A Message to Algore

The People of North Dakota request that global warming be returned in exchange for the snow Denver has sent us.

Thank you.

How About Some Uniforms?

Was it really a good idea to have the executioners on video look like they were pulled off the street? Apparently the Iraqi Government could not afford uniforms.

Why did the Bush Admin allow the people on video to wear plain clothes and leather jackets with ski masks? Why would the Bush Admin allow the people executing Saddam look like to the terrorists chopping off the heads of people like Nick Berg?

This will come back to bite Bush cause this give the anti-war Dems and foreigners the ammo to say that the regime we put in place functions just like the terrorists.

Memo to those in charge: When it comes to executing Osama if he is ever caught, wear something that looks like a uniform and not something the terrorists would wear.

Where were the advisors? I thought the US was training Iraqis, it looks like these are just a bunch of thugs in ski masks stringing him up.

I guess the Iraqi government doesn’t care about public image and professionalism. That certainly will empower the nut jobs that say we have just exchanged one thug for a larger, more democraticly elected group of other thugs.

Don’t tell me that someone in our government couldn’t have said to their people “pst, hey, make some uniforms or give your executioners suits and ties so the world doesn’t think you are thugs.”

Democrats, Rejoice: For the Bush Tax Hike Cometh!

Paulson Tax Hike?

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has quietly entered discreet conversations with members of Congress about a tax increase for upper-income Americans as part of bipartisan Social Security reform.

Since the 2006 Republican election defeats, the White House has not ruled out raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. With or without such a tax increase, Democrats will reject President Bush’s proposal to carve private retirement accounts out of Social Security.

Paulson is the first of Bush’s three secretaries at the Treasury to participate in Social Security reform negotiations. Paul O’Neill and John Snow were not actively engaged with the issue.

The Supply Side Argument for Subsidized Higher Education

“Supply Side Economics” tells us that a reduction in tax rates today will lead to a higher personal income tomorrow, and thus higher tax revenues for the state.

“Conventional Wisdom” tells us that higher levels of education today, will lead to higher personal income tomorrow.

With that as the starting point, let’s replace “tax rate” with “tuition rate.”

If higher education and lower tax rates today lead to higher income and higher tax revenue tomorrow; then the Laffer Curve that describes the “sweet spot” for tax rates should be modified for use to determine the tuition rate for education that the individual taxpayer (or individual student in this case).

This Blog is Moving

The new version of Blogger has been a disappointment so this blog is moving to WordPress.

The FreeRepublicans.com domain will remain the same.

For a preview check out http://freerepublicans.wordpress.com

The new site will be up and running on January 1st, 2007.

This site will remain out there forever.

Military Considers Opening Recruitment Stations Overseas

Boston Globe

The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks — including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer — according to Pentagon officials.

Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans’ willingness to serve in uniform.

The idea of signing up foreigners who are seeking US citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.

A Failure of American Competency

Human Events

There’s a reason why political power was taken from the Republicans and given to the Democrat Party. Voters in the political center had concluded that the Iraq invasion has been a failure. They may be wrong, but the Middle East has a long history of befuddling the best efforts to reform it.

At the heart of the election was the conclusion that, given America’s famed managerial and military skills, what had occurred in Iraq was a failure of competency at the highest levels of government. The blame cannot be placed on our soldiers, airmen, and Marines. It was not a failure of the valor of our fighting forces.

It is now widely understood that the White House and Pentagon failed to provide either sufficient manpower or planning for the postwar period.
[...]
After George W. Bush took the reins of government, the very opposite of the success initiated during the Reagan years of the 1980’s and the subsequent 1994 transfer of power to a Republican Congress, occurred. Conservatives looked on in dismay and slowly began to raise their voices in protest. Centrist voters heard them and Bush is now a very lame duck President.

Billions of U.S. dollars have been expended on the Iraq war and its aftermath. We are closing in on more than 3,000 casualties, in addition to thousands of wounded and maimed service men and women.

Unheeded in the initial and subsequent calculations was the ancient and endemic corruption that has existed for centuries throughout the Middle East. It has proven as powerful as bombs and bullets.

A retreat from Iraq, however, will further embolden the forces of radical Islam that have been on the march since the late 1970s. They want to control the whole of the Middle East and then the world beyond. This would be their goal whether the U.S. had invaded Iraq or not.

Congress must decide whether America needs a larger military and on that decision hinges much of the future at home and abroad. It is an obligation that America must assume because few other nations can or will.

The military we have is a superb fighting machine, but as Gen. John Abizaid recently told an audience at Harvard, “This is not an Army that was built to sustain a long war.”
If the neocons knew that, they ignored it.

Our population of 300 million people has 60 million between the ages of 18 and 35, more than enough to expand the current force if Congress would authorize the expansion to 70 brigades from our current 52. Constantly drawing down on Guard and Reserve units is a bad idea.

