Alternatively, you could just look at the facts. Oops. You may be right about cutting taxes to help the economy, in order to increase tax revenue. The only problem is that Bush forgot the other half of the equation: cutting spending.
Cutting spending isn't part of the equation at all. Government spending will always have to increase with the size of the economy. The key is to promote enough growth to maintain a constant debt in relation to the size of the economy.
Cutting spending actually accomplishes the opposite. For example, budgetary pressures in the Army Corp of Engineers resulted in a the widely known problem of the New Orleans levy system to go unfixed for decades, and this came back to bite us hard when the hurricane struck and flooded the city. The same can be said about the gutting of defense and intelligence spending in the 1990's that made it easier for people like Osama bin Laden to attack us. The economic results of these types of spending cuts are far more devastating than the amount of debt that would have been accumulated to pay for them when needed.
Okay, but what if the majority of the treasury bonds is not being purchased by U.S. nationals, but rather by foreign governments/corporations/individuals? All of the interest then paid on the bond is a drain on our economy, right?
Not exactly. We don't live in an economic bubble - this is a global economy. Growth and prosperity abroad always results in growth and prosperity at home. On top of that, we would have the added bonus of having other people finance our growth for us.
Note that your question still is a "what if" question. The majority of US debt is by far still being purchased by US citizens and by the US government.
Sure, you can keep paying off one credit card with another. But the issue of whether deficit spending actually boosts economic growth is up in the air. On one hand you do have the Keyensian economic effect.(which is interesting considering Republicans supposedly reject Keynes), but on the other hand you have the drain caused by interest payments. Interest ads no value. You're not creating any economic growth by spending $400 billion on interest, and you also have the issue of the $9 trillion which is tied up in federal bonds instead of being available for economic investment into the private sector.
Amazing how you could get this so mind-numbingly backwards. The $9 trillion "tied up in federal bonds" is an investment in the private sector. Those bonds show up as an asset on the balance sheet of debt holders, and interest payments go directly back into the private sector through them. This does add value, otherwise nobody would be interested in buying treasury bonds from the government.
The interesting thing is, we're at a point today where the interest payments on the Federal Debt(about $400 billion) is larger than the amount of the annual deficit(about $250 billion). So we're at a point now where if not for the debt, we'd have a balanced budget. So our debt is actually draining on our budget and making the debt larger. Why is that an issue? Because being in a situation where your debt keeps rising in order to pay off your existing debt is a recipe for bankruptcy.
It is impossible for the government to go bankrupt - they control the money supply. The only risk is hyperinflation, where the money that the government uses to pay of the debt is worthless, but as long as the economy keeps growing this isn't a risk either. An increasing debt is not an issue as long as the economy grows at least as fast.
Whoa... Your beyond drinking the kool-aid. Your flat off in la la land. Paying off the debt would not drain the economy, rather quite the opposite. It would free up the $9 trillion plus interest payments for private economic development.
Wrong. Paying off the debt would only manage to transfer the debt burden from the debt holders, who hold the debt as an income-producing asset, to tax payers, who receive no financial benefit from paying the extra taxes. You are then stuck with the problem of finding ways to increase the money supply to facilitate growth without adding too much inflation with the extra funds.
debt-to-GDP is increasing, and has been for several years
Wrong again. Although my information is now about 1 week out of date, for the past 18 months the size of the economy has been growing faster than the size of the debt, I.E. the Debt-to-GDP ratio has been falling. This changed on 10/27 with the slower than expected growth numbers, but isn't predicted to last long.
It would only be decreasing if the deficit was held to zero, allowing for inflation to decrease the present and future value of the debt. That hasn't happened since the Clinton era.
No. The debt-to-GDP decreases if GDP growth outpaces debt accumulation. That is pretty basic math, you know. Inflation always decreases the future value of debt because the vehicles that hold this debt are long term.
Your understanding of economics and deficit spending is disturbing. I've encountered it before, and it appears to be a result of a propaganda campaign by some Republicans to prop up their existing power structure. That is, ignore the problems and look at the furry rabbit slight of hand.
I would say the same about you, but I am not arrogant enough to assume that anybody who disagrees with me has been brainwashed by a propaganda machine.
I don't know if it's worth responding to you, because I don't think you care about actually e
As long as the debt is outstanding, interest is owed on it. Your taxes pay to service that debt or in the case of Bush administration, issue more bonds to pay the interest which means even more taxes later.
Right, and this is money that goes directly back into the private sector to fuel economic growth.
