Super-committee looks bleak...

[doodle]

Well the slime in Washington is trying to renege on what they previously agreed to by taking military cuts off the table.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/us/po ... fails.html

I think it is just about time that American's figuratively "storm the Bastille" and eject these ***holes into the street. I will personally be voting every incumbent out...and I have written all of them multiple letters explaining just how disgustingly spineless and weak they are.

[MediumTex]

A happy day in the life of an informed person is when he realizes that government will always be in the process of an assortment of stupid and dysfunctional projects, and the fact that this dysfunctional stupidity seems to have no end is not really a cause for alarm.

All entities and organisms can be relied upon to act in a manner consistent with their natures.  The bird will fly, the snake will slither, the cancer cell will reproduce, and the government will stumble from one clumsy effort to another in a vain attempt to engineer the perfect society as it exists in the minds of the politicians.  Asking for more from government is (IMHO) to misunderstand the nature of the institution.

The idea that there was ever a golden age of government is typically the result of faulty memories.

[stone]

In Scandinavian countries, they do have vast governments and seem to function very well but I've never lived there so I don't really know. I can't imagine us getting a Scandinavian scale of government to work well in the UK. There they seem to know the frailties of the government approach and set things up so as to avoid those potential frailties. They have the "free schools" system in Sweden and also have state funded health care isolated from the rest of the political system. They manage a huge government by fragmenting it into human scale parts that actually respond to what people on the ground need. By contrast in the UK we take some kind of head banging masochistic pride in the fact that our National Health Service is on a Red Army scale.

[Storm]

I think there needs to be real, effective compromise before anything will be worked out on this.  That means Republicans must agree to some form of revenue (tax) increases and Democrats must agree to some form of entitlement cuts.  Right now the compromises have been entirely one-sided with Dems capitulating to all kinds of cuts and the GOP agreeing to zero revenues.

So, now they are faced with the default option of huge defense cuts because nobody will compromise.  I hate to say it, but the GOP loaded the gun and cocked it.  The Democrats should just let them hold it to their head and pull the trigger.  I would fully support a Democratic block of any attempt to take defense cuts off the table.  But, I fully expect more Democratic capitulation.  They are spineless in the face of a rock solid opposition.  The GOP may have a ridiculous platform (voting against a tax on millionaires seems like political suicide), but at least they're consistent and stick to their guns.

[MediumTex]

Wouldn't it be neat if they changed the name of the "Department of Defense" to the "Department of Attack"?

Right now we would be talking about possible "attack cuts".

[craigr]

Wouldn't it be neat if they changed the name of the "Department of Defense" to the "Department of Attack"?

It used to be called more appropriately the Department of War until it was Orwellian Newspeak'd into Department of Defense in 1949.

Ironically, since 1949 it hasn't engaged in any conflict in the actual defense of the country and has caused many unintended consequences.

In Scandinavian countries, they do have vast governments and seem to function very well but I've never lived there so I don't really know.

I have a friend that is Swedish and lives in the US now and gets red-faced angry when people talk about Swedish government. He has a lot of really funny/sad stories to share about it and how it works. I should video tape him one time because he sure gets steamed on the subject.

I spent some time in Sweden and Norway this summer for several weeks. They are nice countries, but the populations are very small compared to the US and have a far more homogenous culture that includes a very strong work ethic and very high level of education/skills. The government does offer a lot of "services" I suppose, but at the same time my feeling was that the culture of those places makes one feel very awkward to be known as a person that is on the dole. I think that culture in the US is dying and bringing in such a vast government service network here would bankrupt the country much faster than what we are doing now.

Plus the fact that Norwegian Government controls vast amounts of oil wealth to line the coffers doesn't hurt things. It's easy to brag about how well socialism works when you are able to sell a product to the rest of the planet for a hefty profit to fund it.

I'll also add that a country like Norway is artificially very expensive to live in. The sales tax was something like 25% and income taxes are also very high. I was in Oslo and had a few mixed drinks one night and my bill for them alone was about $30 each. Beers averaged in price between $15-20. A hamburger at TGIF, yes TGIF, was over $30 USD. Part of this was due to the fall in the dollar, but comparatively the difference was mostly due to the VAT and all the other taxes rolled into production along the way.