War is always a serious enterprise. Americans need to take it more seriously.

Tooting My Own Horn

Mentioned in the Grand Forks Herald

and the Fargo Forum

Second-guessing, Part 2A second conservative group has weighed in on Gov. John Hoeven’s budget, calling it “an unacceptable proposal” and calling for return of the state’s half-billion-dollar budget surplus to taxpayers.

Dustin Gawrylow, executive director of North Dakotans for Change, criticized the governor for recommending the state spend “$382 million more than the agencies themselves” requested, for recommending a $300,000 increase in his own budget, and for cutting the requests from five college campuses “while tuition rates continue to increase.”

He also calls for elimination of the state income tax on incomes up to $30,650.

His organization’s Web site, www.nodakchange.com, contains a link, “Learn more about the people behind North Dakotans for Change,” which doesn’t link to anything. The site does score 2005 legislators, awarding points for “pro-youth” and “pro-growth” votes.

Earlier this month, North Dakotans, including former Gov. Ed Schafer, who are affiliated with Americans for Prosperity, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates lower taxes and restrictions on government spending, called for using the state’s surplus to “make government more efficient and less costly.”

Not sure why she says that the link doesn’t go anywhere, cause it does, but oh well.

Don’t stop terror rockets, says Israeli prime minister

World Net Daily

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday rejected a plan by military leaders here to allow the Israeli Defense Forces to take out Palestinian militants it catches in the process of launching rockets from the Gaza Strip into nearby Jewish cities, WND has learned.

IDF leaders charged Olmert was “damaging” Israeli security.
[...]
…the IDF several times last week spotted militants in the process of launching rockets but the military was unable to take any action. Olmert’s government changed the rules of engagement following the cease-fire. Now, if Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are caught launching rockets at Jewish cities, the Israeli military is forbidden to respond.

Previously, the IDF used artillery units and aerial strikes against militants discovered in the process of launching rockets.

“We are frustrated just watching the rocket launchers being set up. There is nothing we are allowed to do,” said a military source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

Of Debts and Deficits

Human Events

On October 11, President Bush went before the television cameras to proudly announce that the budget deficit for fiscal year 2006, which ended on September 30, was only $248 billion. This was a great success, he said, because in February the Office of Management and Budget had estimated that the deficit would be $423 billion.

If this is the standard for success, one wonders why we didn’t do even better. All Bush had to do was order OMB to make an even bigger mistake than it did in estimating what the deficit would be. If it had wrongly projected the deficit to be $500 billion or $600 billion in 2006, then Bush could have announced an even bigger improvement. Maybe next year he should tell OMB to project a deficit of $1 trillion. Then even if the budget deficit rises, Bush can congratulate himself once again for beating expectations.

In the real world, of course, people measure their progress not against some incorrect forecast, but against actual results. By this standard, the numbers don’t look as good. Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion in fiscal year 2001, which the government was already in the midst of when he took office. By the following year, fiscal year 2002, the surplus was gone and the government had a deficit of $158 billion, which rose to $378 billion in 2003 and $413 billion in 2004, before falling to $318 billion in 2005 and $248 billion last year.

But these figures greatly understate the budgetary turnaround. In January 2001, the Congressional Budget Office estimated budget surpluses as far as the eye could see. It projected an aggregate surplus of more than $2 trillion between 2002 and 2006. Instead, we had an aggregate deficit of $1.5 trillion — a deterioration of $3.5 trillion.

Yet these figures still understate the budgetary damage caused by the Bush administration because it leaves out changes in the budgetary status of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The federal budget only measures their current cash receipts and outlays. Because these are permanent programs not subject to annual appropriations, however, it is necessary to look at their budgets in what accountants call accrual terms — taking into account future commitments already made.
[...]
The Financial Report also shows that the true public debt at the end of fiscal year 2006 was not the published figure of $4.6 trillion, but almost twice that — $8.9 trillion — when liabilities for federal employees and veterans’ benefits and other items are included.

But even this larger figure does not represent the government’s total indebtedness because it leaves out Social Security and Medicare, which have projected costs far in excess of projected revenues. Over the next 75 years, these two programs have an unfunded liability of $44 trillion — $15 trillion for Social Security and another $29 trillion for Medicare.

What is really frightening is that Bush apparently has no clue that the problems of Medicare are twice as bad as Social Security’s and getting worse at a much faster rate. At the end of fiscal year 2002, Social Security’s unfunded liability was $11 trillion and Medicare’s was just $13 trillion. Today, Social Security is a little worse, but Medicare is much, much worse.

Yet over and over again, Bush has said we must fix Social Security — even if we have to raise taxes — while saying nothing about the way Medicare is hemorrhaging money. He can’t because his massive, unfunded program for prescription drugs in 2003 is the principal reason why Medicare’s financial problems have gotten so much worse since 2002.