When you talk about growth, any reasonable analyis will separate growth due to the population growth (a rise in the full employment level in the economy in economist speak) and productivity growth. The cost providing government services is presumbably proportional to the population size so that economic growth due to population increasing is not going to solve an debt problem since the imbalance between government spending and government revenues will increase. Productivity growth is typically quite a small value (1% per year) and has been know to inexplicably disappear for decades, like 1970s. It's not possible ot get out a debt binge on productivity growth.
Sure it is. The debt levels we are carrying now are nowhere near the extreme levels we have historically seen, and are quite conservative compared to other industrialized countries in Europe and Asia. Coming out of WWII, we had a debt burden twice as high as we have today, and it was mitigated by productivity growth in the economy. As long as the economy grows at least as fast as the debt burden, we will never have a problem with debt.
You are also making the false assumption that federal goverment will continue to be able to borrow money a favorable interest rates. Should the interest rates rise for any reason, the government's debt burden will become progressively more expensive.
There is never a shortage of people willing to lend money that has the "full faith and credit" of the Government for repayment. Again, look at the years following WWII. With a debt twice as big as we have today, there still was no shortage of people willing to buy the debt from the Government, and that helped keep interest rates low.
I have no idea what you talking about since you didn't say a surplus of what. It's a certainly not a surplus of investment as government spending completes with private investment. Basic economics: Y = C + I + G + NX. where Y is output (GDP), C is consumption, I is investment and G is government spending and NX is net exports. By boosting government spending which the Bush administration has done faster than than any administration since Johnson and his Great Society, private sector investment and and consumption has suffered as result. Granted, government spending may boost output but elasticity of ouput to government spending is less the one. The rest is coming out consumption or investment.
Government deficits equal an asset in the private sector. Not only that, it is an asset that earns interest and increases the money supply without inflationary pressures. Compare this to a government surplus, where the amount of surplus is a liability in the private sector. The main difference, of course, is that the government has no plans to repay surplus funds back to the private sector, so a government surplus is a "loan" to the government that never gets paid back and cannot be invested or spent on economic growth.
You could make the same wrong argument about personal debt if you have rising income. However, the interest still cuts againt the present value of your lifetime resources. The government has the same problem. Interest is a real expense and lower the present value of government resources causing either lower future spending or higher future taxes. There is no free lunch.
Borrowing money for an income producing asset is always a good thing. Ask any investment planner about the term leverage to find out why.
I should have checked before I posted. For the previous 18 months, up until last week, GDP growth was in fact outpacing debt growth. But the Q3 growth figure released a week ago reversed that. This should be a temporary event as GDP growth is projected to rebound in 2007.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that sitting around and letting tyrants like Saddam kill is what is inexcusable. Like you said, two wrongs most certainly don't make a right, which is why something had to be done.
Wrong. As long as the economy keeps growing, current debts can be rolled into new treasury securities when they become due without our debt to GDP ratio increasing. Fortunately, deficits affect a net surplus in the private sector, helping fuel economic growth without inflation. So unless we do something stupid to stop economic growth, like raise taxes or pay off the debt early, this debt will never have to be paid off. It will be continually rolled into new debt without increasing our total debt burden.
In fact, our current debt-to-GDP ratio is 65% and falling, meaning that our economy is growing faster than our debt is. What President Bush should do is a) further cut taxes or b) further increase spending to keep this ratio constant and promote the most economic growth. Personally, I prefer option (a).
To paraphrase the book of Samuel: Saddam has killed his thousands, Bush has killed his ten thousands
How ignorant. Your hatred of Bush has clearly blinded you from the plain facts.
Saddam Hussein participated in numerous high profile assassinations, beginning with the unsuccessful attempt on Abd al-Karim Qasim when he was still in high school. He killed 5 religious leaders in front of hundreds of their followers in 1974. He assassinated former Prime-Minister Abdul Razzaq Al naef in 1978. In 1980, Ayatollah Mohamad baqir Al Sadr and his sister were arrested, tortured, and killed. In 1983 he killed 16 members of the Al Hakim family. These were murders that he publicly boasted about.
Saddam also killed leaders in other countries, including Haj Sahal Al Salman (1981), Sami Mahdi (1981), Ni'ma Mohamad (1987), Ni'ma Mohamad (1987), Shaikh Talib Al Suhail (1994).
In 1978 and 1979, Saddam rounded up and murdered 7,000 alleged communists. During those years he also had hundreds of religious leaders and followers killed. In 1979 he ordered a "cleansing" of the government to eliminate political opponents where hundreds of top ranking Ba'thists and army officers were executed in public. In 1983, 8000+ members of the Barzani clan were murdered.