BTW. I met Swedes and Norwegians that bootlegged their own alcohol in stills at their homes due to the expense. One made his out of buckets which he used to make his own Vodka. I found plans for what may be it here:

http://www.amazingstill.com/Amazingstill.pdf

The Norwegians I met out in the country also made their own hooch because the taxes were so high. It apparently was quite common out where they lived.

So I guess it comes down to whether that level of expense is worth all the government services you get (especially if we are allowed to compare those services if they were offered by a private party). Personally, I'd rather pay $10 for a hamburger and have a lot less government in every aspect of my life. I've never once seen a government operation run better than a private one doing the same thing.

[Jan Van]

Well the slime in Washington is trying to renege on what they previously agreed to by taking military cuts off the table.

Doodle, man, you just don't get it. This is a dangerous world. Just this week I learned from my main man Cain that China is "trying to develop nuclear capability". We just can't afford to cut in our already spartan defense budget!

List of countries by military expenditures

[Jan Van]

btw. for some strange reason this song popped into my mind while reading Doodle's post. Zappa must have had congress in mind when he wrote it...

Zappa

[MediumTex]

Well the slime in Washington is trying to renege on what they previously agreed to by taking military cuts off the table.

Doodle, man, you just don't get it. This is a dangerous world. Just this week I learned from my main man Cain that China is "trying to develop nuclear capability". We just can't afford to cut in our already spartan defense budget!

List of countries by military expenditures

The military industrial complex is really an amazing thing.

It continues to march forward, whether or not there is an actual enemy that needs to be defended against.

After WWII, most of the world went back to peacetime levels of military spending, but not the U.S.  The U.S. basically continued a wartime level of defense spending for the next 50 years, ostensibly to protect against the Soviet threat.  Then, after the Soviet threat went away 20 years ago, U.S. defense spending still didn't fall significantly.  Think about how happy the defense contractors must have been to have a new enemy to blow up in the form of the terrorists after 9/11.

[stone]

Craigr, what I find hard to dissentangle is whether the harmony and work ethic etc in somewhere like Sweden comes about because everyone gets treated well by the state or whether the system can cope only because Swedish people will always be like that. I don't think Norway's oil wealth explains things. Denmark seems very "Scandinavian" but has essentially no natural resource wealth. Norway is extraordinary because it taxes massively over and above what the state spends. They in effect annul money (so as to prevent inflation/imbalances?). Basically Norwegians choose to live like Danes and essentially repudiate the oil wealth.
Like you I have a very hard time trying to imagine a Scandinavian system working in my own country (the UK).

[craigr]

Craigr, what I find hard to dissentangle is whether the harmony and work ethic etc in somewhere like Sweden comes about because everyone gets treated well by the state or whether the system can cope only because Swedish people will always be like that.

I think the being "treated well" by the state is really a reflection of the Scandinavian culture that is polite, treats people well, follows the rules, works hard and doesn't tolerate corruption. I don't think the govt. made them that way. The minute you don't have these things any more the entire system will collapse back to socialism's natural state which is everyone trying to slack off to take advantage of everyone else, corruption from top to bottom, government tyranny, etc.

[stone]

Craigr " Scandinavian culture that is polite, treats people well, follows the rules, works hard and doesn't tolerate corruption."

Remember they were the Vikings back in the day

[craigr]

Craigr " Scandinavian culture that is polite, treats people well, follows the rules, works hard and doesn't tolerate corruption."

Remember they were the Vikings back in the day

I forgot to add that I think once provoked into anger you'd really regret it.

[stone]

Is it true that Kerala is the most "civilized" part of India and also has a "social democratic" type state government? Perhaps big government is a disaster if democracy isn't strong but can work in many cultures so long as democracy is strong enough? I can't off the top of my head think of a strongly democratic place where socialism is a total disaster- perhaps Chile under Allende was such a disaster??

[craigr]

Is it true that Kerala is the most "civilized" part of India and also has a "social democratic" type state government? Perhaps big government is a disaster if democracy isn't strong but can work in many cultures so long as democracy is strong enough? I can't off the top of my head think of a strongly democratic place where socialism is a total disaster- perhaps Chile under Allende was such a disaster??

The fundamental problem is you need to have a culture that thinks stealing stuff that isn't yours is wrong and leeching off your neighbors is a disgrace. They also need to value things like education and conduct themselves honestly in day to day activities (even for the smallest of matters). Otherwise you end up in a situation where 51% of the people vote to take stuff from the other 49% and the death spiral begins.

