Sounding Retreat

  The premise:  The military and political decline of empires often follows an economic decline as self-serving corruption eats at the center and rulers favor butter over guns. Chinese dynasties; Rome; Barney Frank and Charlie Rangel.   

The question: Faced with unsustainable deficits and a limited ability to raise taxes, what will be the response of Barry Obama-Soetoro - son of a disillusioned American ex-patriot mother and a politically displaced polygamist Kenyan father; step-son of a middle class Indonesian army geologist; student of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers; patron of Van Jones and Eric Holder?

The setting: The U S of A has had an unprecedented run -with 5 % of the world's population enjoying 30 % of the economy; with the dollar being the global reserve currency buttressed by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization; with pliant military and political alliances spanning Europe, south-central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America; with a defense budget equal to 41% of the world's military spending; with the United Nations in New York and the greatest international universities spread across the land; with McDonalds, Hollywood, and Madonna raising global cultural standards. Ah, those were the days.

The upheaval: So what happens when Obama's trillion dollar deficits make us give up the deal: the hundred Army, Air Force, Marine, and Navy bases spread around the globe; the naval bases in the Indian Ocean which protect the flow of oil to Japan and Australia; the bases in South Korea and Japan which guarantee our friends against Kim Jong il's North Korea and Hu Jintao's China; the 80,000 troops in Europe for some forgotten reason. Oh, and things like the billion dollar bribe to Egypt to leave Israel alone.

The path forward: So, where does the pied piper (whose $3.83 trillion 2011 budget has a deficit of $1.27 trillion and "discretionary security" spending of $782 billion) want to take us if he ever gets serious on the spending side?

- An age with many fewer nuclear weapons - despite a big increase in the 2011 budget.  Probably a good idea. Probably will save some money in the long run.  

-  An age with less new military hardware - the $140 million per F-22 fighter jet; perhaps a carrier battle group or two; the moon exploration program. Secretary of Defense Gates should be able to wield a surgical knife. Will decrease some exports and spin-off civilian applications of the technologies. Bad for some of my stocks.

-  An age with a lesser commitment to our long time friends - England; Israel; Japan. Definitely a bad idea, but Hillary doesn't seem to have much of a policy voice. Nature won't like the vacuums.

-  An age with less global largess under the State Department's $56 billion umbrella: help for the globe's poor, hungry, sick, climate-challenged, and politically needy.

- An age of diminished expectations - for our kids and grandkids; for the kids growing up in Iran's neighborhood; for the Europeans who have long since forgotten how to protect themselves; for the 100 United Nations members who so much enjoy voting against us in the Security Council - and should start studying Chinese.  A very bad idea indeed.

Sometime after the election we will get the recommendations of Obama's commission on fiscal responsibility. One assumes that it will be at least 2000 pages long and that nobody in Congress will read it. But you can also assume that it will protect the expanding health care entitlements, contain enough taxes (probably VAT) to provide the butter, and enough military and foreign policy cuts to sound retreat for the empire. Barry's mother would be proud.

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This week's video is an ad being run by the Republican Governor's Association, Remember November. Much better than what the Republican National Committee is doing.

bill bowen - 4/30/10 

An urgent favorite: Tom Campbell who is running in a June 8 primary to face Barbara Boxer in November. Harvard Law; U of Chicago PhD in economics; 5 term congressman from Silicon Valley; twice named the most frugal member of Congress by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation; a fountain of fiscally conservative/socially moderate ideas.

Comments

[Bill McCormick]

Where o where has Iran gone? Where is the rush to sanctions? Where is the teeth behind the promise that we will not allow Iran to become a nuclear threat to the world? The hour glass is slowly emptying and the world fiddles? When they fly airplanes into our buildings holding 50,000 people and we only lose 3000, when they land a plane on our Pentagon and we only lose 200, when they fail to detonate airplanes in the sky where hundreds would have died, when they fail to ignite a car bomb in downtown NYC where thousands were at risk, when they behead our citizens on the internet,when they blow a hole in our Navy ship killing only a few of our sailors, when they infiltrate our Army medical staff and shoot our soldiers on the way to battle and when they blow away hotels and bars with our citizens in them (how lucky we have been so far)then do we trust that a man with the mindset of the Iranian leader will NOT use a nuclear weapon? Do you believe that if Hitler had the bomb he would not have used it?

If I were to put this choice of stop him now or deal with him later to a game theory model then the choice would be clear to mathematicians. But politicians make decisions based on their needs and rarely on the basis of our needs. Politics is about selling and not about marketing. Know what that means? Selling is convincing someone they need what you have to offer. Marketing is about filling a need they really do have. Most people don't like war so it is easy to sell them on not having a war or ending a war. But, if they are best served by going to war then you must market and fill that need by going to war and winning it. Even if they never realize that the need was there or filled. And, even if they vote you out of office. How many times did Lincoln lose elections? How many times did the British turn their backs on Churchill, listening instead to Chamberlain? Only, in their greatest time of need did they finally respond to market forces and turn to those great leaders.

Asked a week or so ago about the threat from Iran getting nukes and long range rockets an Administration official calmly stated that we would have a defense system to shoot them down by 2015. In December we drew a line in the sand for Iran and the world. Did the dust storm blow it away? Is this leadership or selling?

