Monday, September 30, 2013

Give and Take -- An Online Exchange

Give and Take – An Online Exchange

 Care to know what your neighbors think about current affairs? Think you can bear to see how ill-informed most of them are? If so, try reading the online comments in a nearby newspaper. You might even want to take the time to respond. 

 Here are examples from my neighborhood newspaper, in a thoroughly red state, with my responses

Double-dare
     [A gentleman named Michael Kollar wrote on Sep. 30, 2013:] “Before President Obama issued his "red line" proclamation, there was no chemical gas attack in Syria. After the red line proclamation, Syrian President Bashar Assad gassed his own people. It seems to me that President Obama was playing that old I-double-dare-you game and he lost.”

 Response by ByersAware 
     Mr. Kollar, Rush Limbaugh has two excuses for his absolutely idiotic rants. First, he gets paid millions for them. Second, his drug addiction may have scrambled whatever reasoning power he once possessed. You are at a disadvantage with your rants.
     Are you already working on your lame-brain response if President Obama's shrewd diplomacy, backed up by a credible and highly public military threat, brings removal of Syria's chemical weapons and an effective end to Iran's nuclear weapon development?
     The Washington Post has reported: "U.S. and Russian technical experts were doing preparatory work for ending Syria's chemical weapons capability for months before the two nations' Geneva meetings began." That's known as diplomacy, Mr. Kollar, backed up by a highly public threat of a cruise missile strike.
     And then Iran elected a new president who opened a process that may lead to a satisfactory inspection program to insure they do not develop nuclear weapons. So, we have a strong possibility -- not a sure thing, but for the first time a good possibility -- of avoiding U.S. military action in two more Middle Eastern nations.
     If that happens, Mr. Kollar, are you going to blame President Obama for NOT going to war, the way that Dick Cheney and Sen. McCain would have done?
 *** 
Come To My Parlor
      “The House voted late Saturday night to delay President Barack Obama's health care overhaul for a year – a move which made it almost inevitable that a partial shutdown -- which would idle tens of thousands of federal workers -- will start Monday at midnight.” NBC News Sept.29, 2013.
      “Undeterred, House Republicans pressed ahead with their latest attempt to squeeze a concession from the White House in exchange for letting the government open for business normally on Tuesday, until Dec. 15.” Associated Press

 RedState Comment: “A delay would only help Dems in 2014 mid-term elections. Let's get it going full battle-ramming speed instead.”

 Response by ByersAware
     Bouquets to those generous, compassionate Koch-and-tea party Republicans. They'll allow the government to operate for ten whole weeks, until Dec. 15, if the Democratic President will junk the health care law for a year and give the Koch party that much more time to try to kill it.
     And of course they would never dream of making further demands on Oct. 17 when the debt limit increase comes up for a vote. Or on Dec. 15 when shutting down the government once again becomes an issue. Nah, they'd never do those things. Not the Koch-partiers.

"Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly....” 

Syria and Mission Creep
     Edd Prothro, retired Marine Master Sergeant, wrote on Sept. 24, 2013: “Regarding the debate (on hold) about whether to launch a limited attack on Syria, and the possibility that it might (or would) escalate: I am a retired Marine combat veteran, who just happens to be a "plank owner" with U.S. Central Command.

      “The operative word in this question would be 'mission creep,' the expansion of a mission beyond its original goals. Or, as we assigned to the RDJTF/USCENTCOM, used to say, 'When you're up to your arse in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.'
     “If we make any type of strike on Syria, there will be mission creep. The reason I know this is because, unlike the politicians and talking heads, I always was among those down in the mud, and the blood, and the stench, trying to accomplish a mission that kept changing on a regular basis. I have buried too many brothers-in-arms from missions throughout the world and over the years. I dread the thought of burying more young soldiers who have died trying to protect a foreign land and peoples who have no respect, appreciation or desire to be protected."  

[Well, I could not resist pointing out a few facts MSgt. Prothro had overlooked]

