"President Obama’s comprehensive strategy to dismantle Al Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan will renew our focus on defeating the terrorists responsible for the September 11th attacks and others who threaten our national security. The President’s proposal to modestly boost American combat forces with a greater reliance on training Afghan security forces will help improve the security of the region while the economic and agricultural aid will help provide alternatives to poppy cultivation for rural Afghan farmers."
-Nita Lowey, House Representative for the 18th District of New York
Cost: over $1 trillion dollars per year to maintain a world army with 700 bases around the world in 130 countries.
After voting for an unconstitutional war in Iraq, it is no surprise that Nita Lowey wants to continue to trample on the Constitution and escalate the war in Afghanistan. If you look at her record, Nita has consistently pushed for the United States to police the world, nation-build, and waste trillions of dollars on an over-extended military in the name of national security.
The United States government has had a long history of using fear tactics to promote its foreign wars, whether it was to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam (which never happened) or to prevent WMDs from being used by Saddam Hussein (which he never had). But right now, I want to focus on the fallacy that by occupying Afghanistan we are somehow making the United States safer.
We are constantly told that we have to "win" in Afghanistan so that al-Qaeda cannot use that territory to plan further attacks against the US. But we need to remember that the attack on September 11th, was, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, largely planned in the United States and Germany by terrorists who were in our country legally. This shows that just by invading Afghanistan does not stop terrorists from gathering in other locations. By endorsing military action in Afghanistan because of al-Qaeda presence, implies we should favor US air-strikes against our own states and even Germany. This is absurd. We need to understand that the Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to remain in Afghanistan because both had been engaged, with US assistance, in the insurgency against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
The main problem stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. It is our presence as occupiers that feeds the insurgency. With every civilian death, we unify diverse groups in a common goal against our occupation. Bin Laden has repeatedly stated this, but for some reason, we believe his threats, but we refuse to listen to the reasoning he gives for them. The fact remains that al-Qaeda members are 10 times more likely to come from a US occupied territory. By adding more US troops we will only assist those who recruit fighters to attack our soldiers and who use the US occupation to convince villages to side with the Taliban.
Nita also argues that we must train and build an Afghan national army to take over and strengthen the rule and authority of Kabul. But what we actually have done is entrench ourselves in the middle of a 35-year old civil war, while setting up a government, that encourages an ideology and system of rule unknown and unwanted by the Afghan people. This will only lead to greater tragedy and greater civil unrest down the road.
What concerns me further is that not only is Nita in favor of an escalation in Afghanistan but she also wants to escalate the fighting in Pakistan as well. Already CIA drone attacks on Pakistan soil have destabilized that country and have killed scores of innocents, displacing thousands of people, and producing strong anti-American feelings. I do not see how that contributes to our national security.
If we continue to follow down this path and invade country after country, when will it end? At what point do we say enough is enough. Right now, the only end in sight will be a destruction of our dollar. Most great nations faced economic ruin because they have stretched themselves too far beyond their borders. We must ask ourselves: What if the Chinese invaded us and told us how to live, and how to run elections? How quickly would we unite to defend our land?
If we truly want to make America safe we can use the powers of marque and reprisal within our Constitution to target specific terrorist suspects, instead of invoking war against an entire foreign state. Safety will only come when we stop this policy of preemptive war. Instead we need to promote diplomacy, free trade and personal liberties, and at the same time bring our troops home to secure our borders.
Most importantly, we need to find out how and why our government bureaucracy failed to stop the 9/11 attack from happening. We need to discover why the FBI did not act on 70 internal field tips, and why the various intelligence agencies could not collaborate on information to prevent the attacks while spending 40 billion of our dollars per year. This is where our focus should be and not overseas. If we follow Nita Lowey's approach and continue to invade and nation-build, we face a future as an isolated nation with few allies, a weakened military, and a destroyed currency.
Further Reading:
...And What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
NITA LOWEY LOVES BREAKING WINDOWS
Voted YES on $2 billion more for Cash for Clunkers program.
(Jul 2009)
Total cost: $3 billion
Edmunds.com, the premier resource for online automotive information, has determined that Cash for Clunkers cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold.
There is a clever anecdote called the Broken Window Fallacy that gives insight into the evils behind the Cash for Clunkers Program. The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by his young son, and who then has to pay for a glass maker to fix it. To the casual onlooker this is perceived to stimulate the economy because there is a boom to the glazier's business. However, the onlooker ignores the cost to the shopkeeper.
