Americanly Yours

The War in Afghanistan will soon have been going on for 8 years with absolutely no end in sight.

Are we losing?  Maybe, maybe not.  But, it is clear that we are not winning.

A “surge” like President Bush’s successful strategy for turning around the Iraq War is unlikely to work in Afghanistan.

This War has cost hundreds of billions of dollars in Treasure and, more importantly, hundreds of honorable American lives.

I supported this War for a long time–pretty much everyone did at some point.  In November 2001, shortly after the War started, only 9% of Americans thought the War was a mistake.

But, changing situations create the need for changes in outlook, and often changes in policy.

Whether or not the War was a mistake, a majority of Americans now want our troops to leave Afghanistan.

We have not succeeded in dismantling al-Qaeda.  We have not captured Osama bin-Laden or many of the other high value targets.

The Soviet Empire’s premature end was due in part to its war in Afghanistan.  We should not allow history to repeat itself and bring an end to the mighty American Empire as well.

This Nation is hemmorhaging money, the economy is dismal.  It is time to stop spending so much of our National fortune on this War.  Our cost for this War will be paid back  over the next 3o years to China and others who have loaned us the money to fight.

Afghanistan’s government is crumbling and it now appears that Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s American backed Prime Minister may have engaged in ballot-stuffing and other measures of voter fraud to keep himself in power.  These actions are preciously the same that American officials have criticized Iran for taking.  By standing behind a government like this, we are implicitly voicing our approval of these actions.

This war has spilled over into Pakistan and has greatly destabilized a nation with nuclear weapons–threatening the security of the entire world in the process.

The anti-war left has recently been strangely silent over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  My assumption is that they have not wanted to create political problems for a President that they largely supported while he is trying to push through health care and environmental legislation also largely supported by this group.  With the health care and cap and trade bills headed for near-certain failure or at a least a major watering down, I suspect that the anti-war left will begin to be more vocal in its opposition to the War in Afghanistan again soon.

New polls show that the majority of Americans now oppose the War in Afghanistan.  President Obama’s approval ratings have now dropped to the mid-40-low 50’s range.  You can be certain that President Obama does not intend to sacrifice his popularity over a war that was started on President Bush’s watch.

In the coming months, President Obama soon announce his decisions on what to do about the War in Afghanistan.  Many policy analysts believe that the President will announce a large increase in the number of troops for Afghanistan.  This is exactly the wrong strategy.  President Obama should begin a massive withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.  Im not saying that we shouldnt continue to hunt bin-Laden–I would favor leaving behind an extremely small and elite force to hunt terrorists and bring them to justice.  However, we should stop engaging in “nation building,” stop propping up Karzai’s corrput government, and stop fighting this War.  If other Nations wish to continue fighting this War without our aid, let them do so, but the United States government should cease spending the lives and the wealth of Americans on this War.

We can still leave Afghanistan honorably; it is time to do the right thing and bring our brave and heroic men and women home from Afghanistan.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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There has been a lot of public outrage against AIG for paying some of its executives retention bonuses.  The logic here is that AIG is a struggling company that has accepted well over $150,000,000,000 [$150 billion] in federal government aid, and therefore should not be giving its employees bonuses.  Before we all grab out pitchforks and torches, we must remember that it is not legal for the federal government to create a new tax targeted towards AIG’s executives.

Retroactively taxing AIG employees’ bonuses is an unconstitutional act.  Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of The Constitution reads as follows:  “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

The prohibition on passing bills of attainder means that it is illegal for Congress to pass a law that punishes AIG employees (or any other specific group of people) without granting due process.  The prohibition on passing ex post facto laws means that Congress cant pass a law declaring something to be illegal and then punish people for committing the act before it was illegal.

Congress is currently debating passing a bill that would tax AIG executives’ bonuses at 90%.  The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would do preciously this last week.  This bill is unconstitutional and should not be passed by the Senate.  If it does pass the Senate, then President Obama should stand up for the Constitution and veto it.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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This past weekend, President Obama announced that he wanted to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in 2013.  You would think that this would make a deficit hawk like me happy.  It would–if it werent so misleading.