IMO. A corrupt culture will result in a failed state no matter what government you install.

[stone]

I supose UK in the 1970s was another example of disaster

[Reub]

The most important thing that our federal govt does is to provide it's citizens protection from our enemies in a very barbaric world.

[stone]

Reub, I totally agree that if goverment were to be shrunk right down, then the last thing I would want to totally lose would be the military and the second last thing would be the police. BUT that still leaves a lot of room for debate as to how much military is enough. Some people might think enough is more than we have. Personally, for the UK, I wish we limited our military to robust homeland defense and to escorting refugee exoduses (such as could have been done in Rwanda in 1996 rather than doing nothing as was the case). As a non-US citizen, I would also feel much safer if the USA chose to limit its military to such an extent too.

[Reub]

I believe in overwhelming military superiority as a deterrent to all others.

[stone]

Reub, my problem is that overwhelming military superiority does not always deter. The Soviets lost in Afganistan despite overwhelming military superiority. The 9/11 attackers had pitiful military inferiority compared to the USA. Having any number of hydrogen bombs won't provide any protection against a 9/11 type attack. Being able to kill suicide bombers a million times over is no use after the event. I'm just trying to see things in a pragmatic light. To my mind our military needs to focus on what can be done without creating fresh enemies and to do that in a robust, cost effective, way.

[Jan Van]

I believe in overwhelming military superiority as a deterrent to all others.

So what is overwhelming? In 2010 the USA spent almost 43% of what was spent in the whole world. That's quite overwhelming. You think it won't be overwhelming if we cut 10%, and spend say $600b? That would have been 36%. Or $500b for a share of over 30%? And $500b would still be more than 4 times as much as China spends... 

[Reub]

The more overwhelming, the better.

Of course this wouldn't work against individual terrorists, but state sponsors would be deterred.

Mind you, I believe that this force should be used very, very sparingly. And not in George Soros' model of "Obligation to Protect".

This is the paramount purpose of the federal govt...to protect it's citizens. (And not to redistribute wealth or influence social change).

[stone]

Reub, sparing use and no obligation to protect sounds like it could even be a reduction from the current military. My other difficulty is that it seems very hard to fund a military without the government redistributing wealth one way or another. If they use a combination of deficit spending and sales tax, then there is redistribution just as much as there is redistribution if they had a balanced budget and an asset tax. What would consitute the "neutral" or "just" or "non-distorting" position? You can't gather and spend trillions of dollars without redistributing wealth however inadvertently.

[Gumby]

It's seems obvious to me that Wall Street wants more military spending. We don't spend $685,100,000,000 every year on our military just to deter other countries from attacking us.

Wall Street owns Washington. Wall Street demands a strong military.

Besides the obvious fact that a strong military provides stability to the dollar, an annual military budget of $685,100,000,000 also provides stability on every major continent — so that Fortune 500 corporations can go about their international business and keep shareholders happy. (Don't forget that we also subsidize the militaries of some countries as well).

If you don't think that the world's largest corporations aren't constantly lobbying, in secret, for more military support (keeping shipping lanes safe, providing regional stability) then you're not seeing the big picture.

I wish it weren't this way. But, until we can get Wall Street money out of politics — which will probably never happen — I don't think military spending is ever going to be seriously cut.

Jack Abramoff was interviewed on 60 minutes yesterday. In his interview he explained how broken the system is, and how easy it is for lobbyists to control Congress. It will make you sick to your stomach.

60 Minutes: Jack Abramoff: The lobbyist's playbook

(The irony is that even the commercials on 60 Minutes are usually a cog in this political machine)

[MediumTex]

Harry Browne made the point after 9/11 that the terrorists didn't seem interested in attacking countries like Switzerland, and how an activist foreign policy and military presence in other countries can easily begin to undermine national security rather than enhance it.

It is sort of a bizarre irony, but the U.S.'s two principal military opponents of the last 20 years (Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden) would never have been a threat to the U.S. if the U.S. government hadn't trained, funded and equipped them in the first place in the 1980s (Hussein in his fight against Iran and bin Laden in his fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan).

When I hear of a terrorist being blown up in a drone attack on the other side of the world I think of his 7 sons and how each of them will now feel an obligation to avenge their father's death and I don't really feel all that much safer.