Originally, the "War On Terror" was projected to cost no more than $50 billion and after being greeted as "liberators", the "cakewalk" would take no more than six months -- maybe a year.
Nine years later it has cost more than $1.1 trillion and growing.
In the face of severe economic difficulties at home. accumulation of mountains of debt, and questions about Defense Department spending excesses raised by non-partisan Defense Secretary Gates, financial perspective on the war is called for.
Apart from the painful costs in life and limb suffered by our military forces and their families, basic costs must be held to an emotionally unencumbered cost/benefit analysis. For starters:
1. The cost to date for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is over $1.1 trillion.
* This is the equivalent of spending $1 million a day --- for 3,200 years.
* 3200 years ago Christ was not yet born and Moses was a newborn
floating down the Nile in a basket.
2. Estimates are that there are 150 full time insurgent Taliban forces and we've spent $337.8 billion to date in Afghanistan.
* That's $2.2 billion per full time Taliban insurgent. If we can't kill them with 150,000 troops maybe we should try to buy them off by giving each Taliban insurgent the same net worth as Baron Hilton.
3. Americans have spent an average of $8,000 per taxpayer to support the wars.
* The average Bush "middle class tax cut" for 4 out of 5 families was about $350.
4. President Bush's much maligned TARP program is projected to cost about $110 billion. less than originally estimated, or about $800 per taxpayer (and some of that has already been paid back and more will be paid back).
* The government's attempt to bolster or "bail out" the economy (however you wish to catagorize it) is 10% of the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan.
5. America is not at war.
Only the military and their families are at war.
The troops are exhausted from a war that has already extended beyond WW II by three years. While philosophic, ideological and political discussions are indulged in at home, the troops are out of sight and sadly, out of the public mind. The troops are overextended and overlooked beyond bumper sticker sloganisms and their experience contrarily makes them more uncertain and less confident concerning their mission. In an extraordinarily unpatriotic fashion, we ignore the problems they face and the burdens they carry as if they were problem free, ever dependable robots.
Their dependability is not at issue here.
It is our dependability as thoughtful and respectful citizens that is at issue.
* During the past year, active duty suicides and "high risk behavior" killed more soldiers than combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
*While there were a record number of 239 suicides among active duty and reservist soldiers, (74 of these were from drug overdoses). This number has tripled since 2001.
* There were also an additional known 1,712 failed suicide attempts by active duty soldiers.
*The rate of suicides by post conflict veterans aged 20-24 is twice the rate of their active duty brethren.
* A recently issued US Army report indicated that one-third of the troops are taking at least one prescription drug and 14% are taking powerful pain killers. The report further indicates that "the force is becoming increasingly dependent on drugs, anti-depressants,amphetamines and narcotics."
We know the costs. Can we afford it? Is it worth it?
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Socialism in America? You Ain't Just Whistlin Dixie
Have you heard rumblings of a counter tea party movement afoot in the land which calls the tea party "the bite the hand that feeds you caucus?" A rogue e-mail making the rounds called the movement: "free loading, progress-blocking, benefit grabbing,resource sucking, violent and hypocritical."
Southern politicians in particular complain about BIG GOVERNMENT and TAXES because it resonates easily and conforms to the post civil war self-perception of that region as victims of northern conspiracies.
However, as it turns out, in spite of their persistent anti-government rhetoric, Southern politicians are complety comfortable accepting the last line of Tennessee Williams' play, "A Streetcar Named Desire": "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Down South it has become habitual to do just that. Southerners get back a whole lot more than they give in taxes.
America's wealth is indeed being redistributed -- from what the independent Tax Foundation calls the "giving states" of New York, New Jersey, New England, most of the northeast and California --- to the receiving states" consisting of all of the south and ironically, Alaska.
For example, those poor socialists in New Jersey only get back 56 cents on the tax dollar. But for every tax dollar Mississippi sends to Washington they get back $2.02, more than doubling their money! That's a Madoff return paid by the "giving states". Same for Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Rand Paul's Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Then of course, there is Alaska.
The South gets the re-distribution of federal tax money because it seems least capable of helping itself out, It has:
* The lowest per cap % of high school diplomas.
* The fewest college degrees per capita.
* The highest rates of adult illiteracy and often their illiteracy rate exceeds their unemployment rate. E.G. in Mississippi, adult illiteracy is 16% and unemployment is 11.5%. Illiteracy in Alabama is 15% and unemployment is 11%. These means that Southern states have may adults working who cannot read beyond the 5th grade level. THUS ---
* The highest poverty rates and the lowest average household income in the nation.