Response By ByersAware
     MSgt., your deep concern is well-taken. But I wonder how carefully you considered your statement that "If we make any type of strike on Syria, there will be mission creep." In 1995, through NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serb forces, we brought an end to the Bosnian war. We lost not a single airman or soldier. But we ended the "ethnic cleansing" slaughter of an estimated 100,000 people and the rape of an estimated 20 to 50,000 women.
     The Bosnian Christian forces were judged responsible for 90 percent of those war crimes, mostly against Muslims. It was President Clinton who authorized those limited strikes, all of them against Bosnian military positions. There was no "mission creep."
      In Egypt and Libya, President Obama "led from behind" in limited actions that established "no fly zones" in those two civil wars. We lost not a single American life, and there has to date been no "mission creep." The eventual outcome is still in doubt; but there are grounds for hope that non-dictatorial and non-Islamic governments will in time be established in those two nations that have little history of such rule.
      I see no reason to believe that the limited strikes proposed by Obama against Syria to prevent further use of chemical weapons, accompanied by supplying better arms to some of the rebel forces, would lead to "mission creep" beyond what already is likely because of the involvement of the Iranians and the Hezbollah from Lebanon.
      Ever since World War I, Western nations have dominated and dictated to the Arabs and Persians in the Middle East. After WWII, when the Middle East territories were no longer an economic asset to Britain and France, those two colonial powers drew boundary lines for new nations that seemed to guarantee continual internal warfare among competing tribal/religious groups assigned to each nation. Thus, the new nations were likely to remain weak.
     The U.S., by becoming the strongest Western nation and the only remaining super power, has assumed a degree of moral responsibility (as well as oil-based economic interest) in that region. We helped Britain and France create the problems. (Using the CIA to help overthrow the elected leader of Iran and keep the Shah in power was one of our most obvious tactics.) We should now do our best to help solve the problems that we helped create, without renewed Western control.
      Obama's State Department has been negotiating with the Russians for months to find a way to remove chemical weapons from Syria without outside military action. Whether it was planned this way or not, Obama's call to Congress for authorization of limited air strikes (presumably against the Syrian missile launching sites) gave the Russians the "cover" they needed to force Syria to give up the chemical weapons. Air strikes without the "warning period" created by referring the decision to Congress, would have created a different situation.
     The outcome is uncertain at this point, but if it succeeds we will have accomplished our goal by threatening air strikes while delivering none. Both Putin and Obama will deserve credit, and responsible Americans should avoid trying to make either one look bad.
      I have great respect for your service and your views. I was a Marine officer, ultimately commander of an infantry company in the reserves, during and after the Korean War. I have always maintained that one good Marine sergeant is worth three junior officers. And I am pleased that our present Secretary of Defense was a combat non-com in Vietnam, a war in which our senior generals lied to the American people over and over again.

 More on Syria
     [The following is a response to another comment regarding involvement in Syria. Frank Kennedy wrote that President Lyndon Johnson had said he increased the scale of war in Vietnam because he feared he would be impeached if he did not. This, Kennedy said, was dumb, as undoubtedly it would be.]

Response by ByersAware
      Frank Kennedy, when you say "dumb” I assume you are referring to the readiness of Republicans to impeach a Democrat President on any grounds they can dream up. Witness, Newt Gingrich and company hog-tying Clinton's presidency over his sexual conduct, thus diverting attention of the President and the nation from our need to eliminate the terrorists who struck the U.S.S. Cole and our embassies.
      That was as dumb as the present outcry among the Koch and Tea Party Republican fringe to impeach President Obama over his...(make up your own reasons; they are making up theirs).
      We should not have gone to war in Vietnam (Johnson) or in Iraq (Bush). We should not have declared "We are all Georgians now" as Sen. McCain did, meaning that he was ready to go to war with Russia over Georgia. We SHOULD have bombed Bosnia as we did under Clinton, losing not a single soldier or airman while putting a stop to horrible slaughter of Muslims by the Bosnian Christians. That was in an area where we had no direct strategic interest.
      We SHOULD have "led from behind" (for which the Republicans ridiculed Obama) in Egypt and Libya. While we lost not a single American life, we gave the citizens there the POSSIBILITY of establishing governments that are neither dictatorial nor Islamic. The best outcome may take several years, but there now is hope where there was none before. And we lost not a single life.
      President Obama and our State Department have been in behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Russians for months seeking a way to remove Syria's chemical weapons without military action. Finally, by presenting his plan to Congress for limited air strikes, Obama gave the Russians "cover" they needed to force Syria to agree.
      Although it still could fail, this was a far better action than if the President had done what McCain, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush wanted. You are correct. The threat of impeachment is dumb, dumb, dumb.
 *** 
 Our Prices Are Too Low
      On Friday morning, September 27, 2013 the AP reported little chance that Congress would agree on a plan to keep the government from a partial shutdown in four days, as House Republicans refused to pass an appropriation bill unless it eliminated funding for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
     Online comments in the Tulsa World supported the idea of a shutdown: “If we were the richest country in the world we would have 17 trillion dollars in the bank, not 17 trillion dollars of debt. STOP spending!!! No more borrowing from CHINA! WE ARE BROKE! Live within our means, simple as that!” 
     None of these statements was based on fact, nor shows any attempt to understand what is really going on. In response to those comments I offered the following lesson in recent government history:

