Cutting the Pentagon is a question of strategy—as well as fiscal sanity.
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama made an attempt to placate critics of his fiscal profligacy by proposing a three-year freeze in federal spending. Republicans immediately cried foul, noting that outlays would remain stuck at the administration’s bloated levels. The more serious among them also point out that Obama excluded the biggest entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—making his moratorium no exercise in spending restraint at all.
Yet there were fewer objections to the fourth category of spending Obama exempted: expenditures “related to our national security.” No one wants the federal government to pinch pennies when it comes to its paramount constitutional responsibility, protecting the physical security of the United States. But the Cato Institute’s Christopher Preble and the National Security Network’s Heather Hurlbut argued shortly afterward in Politico that much of what is spent in the name of security serves no such purpose.
Even freezing defense spending at current levels would be an expensive bargain: the Pentagon’s base budget was $548.9 billion in fiscal 2011. That’s not counting the additional $182 billion requested that year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts that have already cost the country $1 trillion. Costs can be expected to rise even more: inflation-adjusted military spending has increased by 60 percent over the past decade, prompting Preble and Hurlbut to write, “because our national security rests on our economic health as well as on the strength of our military, a liberal and a libertarian can agree that the Pentagon should no longer get a pass.”
Defense on a Diet
Republican Déjà Vu
Pardon me while I yawn.
I remember all too well in 1994 when the Republicans regained control of not only the House, but the Senate as well. I remember sitting in my car and anxiously listening to Rush Limbaugh’s first radio show after the election. I remember speaking with my Republican congressman at the time on a local call-in radio talk show. I asked him when the new Republican-controlled Congress would begin repealing some of the legislation passed during the first two years of Clinton’s reign. The congressman told me he would have to stand in line to introduce such legislation because of everything the Republicans had planned.
Republicans managed to stay in power throughout the rest of Clinton’s presidency. But what did we get for it? Did Republicans repeal the Family and Medical Leave Act? Did they eliminate foreign aid? Did they repeal the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act? Did they lower overall federal spending? Did they repeal the Motor Voter Act? Did they eliminate any substantial business regulations? Did they repeal the Violence Against Women Act? Did they cut Social Security and Medicare? Did they repeal the Earned Income Credit? Did they eliminate any federal agencies or programs? Did they repeal any significant pieces of legislation passed during any previous administration? Did they shrink the U.S. empire?
Ben Bernanke Hates the Poor
How Ben Bernanke Screwed the Poor and America
Meanwhile, "core CPI" will provide Bernanke cover for awhile longer as he throws the Fed's printing machines into overdrive, floods the market with fake currency, and screws over the masses in general ... particularly the bottom 20% whose "food and energy purchases represent over 50% of their after-tax income."
This is a giant wealth-transfer scheme, transferring wealth from hard-working Americans to a fraudulent government and banking cartel.
Spice!
Unintended Consequences of the War on Drugs
This week in my local newspaper, Florida’s Lieutenant Governor Jeff Kottkamp wrote an op-ed reporting that a drug known as “Spice” is becoming “… a nightmare for law enforcement, because it is sold and used openly as a so-called legal alternative to marijuana. Currently, there is no way to test for the use of Spice — making it that much more attractive to would-be users.”
Kottkamp reports, “Spice is, in fact, more potent and more dangerous than marijuana.”
The issue here is not about Spice; it is about alternatives to marijuana. Making Spice illegal would simply open the door for drug entrepreneurs to develop other recreational drugs that are “more potent and more dangerous than marijuana.”
We’ve been fighting a war on drugs for 30 years, and the drugs are winning. There is ample evidence that the harm from illegal drugs comes more from the fact that they are illegal than that they are drugs.
I am no advocate of recreational drug use. Following Nancy Reagan, if someone offers you some, my advice would be to “Just Say No!” But there are two strong arguments in favor of legalization. One is that this used to be a free country, and freedom has to mean the freedom to make what people in the government think are bad choices. Another more utilitarian argument is that the harm from their illegality is greater than the harm from the drug use itself.
Dollar Death Spiral
Glenn Beck on the Dollar Destroyers (VIDEO)
Ron Paul on the Dollar Destroyers (VIDEO)
Glenn Beck does a decent job here of explaining "quantitative easing" (aka printing money, aka monetizing the debt).
Ron Paul on the Dollar Destroyers (VIDEO)
Very informative interview with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Judge Andrew Napolitano on QE2 and the Federal Reserve.