President Obama says that he wants to cut the $1,300,000,000,000 [$1.3 trillion] deficit that he inherited from President Bush down to a deficit of $533,000,000,000 [$533 billion] by 2013.  While this seems like a tough goal that will cut spending, this will actually result in increased spending.  The reason for this is simple:  the present massive deficit is an aberration from the normal, including hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that was supposed to be one time spending.  For example, included in the $1,300,000,000,000 [$1.3 trillion] deficit is the $700,000,000,000 [$700 billion] spent on the bank bailout, the additional billions spent on the bailouts of Bear Stearns and AIG, and last years stimulus plan that sent most Americans a $600 check.

In fact 2008’s deficit was $438,000,000,000 [$438 billion] a massive number, but a number that is dwarfed by the $1,300,000,000,000 [$1.3 trillion] deficit that is to be expected in 2009.  The vast majority of this money was supposed to be for one time things.  In fact, without adding the increased spending from the “one time items,” the deficit for 2009 looks a lot like the deficit for 2008.

President Obama’s 2013 budget deficit figure still represents an increase of over 21% from 2008’s number.  This “cut” looks more like an increase to me.

And Mr. Obama’s own numbers still admit that he will have a deficit of over $1,000,000,000,000 [$1 trillion in both 2010 and 2011].  No numbers were given by his office for 2012’s predictions, but lets give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that 2012’s deficit equals 2013’s deficit of $533,000,000,000 [$533 billion].  This means an increase in the national debt of at least $3,000,000,000,000 [$3 trillion]–equal to $10,000 per American.  I think the numbers will be much higher.

More on that later.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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I have some interesting quotes from President Obama which he said this week at a Democratic Party retreat:

“If you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.”

This is true, but the problem is that Mr. Obama has misidentified the direction of the cliff that we are headed for.  A year ago, we were about to enter what would have been a somewhat minor recession.  Mr. Bush and Congress flipped out and spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a stimulus that completely failed.  Then, rather than allowing failing business to fail, Mr. Bush and Congress bailed them out one by one and then bought a bunch more.  I am not going to fully detail this now, but in a free market system prices are important not just because they tell us the value of something, but they also contain a lot of information within any given price.  Mr. Bush and Congress should have allowed the banks and insurance companies to fail and for the debt to be repriced, rather than subsidizing bad banks and investments and keeping debt priced at the same level.  But Mr. Obama is continuing the exact same policies that got us into this mess. If you disagree, then read about how Japan’s economy stagnated for 15 years when their government shored up bad private sector bank loans.

Our economy is racing toward a cliff and Mr. Obama is hitting the accelerator, rather than slowing down or changing directions.

“When you start hearing arguments, on the cable chatter, just understand a couple of things.  Number 1, when they say, ‘Well, why are we spending $800 billion [when] we’ve got this huge deficit?’  First of all, I found this deficit when I showed up, number 1.”

Um… yeah you did.  But how is that an excuse for spending $800 billion.  Remember the cliff that he mentioned above?  Didnt he also mention changing directions?

“I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”

The above quote from President Obama is almost true (the debt increased by about 85% during President Bush’s two terms).  But Mr. Obama has already requested about $1.2 trillion ($350 billion from TARP and over $800 billion from this “stimulus” bill) since he became President a few weeks ago.  That is an increase in the size of the National debt of about 10% in about 3 weeks!  Change, Mr. Obama?  Or just more of the same?

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been sick most of the week and am just now starting to feel better…

The big news is the “stimulus” package that is about to be passed whether or not the American people want it to.

My friend Art sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal which talks about what all is included in the “stimulus.”  It is pretty ridiculous.

But on top of this, there are are some truly outrageous things in the bill.  Under the terms of the bill, illegal immigrants who have been working in this country illegally will be able to get a tax rebate check of $500 per person.  Seriously.

This bill also gives money to dairy farmers to take their dairy cows out of production in order to raise the price of milk and create a greater profit for the dairy industry.  This type of government intervention is not only wrong, it is very dangerous.  Remember that less that a year ago, there was a global “food crisis” going on in which hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people were on the verge of starving.  By paying farmers to not produce food and drink, our government is playing a very dangerous game.  But this is not a game.  This is real life.  If government intervention causes the price of food to go up, people could actually die.

Here is an interesting article from CNN that was sent to me by two of my friends, Squeak and Hawk (yes, I have a friend named Squeak and a friend named Hawk).  This talks about solutions that Libertarians have come up with to address the current [government manufactured] crisis.  I dont support all of them and there are at least two that I completely disagree with, but they are all better than what we are going to end up spending the money on.

I want to write more, but this is getting to be too long.  Ill have an article for yall tomorrow.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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