In 1980, Saddam started the Iran/Iraq war, which an estimated 1,500,000 Iranians were killed, including 5,000 in a single day from a chemical weapons attack. Thousands of Iranian solders were killed on a single day when Saddam had live wires canvasing a battle field, ordered his armies to retreat, and then electrocuted the pursuing Iranian soldiers. He then stacked these thousands of corpses in a marsh and used the bodies as a man-made bridge to drive military vehicles over.
In 1990, Saddam illegally invaded Kuwait, killing thousands of innocent civilians and displacing over a million more, many of which were tortured, raped, beaten, and oppressed.
Between 1987 and 1988, over 180,000 Kurds disappeared, and chemical weapons were used on the town of Halabji killing at least 8,000. The village of Balisan was also gassed. 50,000+ rural Kurds were killed in Anfal. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced in refugee camps.
In the 1990's, at least 7,000 prisoners were killed in a systematic "prison cleansing" program.
At least 40,000 Shia's were also killed in the 1990's, including 2,000 on a single day in 1993.
The fact that you can ignore the above atrocities, and actually blame the world leader who is largely responsible for stopping such atrocities does not speak well of your intelligence or objectivity.
All that Kim Jong-il needs to do to get protection from a nuclear attack is to agree to the stipulations of the NPT. The 5 nuclear states would then be required to provide protection from a nuclear attack as long as NK was abiding by the stipulations in the treaty.
But if the 5 nuclear states get rid of their weapons, there will be nobody around to protect against the proliferation of nuclear weapons from a rogue state.
Withdrawing from the treaty and giving up our weapons is far more insane than anything you are complaining about. The only reason the NPT has worked as well as it has is because we have the weapons to enforce it. If we gave our weapons up, we would have no way to enforce this treaty, and would be powerless against regimes like NK. It would be the diplomatic equivelant of bringing a 3" knife blade to a.50 M2 machine gun fight.
Nuclear technology is already "out there", and there is no "undo" button to click. The only way for us to protect against a nuclear attack is to pose a nuclear threat ourselves.
Well, if by "specific statutes" you mean "FISA itself", then yes.
No, I mean a statute that gives executive authority for warrantless wiretaps without approval from the FISA court. The FISA text clearly states that a person is only guilty of an offense if he "engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute", meaning that FISA can be superceded by statutes that allow for such surveillance without court approval. The Bush administration contends that the 2001 AUMF is such a statute.
A small number of members of Congress are required to be informed of specified information regarding such programs, bother under FISA and under the changes proposed in EMSA; however, Congress does not have veto. There is no approval process, and the required information is very general.
But they do have oversight.
Please point to the provision in the bill that requires the FISA court to approve a "warrantless program".
(a) Necessary Findings- Upon receipt of an application under section 703, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court shall enter an ex parte order as requested, or as modified, approving the electronic surveillance program if it finds that--
`(1) the President has authorized the Attorney General to make the application for electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence information or to protect against international terrorism;
`(2) approval of the electronic surveillance program in the application is consistent with the Constitution of the United States;
`(3) the electronic surveillance program is reasonably designed to ensure that the communications that are intercepted are communications of or with--
`(A) a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor;
`(B) an agent of a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor; or
`(C) a person reasonably believed to have communication with or be associated with a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor or an agent of a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor;
`(4) the proposed minimization procedures meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 101(h); and
`(5) the application contains all statements and certifications required by section 703.
First: surveillance now doesn't, in certain cases specified in FISA, require approval of any the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). There is no case in current law where surveillance requires approval of any legislative committees (notification is not approval; I suppose that surveillance prohibited by FISA could be said to require approval of the whole Congress, in advance, to be done legally, since that's what changing FISA would be.) FISA is a law governing surveillance, not a body that approves things.
You are correct. FISA has always allowed warrantless wiretaps in the case of specific statutes. But Congress always has had oversight of such programs, and this new legislation does not change that.
Second: The proposed bill expands the categories of surveillance that do not require FISC approval. See, particularly, the expansion of the definitions of "surveillance" and "agent of foreign power" in Section 2 and the changes to the standards directly applicable to surveillance without a court order in Section 3.
These changes are a no-brainer, as the original text of FISA only specifically addressed foreign powers and had specific exclusions for international terrorism. It should be obvious why such changes were needed.
Third: The proposed bill replaces the more limited provisions triggered by a declaration of war in current law with two broader authorizations (the latter with no fixed duration) triggered by, in the first case, an armed attack against the territory of the United States and, in the second, a terrorist attack against the United States. In neither of these cases is approval of any party outside the executive branch required (notification is required, but no approval requirement exists in the proposal.)
Wrong. This bill, and the Senate version that passed in committee last week require the FISA court to review and approve of the petition of any such program by the Attorney General, and regular review by the congressional legislative committees.
