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Paul & Grayson: The War Is Making You Poor Act
Fresh off his "You own the Red Roof Inn" tour, Alan Grayson gives another svelte performance as he introduces the latest soon-to-be buried-in-committee bill with the help of his trusty easel. Soon-to-be buried because the bill, co-sponsored by Ron Paul, would exempt the first $35,000 in income for each person in America from federal taxation, putatively helping the average Joe while simultaneously forcing a hint of fiscal responsibility. As Grayson introduces it:
It requires the administration to carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only--that's "only"--the $549 billion set forth in the President's budget for defense spending, without the additional $159 billion the President has asked for--for the sake of the so-called emergency war which stretches on for 9 years in one case and 7 years in the other...
In case you missed it, here's the Red Roof Inn special. And, as an aside, we're sure the sarcasm-laced easel and posterboard method of introducing legislation will catch on as congressman wake up to the 21st century and finally realize Al Gore's invention can make even the most empty chamber under the rotunda worth the taxpayer dollars used to fund the CSPAN-8 cameras.
ht EPJ
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A much bigger question is why are we spending this outrageous amount on the defense budget. Its a fucking ridiculous amount. Do you think this money is well spent? Look at the defense contractors continously going over budget, making weapons that aren't up to specs and don't perform as they were promised. The pentagon and other agencies misplacing money that they aren't able to locate. While on the subject our national budget is ridiculous too. Everybody is ripping off the government and meanwhile we are going broke. On top of that we have the fucking worldwide bank and country bailout.
Grayson might seem ridiculous and just grandstanding, but he is bringing attention to this subject in an easy to understand way which is what the public needs.
Grayson is a closet pole smoker who goes against the grain of whatever today's flavor happens to be. He isn't funny, he's obnoxious. I give him a little credit for having stones, but that's it. He just takes an outrageous, arrogant, obnoxious stance on any topic that comes up. It's getting him a lot of press, and possibly earning him points at home for being a gamechanger. I'm not buying it. I don't think he's for real, he's just building up enough stroke to start getting paid off like the rest of them.
Still no death by powerpoint? Fail.
The Russia figure is misleading in terms of services render for $ paid, when one considers our "Space Pen" vs. Russian's and their pencils.
If these two fringe kooks would sponsor something serious, they may get some real support and get something worthwhile accomplished. Grayson is one of the most obxious jackasses in Congress and Paul thinks stop signs are an unconstitutional infringement on his freedom to drive a car. Nothing these guys sponsor is going anywhere.
Just what exactly do you consider more serious than an audit of the Federal Reserve, and lopping off the imperial arms of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex?
This discussion doesn't even consider the amounts that will be requested to fight cyber terror.
Tell you one thing I'd do right now - DHS would just be lopped off. We spent over $40 billion a year on these guys, and yet a Nigerian, with no passport, no luggage, on the 'No Fly' list, whose father warned us of his intentions, is allowed to get on a jet to Detroit. An alert stewardess and a Dutch passenger are the only things that stopped him.
New York city bomber, foiled by a hot dog vendor.
What are we paying for again?
We're spending $26b annually on Japan's defense. They don't want us on Okinawa. What are we defending them against, exactly? Let's take a look at all our foreign bases and ask that same question.
Afghanistan, look at this bullshit:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1269463/Afghanistan-PowerPoint-slide-Generals-left-baffled-PowerPoint-slide.html
This is not a document created by people who have a clear vision of the endgame. They have lost sight of the fact that Afghanistan has been nothing but a dark stone over which empires have been broken. 30,000 more troops and 18 months? Screw it, you could make it a million men and 30 years and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference.
Does anyone have any idea what the victory conditions would be in either Afghanistan or Iraq? At this point, I can't even imagine what it would be. This is something our President should be telling us.
It would be much less expensive to wage war by sending in a truck load of gasoline to eradicate a group of Taliban. It would be pretty damaging to any other residents. It seems that the US is about the only country which is held to any particular standard. Head choppers know that even if they err and whack an innocent Muslim that the victim will have died for the purpose of Jihad. Quite a liberating method of reasoning when conducting combat operations and much less costly.
It does kind of put government spending into perspective when just that small sum is the same as your first 35k tax free. I'd vote for it.
I like em, just a more appealing Ron Paul with that John Stewart touch. IMHO, he's got presidential aspirations, a ten year plan, he will do more of this and summarise, "All of my idea's are the changes you wanted and didn't get." Or something along those lines.
He is a rare politician that is not only focues in his communication, yet, very very brief and to the point, and when he is interviewed, he rarely if ever goes off tangent.
I agree, he does want this video's to go viral.
Grayson is just another partisan hack. He would do whatever he can to move more responsibility and freedom from the people to the govt. How some on this sight see him a champion of freedom is beyond me. His motivitions on financial reform and auditing the fed are not for transparency, but control.
Your judgment of Grayson and conclusive knowledge of his "motivations" are totally off base.
Talk about partisan hacks.
Just in case you would like to review the voting record:
http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=68184
And the proof is where? He wants to end the war in Iraq, yet votes for the defense appropriation bill. Votes for every spending bill, but against raising the debt limit or congressional pay increase.
See the pattern here? He's cherry picking the hot topics so as to appear to be genuine, but when it counts, he does the opposite.
Do your homework please.
He is a part of the Harvard cabal, and nothing but a blowhard showman. Keep worshipping your false gods. You will find yourself to be more of a slave than you are today.
BTW, can you show exacly how I am a partisan hack? And who am I a shill for exactly? I would like to know.
