A New Beginning: The NRA Takes Its Safety Off

A New Beginning: The NRA Takes Its Safety Off: Yeah, I totally agree, a US ban on assault weapons would be ridiculous. That's not the problem, and it wouldn't solve anything. But it's not as simple as telling the Mexican government to get their act together. It's an interesting thing because the US involvment with other countries has always been a hairy issue. But I agree, we should be doing our part on our side to stop these drug cartels. I don't think we're not doing our part though. The real question I think is this: how is this affecting the US, and what should we do about it? The drug trade is a huge problem, but you can't just shut it down. If it were that simple we would have done it by now. It's kind of like trying to kill weeds. You can pull them all up but eventually a seed is going to land and start the infestation all over again. I think what we need to do is worry about how we treat the weeds. How would we do that? No answers from me right now, but that's the direction we should be heading I think.

Credit - the imaginary currency of our demise

As I was wondering what to write my next blog entry on, I was doing some research on what's going on, and eventually wandered around to the topic of national debt. What is it?

Read this article and educate yourself.

There are three parts to our national debt of $11,226,807,485,330.04 (the current amount as of 2 days ago (by the way, it's gone up $18 billion in the past 6 days)): the public, or national debt, the intragovernmental debt and the debt owed by the Social Security Trust Fund. The part I'm concerned about (although it's all very concerning) is the public debt.

There are two parts to the public debt: internal debt and external debt. The internal debt includes what the U.S. owes the states and individuals, while the external debt includes what the government owes foreign countries and foreign individuals. The types of securities held by the public include, Notes, Treasury Bills, Bonds, United States Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities, and TIPS. Internal debt can be seen as what the government owes itself: when we buy bonds, the government is essentially borrowing our money. I don't think that should concern us as much as external debt.

Our government has borrowed money from over 31 different countries and owes a total of over $3 trillion. China and Japan own about 44% of the U.S. external debt. Does that scare you? The United States is spending money it doesn't have. But what is more scary then that is what the Obama administration is doing with our tax dollars.

According to CNN, the new administration has spent over $2 trillion "rescuing our economy" out of an allocated $10 trillion. But where most of this money is going, I would say over 70% of it, is toward making credit more available, preventing foreclosure, and taking over failed banks. We are fueling debt on an individual, corporate, and national level. Obama is not concerned with evening our debts, only with spreading our tax dollars throughout the economy to promote "equality." There are noble hopes with his plans, but I don't think America is really thinking about the process that will make them happen. We are spending money we don't have, and the result is inflation and recession. We need to be meeting the needs of the unfortunate but without the debt. Internal debt will for the most part work itself out, and Social Security is a GOOD THING. But the fact that we are building our economy on credit, and the fact that China and Japan could practically buy us should scare us. Why doesn't it? Are we that driven by immediate gratification that we would stoop to any level to buy what we want? The consequences we are dealing with are real, and the need is genuine. But what started it was the normalization of debt. Let's stop this self-perpetuating cycle and spend our tax dollars first on getting our debts paid.

A Dose of Political Apathy: Should We Bail Out The Auto Industry?

A Dose of Political Apathy: Should We Bail Out The Auto Industry?: "I completely agree. I could go on a long rant about capitalism and how the free market is a large reason we became such a world power. But that aside, I agree. Why should our government pull large companies out of their self-dug economic graves? Times are changing: gas is becoming more expensive, cars are becoming more efficient, smaller. And China and Japan are just making better cars more cheaply. In addition to that, the American economy has always gone through phases of prosperity and poverty. Inflation and deflation. This 'recession' we're in is just a valley that we'll soon be out of, but that doesn't mean there won't be casualties. But for our government to try to keep afloat the dying auto companies, that if left to themselves would disintegrate because of their own inability to keep up with the global auto industry, is foolish to me. It also begins to reek a bit of communism. That would be a different topic however.

Yet, I wonder: if the government WERE to bail out our American auto companies, would that get them on their feet so they could actually produce competition for the auto companies of China and Japan? If so, it could be quite a useful investment for our government to make...although it is quite hard to predict such things..."

The price of an election= too much

Do you know how much it costs to run for president? It cost Senator McCain $333,000,000, and our new president, Barack Obama a whopping $730,000,000 according to opensecrets.org. The total amount raised for the 2008 presidential election by all the candidates was $1,000,000,000. That's $1 billion dollars. All that money was used for advertising, political rallies, speeches, the cost of signs etc. That's just what it takes to run for president these days. Even for someone to run for mayor, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Does anyone else find this absolutely ridiculous?

The fact that that money could be put to different (better) uses aside, there are other problems with the massive cost of the campaigns and elections. One is the time it takes out of the actual political work. For presidential elections it's a little bit different, because they are devoting most of their time to the actual campaign, but for members of the House who only have 2 year terms, campaigns hardly ever stop. It's a time consuming process raising funds. The other problem I see with this is that it excludes those without money. Both John McCain and Barack Obama had millions of dollars of their own that they were able to spend on their campaigns in addition to the hundreds of millions they raised. America is supposedly a classless system, but when the political arena is only open to those who have the cash to spare, something is wrong. If you look at the statistics, you'll see that there is a direct correlation (most of the time, there are exceptions) between the amount raised and the amount of popularity the candidates amassed at the polls and, in the end, in the voter's booths.