Third: The 60-day period is as you describe, the 45-day period is indefinitely renewable in 45-day increments, so your characterization is wrong. Since the 90-day limit (which isn't an approval step, but a notification) applies only to surveillance of a particular individual during the period governed by the renewable 45-day period, it would have much meaning if the 45-day period was actually a hard limit rather than infinitely renewable. The renewal, needless to say, needs no approval by anyone outside of the executive branch, nor does the determination of "reasonable belief" by the executive. The Attorney General is the person the President acts through, not an authority independent of the executive given the power to block surveillance. And the intelligence committees are nowhere given the power to block anything, simply the right to be informed. The only means they have a blocking it is to go to the whole Congress for a new law or impeachment, nothing provided by the proposed law.
Once again, this bill, and the Senate version of this bill, require the Attorney General to petition the FISA court for a warrantless program as long as a list of about a dozen requirements are met. The Senate version even includes a provision that allows the FISA court to define the duration that the program can continue until additional approval is required. And in all cases Congress is regularly informed about the scope and status of the program.
This is checks and balances just as the founding fathers envisioned, despite the chicken-little warnings from the President's political opposition.
Using "secret" as an euphemism for "warrantless" doesn't make it legal.
And using the 4th Amendment as an argument certainly does not make warrantless wiretaps illegal. You will note that the founding fathers carefully use the word "unreasonable" in the text, indicating that "reasonable" searches and seizures are perfectly legal.
Like I said, I think they are just an recommendation, just as most other dumb laws. Murder and causing harm to others are already illegal, what's the point in extraneous laws that only restrict how people use their own car without bringing anything new to the table? Having standardised rules of behaviour in traffic is of course a good thing, but making it illegal to drive over the speed limit on a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere? Now that's just stupid.
I wouldn't recommend using that excuse the next time you get pulled over for a traffic violation.
After what happened to the Canadian citizen Maher Arar I have no faith whatsoever that your current government is capable of doing anything right, this new law will just fuck up more innocent people's lives, under the guise of "anti-terrorism".
Our government? It was the Canadians who delivered him to the US under the pretense that he was a known al Qaeda associate, and it was the US who released him when they figured out that the Canadians were full of crap. Interesting how you can blame the US when they were not the people who falsely accused this guy in the first place.
Torture is evil, goddamnit, I don't care how many million lives it could save.
Not sure why you felt you needed to bring this up, unless you somehow think that warrantless surveillance is a form of "torture".
My point is that you can't take a quote, and replace an arbitary number of words with their opposites and then decide that the quote has been reversed.
Says who? The quote police?
Maybe Franklin thought that non-essential liberties can be traded for long-term safety, but I really don't think one can derive that information from a single quote.
You will note that I didn't attribute my comment to Benjamin Franklin. I simply pointed out something that should be glaringly obvious to those who like to misuse his quotation.
For what it's worth, I don't think there even exists such a thing as a non-essential liberty. The constitution lists most of the liberties, "the freedom to drive over people" isn't one of them.
Care to reference the text of the Constitution that defines secret, untapped communication with known terrorist entities as an "essential liberty"?
I do however think that traffic rules are mostly a recommendation of how to behave to make everything work smoothly, and as long as you don't endanger or harm anyone, breaking the rules is completely fine.
Traffic rules are not a "recommendation" - they are enforceable law. You do NOT have the liberty to drive past a stop sign without stopping without reprimand. Most people agree that the long term safety that this loss of liberty provides is well worth it. So I'm interested why you feel any different about the long term safety that is provided by tracking the communications of known terrorists with people within our borders.
No, it doesn't. It requires executive notification of select members of the legislative and judicial branches, it removes most of the substance of judicial review where it remains part of the system, and create vast new areas where judicial review is entirely removed. Notification is not review.
Wrong. Any surveillance program still needs regular approval from the legislative judiciary and intelligence committees and FISA. If at any time these organizations do not think the program is still justified they can block it.
False, the provisions of this bill are not restricted to authorizing surveillance targetting "known" (known to whom, anyway?) or even "suspected" terrorists.
Wrong again. I suggest you read the Text of the bill. The only instance where surveillance is allowed without any review is in the 60 days immediately following an armed attack on the country, or in the 45 days immediately following a terrorist attack on the country, and this surveillance is specifically limited to organizations which "there is a reasonable belief that such person is communicating with a terrorist organization or an affiliate of a terrorist organization that is reasonably believed to be responsible for the terrorist attack". And there are subsequent 45-day and 90-day reviews before the congressional intelligence committees and the Attorney General where such programs can be blocked.