Since the shopkeeper was forced to spend his money on a new window, he could no longer spend it on something else, such as bread or shoes. The boy's actions may have benefited the glazier, but at the expense not only of the shopkeeper, but the baker and the cobbler. As a result, the child, in fact, made the town poorer by at least the value of one window, if not more.
But now suppose it was discovered that the little boy was actually hired by the glazier, and paid for every window he broke. Here in lies the truth behind the Cash for Clunkers Program.
By voting for this bill, Nita Lowey is wreaking havoc on the free market system, all in the name of stimulating the auto industry and combating global warming. When in fact it does nothing but weaken the American economy and take away the personal liberties of its citizens.
Here are the actual effects of this stimulus plan:
We have to understand that by tampering with the free market system with incentives like this we are only creating an artificial boom period. In the long run, this is not helping the auto industry but only setting them up for a bigger fall. Let us not forget that this $3 billion dollars is only the tip of the iceberg. We have been continually bailing out the auto industry for the last 30 years at the consumer's expense.
In all, this program was little more than a political redistribution of wealth from the people of America to the Nita Lowey’s power base which includes unions, environmentalists, and social justice bulldogs. But we really shouldn't expect anything else from her.
Further Reading:
Nita Lowey Loves John Maynard Keynes
(Jul 2009)
Total cost: $3 billion
Edmunds.com, the premier resource for online automotive information, has determined that Cash for Clunkers cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold.
There is a clever anecdote called the Broken Window Fallacy that gives insight into the evils behind the Cash for Clunkers Program. The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by his young son, and who then has to pay for a glass maker to fix it. To the casual onlooker this is perceived to stimulate the economy because there is a boom to the glazier's business. However, the onlooker ignores the cost to the shopkeeper.
Since the shopkeeper was forced to spend his money on a new window, he could no longer spend it on something else, such as bread or shoes. The boy's actions may have benefited the glazier, but at the expense not only of the shopkeeper, but the baker and the cobbler. As a result, the child, in fact, made the town poorer by at least the value of one window, if not more.
But now suppose it was discovered that the little boy was actually hired by the glazier, and paid for every window he broke. Here in lies the truth behind the Cash for Clunkers Program.
By voting for this bill, Nita Lowey is wreaking havoc on the free market system, all in the name of stimulating the auto industry and combating global warming. When in fact it does nothing but weaken the American economy and take away the personal liberties of its citizens.
Here are the actual effects of this stimulus plan:
- More Debt. Americans who cannot afford to buy a new car are heavily persuaded by the large rebates to stretch their budget even further and go into even more debt to take advantage of this deal. This is the housing bubble all over again, but now with automobiles.
- Destruction of Charity. Charitable donations of "clunkers" fall dramatically since the dealers were required to disable the cars, leaving the poor and the truly impoverished without any means of transportation.
- Increased prices of used cars. Prices are decided by supply and demand, and as the supply of available used autos shrinks, low-priced vehicles become more costly to purchase. Auto parts face the same price increase making it more costly for the poor to keep their cars running.
- Increased Driving. By subsidizing fuel-efficient vehicles more driving is encouraged which causes total fuel consumption to decrease less than expected.
- MPG. New federal data analyzed by The Associated Press finds that the single most common swap, at an occurrence rate of more than 8,200 times, involved Ford F-150 pickup owners. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranges from 15 to 17 miles per gallon, which equates to a mere 1 to 3 mpg improvement over the clunkers.
- Loss of Freedom. The government directed the allocation of funds upfront by selecting the industry that would receive the subsidies, and the administration in power set the rules for allowable purchases under strict guidelines that induced the consumer to purchase smaller, more “green friendly” automobiles that conform to its long-term, environmental ambitions.
- Waste of Capital and Resources. Used cars are destroyed depleting valuable resources and capital that could have been reused or repurposed.
- Redistribution of Wealth. Money that would have been spent elsewhere is now reallocated to the well-connected unionized auto industry causing many other businesses to lose profits.
We have to understand that by tampering with the free market system with incentives like this we are only creating an artificial boom period. In the long run, this is not helping the auto industry but only setting them up for a bigger fall. Let us not forget that this $3 billion dollars is only the tip of the iceberg. We have been continually bailing out the auto industry for the last 30 years at the consumer's expense.
In all, this program was little more than a political redistribution of wealth from the people of America to the Nita Lowey’s power base which includes unions, environmentalists, and social justice bulldogs. But we really shouldn't expect anything else from her.
Further Reading:
Nita Lowey Loves John Maynard Keynes
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