I understand that the vast majority of the money raised came from enthusiastic supporters of the candidates. I'm not saying that if you're not rich you can't run for office. But I am saying that I think you can't get enough publicity to start your campaign unless you're rich, either to pay for advertising or to support yourself while you devote the time necessary to fund-raising.

Here's an interesting article from the Boston Globe on the subject

The war on the rich?

*Sigh* This guy has some interesting views, but he kinda makes me cringe.

This glaringly Republican blog entry on the RedState discusses Obama's proposed taxation of people with incomes over $250,000. He's writing mainly to Republican readers on this topic, and appeals to his readers that are making more that $250,000 a year. And for all his passion on the topic, he words things poorly, and has a few punctuation/spelling errors. But he has some good things to say.

His argument is basically that the proposed taxation on incomes of over $250,000 a year is unfair. The author says that he makes just over $250 a week in his job, and this would put him just over minimum wage, so it is obviously not a biased view. His reasoning is that $250,000 is not enough to own a "penthouse in Manhattan" or "roll around in a drop top Caddy", in essence, it's not enough to be living the good life that most people associate with the richest people in the world. Making this much every year doesn't make you wealthy enough to tax, because there isn't as much excess as one might think. While the author is very much for supporting the homeless and poor, he does not think it should be at the cost of a forced taxation of the more wealthy of society. He does not believe that the government's role is to enforce social and economic justice.

His arguments are pretty sound, and when you boil it down, have mainly to do with the purpose of government. Is it the government's job to support the less fortunate? Especially at the cost of it's citizens who are taxed because they make more than the average American? The author believes that social and economic justice should be achieved by community service and organizations, not by the government, and I partially agree. A point that the author partially makes, and that I would make my main point in any discussion on this issue, is that our government was founded on the ideals of free capitalism and government by the people. I believe that the main thing that has made our government and nation so strong is that we were and are very much an industrial nation, built on the principles of free market. When you take the wealth that individuals and corporations have made because of this system and distribute it to those who don't have as much, for the purpose not of bettering the state of society but of equalizing the playing field, I would say that you are destroying one of the main things that has made our nation strong. His closing statement is this, and I think it's a good way to end his rant, and I think it exemplifies his post pretty well (spelling errors and good ideas):

Let’s get smart about how we go about the dialogue to help the less fortunate. I’m a Republican second and an activist first and foremost. I will always fight for the voiceless and ensure their freedom to prosper not be compromised by a all to often deceitful government that wishes to control their lives.

Republicans are throwing nails?

The commentary by Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe, on the Repulican's behavior towards Obama's stimulus bill is an extremely biased perspective on the partisanship of politics today. Obama's stimulus bill was designed to help pull the people who had lost their jobs out of economic stagnancy, in theory. The effectiveness of such a bill is still to be seen, but there are different views taken by the Republican and the Democratic party. The Republicans, who generally view the economy as the people's responsibility, preferring free market over government involvement, take a very negative view on the bill. The Democrats, who are much more supportive of government financial assistance, are very much in favor of the bill. Jackson, in his commentary, talked about the Repulicans as almost inhuman for their total lack of support for the bill:

Not even the stimulus bill stimulated the Republican Party into any human feeling. It heard not the screams of 4 million people losing their jobs in the last year, not the slamming doors of shuttering factories, not the shrieks at kitchen tables from Saco, Maine, to Sacramento, Calif., as working Americans open their mail to see they've lost 40 percent and more on their 401(k)s. With the collective livelihood of America at stake, only three of 219 Republicans in the House and the Senate voted for the $787 billion economic recovery package, and the three who did — Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter — slashed what they could before passage in the Senate.

It seems like Jackson is targeting the general public of America, but he also seems to be targeting a Democratic audience judging by his sheer contempt for the Republican party. His argument (If he has one, it's a little hard to see past his bigotry) is essentially that the Republcians in office, despite all their efforts are not slowing down Obama, and if anything are going to help him with his goals by causing voters to kick them out of office for their obstinacy. He makes this argument with approval and support ratings from various polls and the fact that only 3 of the 219 Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill and it still passed, and he's right. I think that because of the Bush administration, the Republican part has lost power in our government. It will be interesting to see how these approval ratings change over the course of the Obama administration.

Check it out the commentary by Jackson! What do you think about it?

CIA and Interogation Techniques. Change might not be so immeninant

One of the most controversial issues of the Bush administration was the interrogation techniques used in some out-of-country prisons. In these prisons the inmates could be essentially tortured for information. One of Obama's promises is to discontinue this, and he recently signed an executive order limiting interrogation to the 19 techniques outlined in the Army Field manual.

This article is on the recent election of Leon Panetta as the new CIA director. At 70, he is the oldest person to have run the CIA, and he was elected by unanimous consent. It discusses his views and some of what he plans to do (or not do). What I find interesting in this article, is that while Panetta will not use the "enhanced interrogation techniques" Obama has forbidden, he conceded that the 19 interrogation techniques might not be enough, and while he defined waterboarding as torture, he said that the intelligence officers who carried it out should not be prosecuted. It appears that Panetta does not intend to change much with the CIA either. The article also mentions that John Brennan was the leading candidate for CIA director until some political blogs linked him to the "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the pre-emptive war in Iraq, when he subsequently withdrew his name for consideration. While John Brennan is not the new CIA director, he is now Obama's homeland security advisor.

So what is our government saying about their actual beliefs about torture? Their words and actions seem to be doing two different things. Read the article by clicking the title of this post and form your own opinions. What do you think?