I'm sorry but your argument is stupid. While the opposite of a mathematical calculation is usually true, the same can not be said of quotes.
I'm sorry, but your argument is stupid, if you even want to call it an argument. The simple fact is that there will always be tradeoffs between liberty and safety. Of course Benjamin Franklin knew this because he included some important qualifiers, namely essential liberty in return for temporary safety. There isn't a sane citizen in this country that thinks we should give up essential liberties for temporary safety. But there are plenty of people who agree that giving up some non-essential liberties are is very necessary to achieve long term safety, and that refusing to give up some non-essential liberties will almost guarantee endangerment.
Think about that the next time you give up your liberty to blow through a 4-way intersection with out stopping or slowing down.
This is a completely unnecessary step that only erodes our constitutional rights and remove checks on the executive branch.
You will note that this bill still requires regular legislative and judicial review, so any claim that it removes checks on the legislative branch is uninformed. And the only "constitutional right" that this erodes is our right to communicate with known terrorists overseas without the Government listening in, which most sane people would realize isn't a constitutional right at all.
Well, there are lots of things that affect the freedoms of 100% of the population, but are accepted because of the resulting security that they provide. I'd be interested to know where you draw the line. Your freedom to drive as fast as you want on whatever side of the street that you want is restricted in exchange for a little safety on the roads. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to break into houses and businesses to take whatever you want is restricted in exchange for some protection on your own possessions. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to practice medicine without any formal training or certification is restricted in exchange for a little security that your Doctor at least knows what he is doing when you go see him. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater is restricted in exchange for a little security against being trampled the next time you go see a flick. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to build a high rise building to your own standards is restricted in exchange for a little assurance that the next time you take an elevator to the 80th floor of a building you will know that it was built with at least a minimum set of standards. Is that acceptable to you?
If so, I'm interested to know why taking your shoes off at the airport isn't acceptable, or why allowing the Government to listen in on phone conversations with known terrorist isn't acceptable to you, because the protection that this provides is quite obvious.
I would argue that taking away all of these protections for more freedom would actually result in less freedom than we have today, which is why I found it curious that you claimed that you would rather die in a terrorist attack than give up your freedoms.
It deprives them of important social interaction with their peers and helps build independence from their parents.
Not true. Public schools are not the only place where children learn social interaction. Between clubs, sports teams, church groups, and neighborhood friends, homeschooled kids have plenty of interaction. There are even organized home school groups were kids can get together for activities and field trips. One such group around here has over 300 kids who get to go on some of the coolest field trips you can imagine. When you see those kids playing together, social interaction and maladjustment would be the last thing you would think about.
Well, no. If a terrorist sticks a knife to your throat and demands that you denounce your religion and join Islam, you have lost your freedom of religion. If a terrorst puts you in front of a video camera with a machine gun and forces you to spew their political propaganda, you have lost your freedom of speech. And if a terrorist hijacks the airplane that you are on in order to turn it into a human-filled missile, or saws your head off in front of a camera with a rusty blade, or blows up the train you are riding to work in, or sets off a bomb at the nightclub you are dancing at, or blows up the bus or subway that you are riding in, or smuggles liquid explosives onto the plane you boarded, or detonates a nuclear bomb in the city that you live in, you have lost the most basic and fundamental right retained by the people (see the 9th Amendment) -- the right to exist.
Terrorists want to take away far more of your freedoms than anybody in this Government does.
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Cutting spending isn't part of the equation at all. Government spending will always have to increase with the size of the economy. The key is to promote enough growth to maintain a constant debt in relation to the size of the economy.
Cutting spending actually accomplishes the opposite. For example, budgetary pressures in the Army Corp of Engineers resulted in a the widely known problem of the New Orleans levy system to go unfixed for decades, and this came back to bite us hard when the hurricane struck and flooded the city. The same can be said about the gutting of defense and intelligence spending in the 1990's that made it easier for people like Osama bin Laden to attack us. The economic results of these types of spending cuts are far more devastating than the amount of debt that would have been accumulated to pay for them when needed.
Not exactly. We don't live in an economic bubble - this is a global economy. Growth and prosperity abroad always results in growth and prosperity at home. On top of that, we would have the added bonus of having other people finance our growth for us.
Note that your question still is a "what if" question. The majority of US debt is by far still being purchased by US citizens and by the US government.
Amazing how you could get this so mind-numbingly backwards. The $9 trillion "tied up in federal bonds" is an investment in the private sector. Those bonds show up as an asset on the balance sheet of debt holders, and interest payments go directly back into the private sector through them. This does add value, otherwise nobody would be interested in buying treasury bonds from the government.