* The highest percentages of citizens without health insurance yet most likely to call health care reform "socialism."
* The most unhealthy region in the nation, leading in obesity, smoking, hypertension, diabetes, cancer deaths per 100,000 while managing to excerise the least.
* The most violent region in the country being a majority of the top 18 states states in deaths by firearms. (Louisiana - 19.5 firearm deaths per 100,000. Mississippi, 17.3 deaths per 100,000 etc. as oppposed to New York with 5.1 per 100,000 or Massachusetts with 3.1 per 100,000 etc.)
* With 35% of the population, the South has created only 17% of the nation's patents over the last 25 years. California alone with 10% of the national population, has nearly 20% of the patents over the last 25 years.
* Louisiana is a special welfare case having a long established dysfunctional dependence on the oil industry in its economy, its politics, in its winking willingness to debase the environment all combining to create an oil based modern plantation mentality. They attack the federal government on the national news everyday for being slow or for failing to act to "restore our way of life" after the BP disaster as if American taxpayers are morally obligated to maintain the oil plantation to which Louisianans' sold out long ago.
Now some Southern public office holders and seekers from Tennessee to Texas are directly or indirectly talking about sucession and this has many others wondering if that is a threat or a promise.
Redistribution of wealth? The South appears to be on the dole and things there have a way of never managing to get any better. Perhaps our Southern brethren should stand up for their outspoken beliefs and send the money back. Or perhaps they should consider jumping on the "Street Car Named Get Serious".
Southern politicians in particular complain about BIG GOVERNMENT and TAXES because it resonates easily and conforms to the post civil war self-perception of that region as victims of northern conspiracies.
However, as it turns out, in spite of their persistent anti-government rhetoric, Southern politicians are complety comfortable accepting the last line of Tennessee Williams' play, "A Streetcar Named Desire": "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Down South it has become habitual to do just that. Southerners get back a whole lot more than they give in taxes.
America's wealth is indeed being redistributed -- from what the independent Tax Foundation calls the "giving states" of New York, New Jersey, New England, most of the northeast and California --- to the receiving states" consisting of all of the south and ironically, Alaska.
For example, those poor socialists in New Jersey only get back 56 cents on the tax dollar. But for every tax dollar Mississippi sends to Washington they get back $2.02, more than doubling their money! That's a Madoff return paid by the "giving states". Same for Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Rand Paul's Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Then of course, there is Alaska.
The South gets the re-distribution of federal tax money because it seems least capable of helping itself out, It has:
* The lowest per cap % of high school diplomas.
* The fewest college degrees per capita.
* The highest rates of adult illiteracy and often their illiteracy rate exceeds their unemployment rate. E.G. in Mississippi, adult illiteracy is 16% and unemployment is 11.5%. Illiteracy in Alabama is 15% and unemployment is 11%. These means that Southern states have may adults working who cannot read beyond the 5th grade level. THUS ---
* The highest poverty rates and the lowest average household income in the nation.
* The highest percentages of citizens without health insurance yet most likely to call health care reform "socialism."
* The most unhealthy region in the nation, leading in obesity, smoking, hypertension, diabetes, cancer deaths per 100,000 while managing to excerise the least.
* The most violent region in the country being a majority of the top 18 states states in deaths by firearms. (Louisiana - 19.5 firearm deaths per 100,000. Mississippi, 17.3 deaths per 100,000 etc. as oppposed to New York with 5.1 per 100,000 or Massachusetts with 3.1 per 100,000 etc.)
* With 35% of the population, the South has created only 17% of the nation's patents over the last 25 years. California alone with 10% of the national population, has nearly 20% of the patents over the last 25 years.
* Louisiana is a special welfare case having a long established dysfunctional dependence on the oil industry in its economy, its politics, in its winking willingness to debase the environment all combining to create an oil based modern plantation mentality. They attack the federal government on the national news everyday for being slow or for failing to act to "restore our way of life" after the BP disaster as if American taxpayers are morally obligated to maintain the oil plantation to which Louisianans' sold out long ago.
Now some Southern public office holders and seekers from Tennessee to Texas are directly or indirectly talking about sucession and this has many others wondering if that is a threat or a promise.
Redistribution of wealth? The South appears to be on the dole and things there have a way of never managing to get any better. Perhaps our Southern brethren should stand up for their outspoken beliefs and send the money back. Or perhaps they should consider jumping on the "Street Car Named Get Serious".
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