Will Hillary Clinton Be The Next U.S. President?, page 12

The GOP Convention is being held in St Paul MN on Sept 1 to Sept 4.
The Dems Convention is being held in Denver CO on Aug 25 to Aug 28.

Originally posted by Justin Oldham
I say government is too big. When I was on the payroll, I saw as many as six people doing the job of one. when I say that government is too big, that's what my opinion is based on. The Federal work force should be a small but elite professional group that can do more with less. Even if we have to pay them more as individuals to do it, fewer bodies on site would require a higher degree of efficience than we current receive.

Good government is something that all generations should be calling out for. I'm not for soaking the rich, but I am for a proportionately fair tax. I could be asked in to a flat rate tax, assuming there were no deductions. Bill Clinton was quite smart to leave office on a budgetary surplus. Again, its that political skill that I keep talking about. He shopped for his legacy early and it (still) shows.

I was watching John McCain on the CBS news tonight, and I don't think I've seen him looking quite so forlorn and pathetic . . ever. I sympathize with his point of view, but he's trying to hold the ethical high ground while the sands of morality shift from beneath his feet. I'm for the war on many levels, but even I know that it will not end well.

1) Government is unique. It is not a for-profit enterprise. When we have an urgent need for it’s services, we need trained people at the ready. Today, and not 2-3 years later. Look at the 2005 Katrina episode. It is now 2 years - in August - and still NO is in ruins. The POOR parts of town, not the R&Fs. For them, it’s money in the pocket and business as usual. Is this a subtle form of ethnic cleansing? Regardless, that natural disaster showed the US was not ready for a sizeable destructive event of any origin. Lacking leadership, I doubt if it is in any better shape today.

I submit the Federal bureaucracy is no more overstaffed than corporate America. Large organizations find it more economic to overstaff than to run short. Demands vary. Work loads are seasonal. So where do you park your excess staff while waiting for the worst? The British used to put senior workers on half pay to stay at home for a couple years before retiring them. Sort of like a national guard on stand-by.

2) The simplicity of a flat tax is indeed appealing. 110,000 experienced and highly paid IRS workers could be let go. The Tax Court shut down. A whole industry of CPAs and JDs conjuring legal tax avoidance schemes could rejoin the productive labor force. Google, Yahoo or Microsoft could process the post-card tax returns. CitiBank or Wachovia could handle the money flow. 1000s of trees would be saved when publishing of tax avoidance books ends. TV time rates would go down because late-nite “sponsored” info-mercials on taxes would end. Assuming we could keep Halliburton (and Cheney) out of the loop, it sounds too good to be true.

Reagan almost attained a “flat tax” in his first tax “reform.” There were just 2 brackets. But by the mid-80s, even the Reaganites had to ask for more money. It just costs money to run a government. And a lot of money to run a big one. Ideology was driving fiscal policy and dinning it insane. B41 and B43 have both operated on that same policy.

17% is the oft-spoken flat tax rate. If half our GDP is subject to the flat tax then simple math shows it will not work. Half of 12 is 6 times point 17 equals just over $1 t. We are spending $3 t. this year. To raise sufficient funds, a flat tax of 54% will not be well received. Persons making minimum wage - about $13,000 a year - would have that socially inadequate remuneration reduced to $10,500. Flat tax advocates, realizing but not admitting the inherent unfairness in the flat tax, offer an exemption to low wage earners. I frequently hear the first $25,000 in family income is to be exempted. That compromises the ‘simplicity claim’ ballyhooed by flat tax advocates. No matter how you slice it, the 1993 tax code comes out on top.

3) John McCain is on to something but he is coming from a different perspective. America is not equipped to win a ideologically driven uprising. Not in Vietnam, not in Iraq. And maybe not in Afghan. As much as I hate B43 and want to see him end in the garbage can of history, “we” have mucked up the Middle East and laid it wide open to Iran, China, Russia, Turkey and Israel to exploit. Not to even mention the ages old conflict between Shia and Sunni. The delicate balance of power and interests that had evolved there especially since the 1890s when Europeans began to come there for oil, was upset on March 18, 2003, by a thoughtless bunch of bumbling ideologues. So now we have to clean up their mess? And the figurehead leader of that hapless Gang of Four - add Rummy and Condo - is still wanting more time to see his failed policies contineut to fail? Wow! How many more Americans will die uselessly on the B43 Watch? Or who will be the last man to die in Iraq? Hello, John McCain, please answer that question.

CNN says we are spending $12 b. a month in Iraq. We continue asserting, say claiming to know what Iraqis will do should we leave precipitously, yet we have not proved to know much if anything about what the rank and file Iraqi thinks about anything. We are dealing with the Chiluba types who are sycophants sucking our treasury dry. We are projecting ourselves onto the Iraqis. I OTOH, believe the Iraqis are 100% capable now, today, to deal with the mess we created if we will begin to withdraw our forces. Perhaps at a rate that would put all but 30,000 out of the country by the end of 2008. Then announce the last remaining troops would be OUT by 2010.

Whatever we do, we must keep the blunders of George W Bush in the forefront. Designated by the Supreme Court to be president, we got off to a bad start. And it never got better. We must never elect an MBA who was AWOL from the National Guard and who PRAYS to God every morning. There is no person worse than an illiterate nincompoop thinking he is in touch with GOD. Faith will get you killed in the real world.

[edit on 7/11/2007 by donwhite]