It is impossible for the government to go bankrupt - they control the money supply. The only risk is hyperinflation, where the money that the government uses to pay of the debt is worthless, but as long as the economy keeps growing this isn't a risk either. An increasing debt is not an issue as long as the economy grows at least as fast.
Wrong. Paying off the debt would only manage to transfer the debt burden from the debt holders, who hold the debt as an income-producing asset, to tax payers, who receive no financial benefit from paying the extra taxes. You are then stuck with the problem of finding ways to increase the money supply to facilitate growth without adding too much inflation with the extra funds.
Wrong again. Although my information is now about 1 week out of date, for the past 18 months the size of the economy has been growing faster than the size of the debt, I.E. the Debt-to-GDP ratio has been falling. This changed on 10/27 with the slower than expected growth numbers, but isn't predicted to last long.
No. The debt-to-GDP decreases if GDP growth outpaces debt accumulation. That is pretty basic math, you know. Inflation always decreases the future value of debt because the vehicles that hold this debt are long term.
I would say the same about you, but I am not arrogant enough to assume that anybody who disagrees with me has been brainwashed by a propaganda machine.
Right, and this is money that goes directly back into the private sector to fuel economic growth.
Sure it is. The debt levels we are carrying now are nowhere near the extreme levels we have historically seen, and are quite conservative compared to other industrialized countries in Europe and Asia. Coming out of WWII, we had a debt burden twice as high as we have today, and it was mitigated by productivity growth in the economy. As long as the economy grows at least as fast as the debt burden, we will never have a problem with debt.
There is never a shortage of people willing to lend money that has the "full faith and credit" of the Government for repayment. Again, look at the years following WWII. With a debt twice as big as we have today, there still was no shortage of people willing to buy the debt from the Government, and that helped keep interest rates low.
Government deficits equal an asset in the private sector. Not only that, it is an asset that earns interest and increases the money supply without inflationary pressures. Compare this to a government surplus, where the amount of surplus is a liability in the private sector. The main difference, of course, is that the government has no plans to repay surplus funds back to the private sector, so a government surplus is a "loan" to the government that never gets paid back and cannot be invested or spent on economic growth.
Borrowing money for an income producing asset is always a good thing. Ask any investment planner about the term leverage to find out why.
I should have checked before I posted. For the previous 18 months, up until last week, GDP growth was in fact outpacing debt growth. But the Q3 growth figure released a week ago reversed that. This should be a temporary event as GDP growth is projected to rebound in 2007.
Read the article. They offer voter verified paper receipts. You are simply going to have to find something else to whine about.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that sitting around and letting tyrants like Saddam kill is what is inexcusable. Like you said, two wrongs most certainly don't make a right, which is why something had to be done.
Wrong. As long as the economy keeps growing, current debts can be rolled into new treasury securities when they become due without our debt to GDP ratio increasing. Fortunately, deficits affect a net surplus in the private sector, helping fuel economic growth without inflation. So unless we do something stupid to stop economic growth, like raise taxes or pay off the debt early, this debt will never have to be paid off. It will be continually rolled into new debt without increasing our total debt burden.
In fact, our current debt-to-GDP ratio is 65% and falling, meaning that our economy is growing faster than our debt is. What President Bush should do is a) further cut taxes or b) further increase spending to keep this ratio constant and promote the most economic growth. Personally, I prefer option (a).
How ignorant. Your hatred of Bush has clearly blinded you from the plain facts.
Saddam Hussein participated in numerous high profile assassinations, beginning with the unsuccessful attempt on Abd al-Karim Qasim when he was still in high school. He killed 5 religious leaders in front of hundreds of their followers in 1974. He assassinated former Prime-Minister Abdul Razzaq Al naef in 1978. In 1980, Ayatollah Mohamad baqir Al Sadr and his sister were arrested, tortured, and killed. In 1983 he killed 16 members of the Al Hakim family. These were murders that he publicly boasted about.
Saddam also killed leaders in other countries, including Haj Sahal Al Salman (1981), Sami Mahdi (1981), Ni'ma Mohamad (1987), Ni'ma Mohamad (1987), Shaikh Talib Al Suhail (1994).
In 1978 and 1979, Saddam rounded up and murdered 7,000 alleged communists. During those years he also had hundreds of religious leaders and followers killed. In 1979 he ordered a "cleansing" of the government to eliminate political opponents where hundreds of top ranking Ba'thists and army officers were executed in public. In 1983, 8000+ members of the Barzani clan were murdered.