All “Attitude,” No Facts
      Reading the comments above, I find a lot of "attitude" and almost no facts. We ARE the richest nation in the world, but the riches are all stashed away as profits by Wall Street banks and in offshore accounts by corporations that are earning the highest profits they have ever earned. You can learn how much with a simple web search.
      The national government is a "service" industry. It provides services to its citizens. We have a debt problem because we do not charge enough for those services.
      If you ran a landscaping company and charged your customers only half what it costs to pay for supplies and workers, you would go deeper and deeper in debt until you faced bankruptcy. That, in effect, is what our government has done. But it doesn't have to be that way. It is not a matter of spending too much. It is a matter of charging (taxing) too little for the services we perform.
     We created two big problems. First, we cut taxes way too low for the richest 10 percent. They earn nearly half of all the income in the nation. Second, we stopped regulating Wall Street banks and let them run wild until they crashed the whole economy. This threw people out of work at the same time we were fighting two wars on borrowed money.
       So, we have had to borrow more money to pay unemployment insurance and food stamps for those who lost their jobs because of our government's two big mistakes. Without that help, they would starve.
      In the past, with Roosevelt and semi-liberal Democrats in control, we knew what to do in a big-debt situation. At the end of World War II, our national debt from war expenses was equal to the total amount of income we produced in a year. But in 1944-45 we taxed our wealthiest people at 94 percent on the highest bracket of their income.
     And we used that money to put the ex-military to work building the interstate highway system, rebuilding Europe under the Marshall Plan, and sending GIs to college under the GI Bill. (The GI Bill, incidentally, not only prepared returning GIs for good jobs, it created new jobs for university faculty and staff.) And here's what happened. We still borrowed money, but we produced more income than we spent, and we collected taxes on that income.
       In terms of dollars, the debt continued to grow, but as a percent of the nation's wealth (GDP), it dropped from being equal to our total national income down to only one-third by 1980, the year President Reagan was elected.
     Then Reagan changed course. He cut taxes and increased spending (for Star Wars missile defense, etc.). In doing so, he and Bush the First pushed the debt back up to two-thirds of GDP. When Clinton became president, the debt ratio dropped again by ten percent.
       But then we elected Bush the Second. His administration pushed the debt up to a new high of 86 percent of GDP. He did it by cutting taxes while spending more. We elected President Obama to try to fix that mess. But Republicans have opposed him every step of the way.
       As a result of Bush the Second's tax cuts, billionaires such as Warren Buffett pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries do. Take one example. In 2011 Wall Street's richest hedge fund billionaire, Raymond Dalio, earned $1.5 MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR. His yearly income was $3 billion. But he paid only 15 percent in taxes. That is lower than the tax rate for a median income Oklahoma worker.
      Everyone benefits from government services of one kind or another. The reason we have such a high debt is that we practically give away those services to the very rich while the poor and middle class struggle to pay the bills.
      People need to do their own research instead of believing what self-serving politicians tell them.
 *** 
Never Compromise Your Principles
      On September 24 a letter from the chairman of the Tulsa County Democratic Party called for the leaders of both parties to search together for ways to improve government in the state. An online comment by John Smallwood said there is no point in having principles if you are willing to compromise them.
       This is my online response to Mr. Smallwood and all the conservatives who share his views.

Response by ByersAware
      John Smallwood, the U.S. Constitution was one hell of a big compromise. The Civil War was one hell of a big failure to compromise.
      With the exception of that war, the constitution has served us pretty well, with a number of amendments that were further compromises. No amendment ever got enacted with 100 percent agreement, and none would have held up if those who disagreed continued to do everything in their power to repeal it.
      You cannot have a functioning democracy (or republic) without compromise. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who is reputed to have said, "We have created a republic...if we can keep it" (or similar words).
      One recent commentator said that in today's Congress there is only 2 percent agreement between the parties--and the last time the agreement was that low was just before the civil war.
      Draw your own conclusions, as you will.
*** 
Why We Have Poverty
      A report stated that the poverty rate is highest among unmarried households, with the greatest concentration among minorities. An online comment said that the solution to poverty is simple. Just don't have kids if you are not married.

Response by ByersAware
     You want to keep from having kids out of wedlock? That's easy. Just choose to be born into a stable family--two parents, neither one beats the other or is on drugs. Neither parent is in jail. Both have a high school education. Neither one faces discrimination because he or she is somehow different. They earn enough money to feed you adequately, especially in those early months when your brain is developing the most rapidly.
      Also choose to be born into a neighborhood where you don't get successively raped once you are about 10 years old. No one mocks you if you make decent grades. No older kids push you to sell drugs or join a gang or have sex. You parents have health insurance and you get decent care. You don't have to drop out of school to try to help your mother pay the bills.
       You have a chance to achieve most anything, if you just choose the right parents. So, shame on those who chose to be born to the wrong parents. They don't deserve food stamps or any other kind of assistance. And hooray for the conservative Republicans and Koch-and-Tea Partiers who are going to make sure such people they don't get any assistance to guide them out of poverty.
       No food stamps. No Childrens Health Insurance Program. No Pell grants for a college education. This way, we'll make sure the kids in those one-parent families grow up to be just like their parents.