[Bill McCormick]

Immigration is a curious thing:
Democrats like it because it gives us more poor people to convert through the crawl under the fence, give birth, or receive amnesty every 8 years process who will then vote Democratic. Ironically these people then increase the amount of healthcare costs and social services the governments must provide while adding little to the tax base for America.
Republicans like it because it allows businesses and upper class to hire people below the prevailing wage and compete at lower prices or get their household services done cheaper.
Now look at us. 31 Million Mexicans later.
Democrats finally pass their long awaited healthcare expansion program in the name of healthcare reform and are looking at reduced education budgets, huge deficits and stubborn unemployment. Now they want to give amnesty to the millions who are not yet covered as illiegal immigrants. Who is it that took those solid blue collar jobs in the construction industry that paid $20-$40 per hour and turned them into $10-$15 per hour jobs that have all but disappeared? As I drove up and down RT 95 today for nearly 200 miles I focused on the litter clean up efforts and the road construction crews working along the way. Every single worker I saw was hispanic. Most employed directly or indirectly by the government.
Republicans now feeling the effects of the mass of immigration from the southern border especially in Texas and Arizona have protested the open border policy by passing a seemingly harmless "let's see your papers" law. The response has been a political goldmine for Obama to "get out his base" and counter the healthcare anger as thousands of Mexicans protest Arizona's confirmation of a Federal law already on the books. Immigrants are supposed to carry their green cards.
Meanwhile up in New York another immigrant from Pakistan who obtained citizenship last year then promptly left for Pakistan a few months later returning in August tries to blow up Times Square. We missed watching the pilots receive training at US pilot schools prior to 9-11 but how many American Muslims are going to travel to Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia or Egypt and return without us watching them? Or were we? I think this is the 3rd or 4th attemmpt to hit NYC now by these Pakistan warriors disquised as US citizens. What a better deal is there for a spy than to be able to come to America, become a citizen then go home train in warfare and return to the trusting neighbors and employers and blow them to hell?
Has anyone ever read what the immigration laws of Australia are? Or Mexico? If we truly opened our borders to the rest of the world, not just Mexico, then our population would be around 3 or 4 billion in a matter of days. And who would feed, cloth and educate them? There is a reason we call them "illegal" immigrants--they broke the law to get here. They break the law working here. But as long as both parties ignore the border problem the tension between Americans will just get worse.

[Bill McCormick]

Nice job with the crystal ball look at the coming commission recommendations, Bo. Scary isn't it? Well that is just the beginning of the price America may pay for the 2008 election results.
Last night on Hannity, a solid Obama supporter of 2008 admitted in no uncertain terms that Obama has turned out to be completely different than the candidate he portrayed himself to be. No transparancy. No bipartisanship. Anticaptialism. And, openly deceptive. Yesterday, off the mike, he once again stated that he believes that there is a "cap" on how much money a person should make. I'd like to hear what that really means but it goes along with his slip to Joe the plumber that he wants to spread the wealth around. And that he has: in his first two years in office he has made $9,900,000. Is that above or below his acceptable cap?
So what is the rush that is coming? Here are my fears:
1. It was suspected when the White House took control of the census that he would use the results to basically redraw the political geographical lines to make Democratic victories easier. After his latest move to get Puerto Rico statehood status I now believe it. Statehood for PR will give the Democrats two more near certain Senate Seats and at least one more house seat. But, unsaid we will also be giving the PR people healthcare benefits as well.

2. Immigration reform. Forget it Arizona. Just about the time you and Texas (who will vote on a similar bill in January) start to deploy the Guard and deport a few of the 19 Million illegals in the country Obama will pass the immigration reform law rumored to contain amnesty for them all. Amnesty will make them legal residents and guess what? Healthcare coverage for all! And, the grateful millions will be a pool of potential new Democrats to vote the "Arizona bastards" out of office.

3. Coming soon in this rush is the new energy plan that contains the new Carbon trading exchange. Invented and proposed by one of the richest men in the world (aren't those guys --like Soros--despised by Obama?) And guess who else helped fund and create this idea along with Obama? Yep Al Gore. under this plan, which is basically a get rich scheme off global warming, each company would get a carbon pollution allowance. And, some certificates of pollution credits. So think of it as a limit on your ability to pollute and a free pass to pollute if you own it. So if you need to pollute more than your limit then you need to buy some free passes. These will be sold to the highest bidder on an exchange where the companies who have more than they need will offer them for sale. In theory the biggest pollutors will pay a price for their pollution and the cleanest producers will earn money for being clean. It will create a new industry and jobs. And, of course, there will be a tax on the trading making money for the government. It sounds a lot like the Major League system where the Yankees annually pay the other owners a "penalty" to allow them to buy the highest paid team in baseball and defeat the competition. And then there is the rumor that Obama, Gore, Soros and Fannie Mae (?) are investors in the "Carbon Exchange" . Anyone have the feeling that Chicago politics are here?

4. If you can use this Democratic majority to bring PR in as a state then we can only imagine that next would be the poor, under represented, people of DC. Statehood for DC? Don't be surprised. And, then the Virgin Islands? Guam?

I am still not hearing a bunch of great ideas from the Republicans but then I guess you don't stop to admire the view in the middle of a cattle stampede--you run for your life. And, today, Republicans and hopefully, independents, are running for their lives. They are at the Alamo and trying their best to stop the programs being rushed at them as Harry Reid annnounces every day that "the time for debate is over". And, Pelosi announces that we better "pass this bill so we can find out what's in it." Meanwhile the Florida Governor, a Republican" is so civic minded that he will now run as an independent -- giving the Democrats the only chance they have to save that Senate seat. What a guy Florida Charlie turned out to be. So my friends, if you are fed up with all these lies and all this it's all about me political leaders then go to the polls and let's try a new group. Or at least get some balance back.
Meanwhile the "I" man has put a hold on all new offshore drilling until we find out what caused the oil rig to explode. Why not order that we equip all of them with emergency shut off systems to cap the well when these things happen.