In 1980, Saddam started the Iran/Iraq war, which an estimated 1,500,000 Iranians were killed, including 5,000 in a single day from a chemical weapons attack. Thousands of Iranian solders were killed on a single day when Saddam had live wires canvasing a battle field, ordered his armies to retreat, and then electrocuted the pursuing Iranian soldiers. He then stacked these thousands of corpses in a marsh and used the bodies as a man-made bridge to drive military vehicles over.
In 1990, Saddam illegally invaded Kuwait, killing thousands of innocent civilians and displacing over a million more, many of which were tortured, raped, beaten, and oppressed.
Between 1987 and 1988, over 180,000 Kurds disappeared, and chemical weapons were used on the town of Halabji killing at least 8,000. The village of Balisan was also gassed. 50,000+ rural Kurds were killed in Anfal. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced in refugee camps.
In the 1990's, at least 7,000 prisoners were killed in a systematic "prison cleansing" program.
At least 40,000 Shia's were also killed in the 1990's, including 2,000 on a single day in 1993.
The fact that you can ignore the above atrocities, and actually blame the world leader who is largely responsible for stopping such atrocities does not speak well of your intelligence or objectivity.
They aren't.
All that Kim Jong-il needs to do to get protection from a nuclear attack is to agree to the stipulations of the NPT. The 5 nuclear states would then be required to provide protection from a nuclear attack as long as NK was abiding by the stipulations in the treaty.
But if the 5 nuclear states get rid of their weapons, there will be nobody around to protect against the proliferation of nuclear weapons from a rogue state.
Withdrawing from the treaty and giving up our weapons is far more insane than anything you are complaining about. The only reason the NPT has worked as well as it has is because we have the weapons to enforce it. If we gave our weapons up, we would have no way to enforce this treaty, and would be powerless against regimes like NK. It would be the diplomatic equivelant of bringing a 3" knife blade to a .50 M2 machine gun fight.
Nuclear technology is already "out there", and there is no "undo" button to click. The only way for us to protect against a nuclear attack is to pose a nuclear threat ourselves.
No, I mean a statute that gives executive authority for warrantless wiretaps without approval from the FISA court. The FISA text clearly states that a person is only guilty of an offense if he "engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute", meaning that FISA can be superceded by statutes that allow for such surveillance without court approval. The Bush administration contends that the 2001 AUMF is such a statute.
But they do have oversight.
Link:
(a) Necessary Findings- Upon receipt of an application under section 703, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court shall enter an ex parte order as requested, or as modified, approving the electronic surveillance program if it finds that--
`(1) the President has authorized the Attorney General to make the application for electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence information or to protect against international terrorism;
`(2) approval of the electronic surveillance program in the application is consistent with the Constitution of the United States;
`(3) the electronic surveillance program is reasonably designed to ensure that the communications that are intercepted are communications of or with--
`(A) a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor;
`(B) an agent of a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor; or
`(C) a person reasonably believed to have communication with or be associated with a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor or an agent of a foreign power that is engaged in international terrorism activities or in preparation therefor;
`(4) the proposed minimization procedures meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 101(h); and
`(5) the application contains all statements and certifications required by section 703.
Tell that to Bill Clinton. It was his Administration who first claimed they were connected.
You are really good at ignoring facts, aren't you?
You are correct. FISA has always allowed warrantless wiretaps in the case of specific statutes. But Congress always has had oversight of such programs, and this new legislation does not change that.
These changes are a no-brainer, as the original text of FISA only specifically addressed foreign powers and had specific exclusions for international terrorism. It should be obvious why such changes were needed.
Wrong. This bill, and the Senate version that passed in committee last week require the FISA court to review and approve of the petition of any such program by the Attorney General, and regular review by the congressional legislative committees.
Once again, this bill, and the Senate version of this bill, require the Attorney General to petition the FISA court for a warrantless program as long as a list of about a dozen requirements are met. The Senate version even includes a provision that allows the FISA court to define the duration that the program can continue until additional approval is required. And in all cases Congress is regularly informed about the scope and status of the program.
This is checks and balances just as the founding fathers envisioned, despite the chicken-little warnings from the President's political opposition.
And using the 4th Amendment as an argument certainly does not make warrantless wiretaps illegal. You will note that the founding fathers carefully use the word "unreasonable" in the text, indicating that "reasonable" searches and seizures are perfectly legal.
I wouldn't recommend using that excuse the next time you get pulled over for a traffic violation.
Our government? It was the Canadians who delivered him to the US under the pretense that he was a known al Qaeda associate, and it was the US who released him when they figured out that the Canadians were full of crap. Interesting how you can blame the US when they were not the people who falsely accused this guy in the first place.
Not sure why you felt you needed to bring this up, unless you somehow think that warrantless surveillance is a form of "torture".
