article, then on average each of our "allies" is sending less than 300 troops each. The word token seems appropriate here.
• No sign that our major economic competitors, Russia, India, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, will be contributing anything to the fight.

The bottom line conclusion is the same as the past two posts: the United States is contributing far more in money and blood to this worldwide terrorism fight than our allies. As we bleed both money, resources, and our soldiers' blood, many of our allies, including those that have tasted terror attacks on their own soil, are just not stepping up. The image of Hillary Clinton and others almost begging for support from our allies is an indication of how far we have fallen in the eyes of the world. Two weeks ago President Obama went to China to beg for their cooperation in helping us get out of our own economic mess and now the administration fawns over allies that donate only 500 troops to the fight in Afghanistan. Very sad.

Thus, the urgent need for Step 30 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." We need to reassess and dramatically downsize our military footprint around the world. We no longer have the economic power, the political clout, or the track record for interfering in foreign affairs that have only minimal or only imaginary impact on our own citizens. From Vietnam to Somalia, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, we have accomplished very little at great expense from a military point of view. The world has changed but our military deployment and strategies have not.

A few observations about the new Obama administration Afghanistan strategy:

• There is no doubt he was not dealt a good hand from the Bush administration. Bush had Bin Laden and his thugs on the run in 2001-2002 and then used the terrorism umbrella to go after Hussein and Iraq, both of whom posed little danger to the United States. In the meantime, Bin Laden and his terror network were able to reestablish themselves, most likely in Pakistan, and this has led us to the morass we are in today.
• Nevertheless, I see a number of troubling facets of Obama's handling of Afghanistan in the past year, the most important of which was the foot dragging to finally make a decision. Rather than gong on Leno, Letterman, and filming TV commercials for George Lopez's show, maybe he should have been focused on getting a new strategy together sooner, it might have saved some lives.
• I think he made two major mistakes in his speech. First, he set a timetable for withdrawal. I think that Senator McCain spoke to the point best when he said that you do not usually win a military conflict with just guns, you usually win it by breaking the will of the enemy. By setting a semi-firm deadline for getting out, it will be tremendously more difficult to break the will of the enemy if they know you are leaving shortly. This deadline also gives the corrupt officials of the central government reasons not to worry too much about any corruption crackdown if they know it will all be over in 18 short months and they can continue their corrupt practices at that time. I believe that Obama set the deadline to pacify members of his own party, i.e. he set political priorities above military strategies. This will make our soldiers jobs more complicated since the enemy knows we are leaving. He also was thinking as a politician rather than a leader by setting this deadline since he probably wants the war to be a distant memory when he comes up for re-election. Again, politics trumps good strategy, wasting our resources and making our troops lives more difficult.
• His second mistake was the short shrift he gave to the Pakistan border areas. We can never militarily win this war unless we go into the havens in Pakistan to flush out the terrorists where they currently reside. Now, maybe he plans to do this and does not want to tip his hand on this cross border incursion. However, I doubt it. Without going after the enemy in hot pursuit wherever they go to hide there is no chance of a military victory.
• Although I will not go into it now, there are some excellent papers from the Cato Group and other organizations that have analyzed the situation and believe that not only should we not increase our troop strength, we should begin withdrawal immediately. These analyses go into details about the history and current status of Afghanistan and why the military options as it was defined by Bush and is currently defined by Obama, have no chance of succeeding. Their conclusions come up with some interesting alternative strategies based on logic and data, something that the political class seldom uses.
• My prediction: similar to Vietnam, the new strategy will devolve into finding any excuse to proclaim an empty victory and get out before the next Presidential election. It will waste tens of billions of dollars and many American lives. We will be no better off than in 2001 when the whole debacle began. Bush started the downfall of the mission and the current administration will finish the job.

I hope I am wrong and the President knows what he is doing based on information that I have no access to and should not have access to. But given that the government could not prevent unwanted guests from getting within arms reach of the President in the White House, I am doubtful that same government will be able to find thousands of terrorists hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, especially if our troops are not allowed to even look for them.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.

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Wasteful Foreign Deployments

Let's take on a different topic today and give health care reform a little break with the exception of the closing paragraph below. As you probably know, the Pentagon is always one of the biggest budget items that the Federal government spends our tax dollars on. In fact, I recently read that the United States spends more on defense than the rest of the word combined. In order to attain a 50% decrease in Washington spending, return that unused wealth back to taxpayers and thus, increasing freedom, the Pentagon budget would have to be cut significantly.

A July 3, 2009 article in the Tampa Bay Times, which was a reprint form the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, provided some insights on first steps to getting this spending under control. The article cited the 2007 statistics from the Department Of Defense:

• The United States had 295,003 military personnel in 150 countries as of the end of 2007
• This excluded 218,500 personnel in Iraq and 25,240 personnel in Afghanistan
• There were U.S. 57,080 troops in Germany
• There were 32,803 troops in Japan
• There were 27,014 troops in Korea
• There were 9,925 in Great Britain
• There were 9,855 in Italy
• There were 1,594 in Turkey
• There were 1,286 in Spain

Let's do some math. If we subtract the troop levels above (excluding Iraq and Afghanistan) from the Department of Defense total, we end up with 155,446 troops stationed in 143 countries. This leads to an estimated deployment per country of 1,087. If we assume that none of these 143 countries have more than Spain, the last country listed in the article, then we probably have about 1,000 troops stationed in each of those 143 countries. While some of these troops are undoubtedly stationed in our embassies for embassy protection, I doubt we need a deployment of 1,000 troops per embassy.

Thus, the first step in reducing Pentagon costs is to return almost of these troops to the U.S. Why do we need 57,000 troops in Germany? They serve no strategic need now that the Iron Curtain has fallen and the Cold War is over. 32,000 troops in Japan are not going to deter China's military and do we really think the Japanese will attack Pearl Harbor again? Our troops in South Korea are only a small percentage of the South Korean army, let them defend their own country. Removing our troops might even ease tensions on the Korean peninsula. I cannot imagine what almost 10,000 troops are doing in Great Britain. Stationing thousands of troops in over a hundred countries serves no purpose except to waste our tax dollars.

Returning these troops will not make America any less safe. I doubt that the 57,000 troops in Germany are any kind of terrorist deterrent. Let's save the money and get focused on the real military threats, not worry about having troops in 150 countries. It is a ridiculous, expensive and ineffective military strategy in light of the terrorism threats in the world today. This strategy is embodied by Step 30 in the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government".

A short sidebar on health care reform debate as promised. I loved a comment from an American citizen I saw today who was on a tear while discussing Obama's health care reform program with the citizen's Congressman. Basically his statement was that why did Obama take six months to pick out a dog for his kids while he wants to pass a trillion dollar (or more) health care reform program in four weeks? I could not have said it better. See some of my previous posts for a more detailed discussion.