Says who? The quote police?
You will note that I didn't attribute my comment to Benjamin Franklin. I simply pointed out something that should be glaringly obvious to those who like to misuse his quotation.
Care to reference the text of the Constitution that defines secret, untapped communication with known terrorist entities as an "essential liberty"?
Traffic rules are not a "recommendation" - they are enforceable law. You do NOT have the liberty to drive past a stop sign without stopping without reprimand. Most people agree that the long term safety that this loss of liberty provides is well worth it. So I'm interested why you feel any different about the long term safety that is provided by tracking the communications of known terrorists with people within our borders.
Wrong. Any surveillance program still needs regular approval from the legislative judiciary and intelligence committees and FISA. If at any time these organizations do not think the program is still justified they can block it.
Wrong again. I suggest you read the Text of the bill. The only instance where surveillance is allowed without any review is in the 60 days immediately following an armed attack on the country, or in the 45 days immediately following a terrorist attack on the country, and this surveillance is specifically limited to organizations which "there is a reasonable belief that such person is communicating with a terrorist organization or an affiliate of a terrorist organization that is reasonably believed to be responsible for the terrorist attack". And there are subsequent 45-day and 90-day reviews before the congressional intelligence committees and the Attorney General where such programs can be blocked.
I'm sorry, but your argument is stupid, if you even want to call it an argument. The simple fact is that there will always be tradeoffs between liberty and safety. Of course Benjamin Franklin knew this because he included some important qualifiers, namely essential liberty in return for temporary safety. There isn't a sane citizen in this country that thinks we should give up essential liberties for temporary safety. But there are plenty of people who agree that giving up some non-essential liberties are is very necessary to achieve long term safety, and that refusing to give up some non-essential liberties will almost guarantee endangerment.
Think about that the next time you give up your liberty to blow through a 4-way intersection with out stopping or slowing down.
You will note that this bill still requires regular legislative and judicial review, so any claim that it removes checks on the legislative branch is uninformed. And the only "constitutional right" that this erodes is our right to communicate with known terrorists overseas without the Government listening in, which most sane people would realize isn't a constitutional right at all.
Of course, the opposite is also true. People who are not willing to give up a non-essential liberty to obtain long term safety deserve much worse.
Well, there are lots of things that affect the freedoms of 100% of the population, but are accepted because of the resulting security that they provide. I'd be interested to know where you draw the line. Your freedom to drive as fast as you want on whatever side of the street that you want is restricted in exchange for a little safety on the roads. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to break into houses and businesses to take whatever you want is restricted in exchange for some protection on your own possessions. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to practice medicine without any formal training or certification is restricted in exchange for a little security that your Doctor at least knows what he is doing when you go see him. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater is restricted in exchange for a little security against being trampled the next time you go see a flick. Is that acceptable to you? Your freedom to build a high rise building to your own standards is restricted in exchange for a little assurance that the next time you take an elevator to the 80th floor of a building you will know that it was built with at least a minimum set of standards. Is that acceptable to you?
If so, I'm interested to know why taking your shoes off at the airport isn't acceptable, or why allowing the Government to listen in on phone conversations with known terrorist isn't acceptable to you, because the protection that this provides is quite obvious.
I would argue that taking away all of these protections for more freedom would actually result in less freedom than we have today, which is why I found it curious that you claimed that you would rather die in a terrorist attack than give up your freedoms.
Not true. Public schools are not the only place where children learn social interaction. Between clubs, sports teams, church groups, and neighborhood friends, homeschooled kids have plenty of interaction. There are even organized home school groups were kids can get together for activities and field trips. One such group around here has over 300 kids who get to go on some of the coolest field trips you can imagine. When you see those kids playing together, social interaction and maladjustment would be the last thing you would think about.
Well, no. If a terrorist sticks a knife to your throat and demands that you denounce your religion and join Islam, you have lost your freedom of religion. If a terrorst puts you in front of a video camera with a machine gun and forces you to spew their political propaganda, you have lost your freedom of speech. And if a terrorist hijacks the airplane that you are on in order to turn it into a human-filled missile, or saws your head off in front of a camera with a rusty blade, or blows up the train you are riding to work in, or sets off a bomb at the nightclub you are dancing at, or blows up the bus or subway that you are riding in, or smuggles liquid explosives onto the plane you boarded, or detonates a nuclear bomb in the city that you live in, you have lost the most basic and fundamental right retained by the people (see the 9th Amendment) -- the right to exist.
Terrorists want to take away far more of your freedoms than anybody in this Government does.
Interesting how you don't consider being a victim of terrorism as a loss of freedom.