Saved me the time of typing something similar.
I don't need a Congressional talking head to identify foreign war as the only plague affecting the dysfunctional American economic system. The USA is locked in the grip of a layered series of governments too big to succeed.
Take an Amtrak from Philly to D.C. Get a right window seat. Then observe the rotten relics of decay along the way....Chester, Wilmington, Baltimore....all of it is a tribute to decades of malinvestment and corruption. A long series of Port-au-Prince type community ghettos, many of which are burned out shells made of bricks. These used to be American working class communities. Now they are a haven for the growing and permanent welfare societies.
It's not just foreign war that makes us poor. We are poor due to lack of moral conviction involving the very space between our borders. And finally it has come to the point of allowing the country to be illegally invaded with even more of the world's poor and uneducated and destitute.
America needs to be at war. We're just waging it in all the wrong places.
The bill may make it so people are tax exempt, sure, but the Federal Income tax system is illigal in the first place, so we shouldn't be giving any of it up.
Grayson, tell the people, the system is illegal. It is simply not necessary to pay income tax at all.
Wait, I thought this was a war for oil? Eight years out aren't we bathing in the stuff and having money fights with the plundered riches of the oppressed natives who squirm beneath Uncle Sam's jackboots? What the hell happened?
Does MoveOn.org know about this?
Even if Iraq and Afghanistan were, from America's perspective, the two most just and ethical wars in human history, the US is simply unwilling (for a variety of reasons) to utterly destroy the enemy and really that's all you need to know when answering the question: "How will this end?" Management has essentially learned nothing from Vietnam.
Obama is truly in a tough spot now. If he ends the wars tomorrow then he's either going to send unemployment through the roof or he's going to have a sizable military force standing around looking for something to do.
What a disaster.
The US has permanently screwed itself with debt, spending and obligations it can never fulfill. If it were a business the only viable option to avoid bancruptcy would be M&A.
Not a variety of reasons: one reason only.
In an extortion scheme, keep the easiest to extort in the position of the extorted.
Outright exploitation of Iraq oil is counter-productive. Just like a pirate could not enjoy his loot on point.
The US can not ignore the Saudis as an issue. Their partnership with the US put them in a dead end as they are trapped in exporting their oil to keep going. Apparently, they grew nervous with a lamenting result.
If the US pushes full ahead on Iraq, the Saudis will seize the opportunity to limit their own extraction rate to stay into the game longer and weights on foreing policy longer than the US might wish after 9,11. Just as the Saudis are doing now with Russia exhausting their resources in order to keep in the race.
Only when the Saudis oil extraction rate is starting to cough, Iraq will plug in.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the the Iraq project has not actually been going according to any plan these last eight years.
I can't generate any sympathy for the Saudi royals.
It doesn't really matter if the idea has technical flaws or is some sense just Agit/prop Theatre. Grayson knows that if there is at least another side presented, in an appealing, funny way, that it has a chance of catching on and going viral. This simple idea, with a simple # HR5353, puts things in perspective. These wars are not free. If we quit doing them, we can save so much money it shows up for those beneath the poverty line. So yeah, the money to fight the wars is borrowed, we don't really "save it," but Grayson knows all that. He's embarrassing the Administration with this, pwning Obama and the budget games they play to hide the cost of playing Emperor. More power to the Clown Prince of the House!
+++++++++++++++
+ What he said.
George W Bush's statement was that the Iraq War would pay for itself with oil revenue. Bush, McCain, and especially Sarah Palin should be standing in front of a spreadsheet with the numbers to show whether Bush knew what he was talking about.
Now you can laugh at that image.
I actually like the guy, from a showmanship/education standpoint, much like Ron Paul.
Medium to long run, though, I think it may be wise to accept that the US will be an African-style basket case.
You can see the left and right-wing press focusing entirely on attacking one another rather than accepting the fiscal reality of the situation.
That they've spent their entire lives arguing over sham issues, that the proudest corporations in America are largely reliant on Federal and State funds to retain profitability, and that our culture is completely diluted.
They can make nods towards deficit-cutting, but they have trouble grasping that these aren't problems that can be solved through empty rhetoric alone.
Wise? Unsound.
Humanity is about to go on the second leg on the Earth as a gigantic mine.
Therefore, very likely, what is possible now will no longer be possible in this future.
The US turning into an African style basket case, how do you want it to happen? Especially after the disappearance of Africa as a basket case due to a lack of goods to sell?
The culture of the US is vivid and not diluted. Where do you see the dilution?
I certainly don't want the US to get much worse than it already is.
By cultural dilution, I mean that there are fewer nuclear families (extreme divorce rates), fewer intact corporations that actually invest in their workforce, a general distrust of intellect, a declining real economy, etc.
Some of that is based in fact, and the rest is just my opinion.
I do think that the US has the most regenerative culture in the world. It's focused on youth, while the rest of the world generally produces art that glorifies elders and history.
That's where I have hope for the US - in future generations. Building the foundations for those unborn kids will be our life work.
Any time you see the phrase 'The War on', just substitute 'The Covert Jobs Program pretending to fight...'
War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terror, all about the fact that there is no national answer to structural unemployment.
A million dollars per soldier per day, and we're probably paying upwards of $50 million for every bad guy down.
But the WoT will go on because even the Caesars knew better than to return a hardened army to a restive populace.
Will we ever hear the words "War on Unemployment"? Maybe when they need to dispose of us.
I think you are spot on, though I think the creation of jobs is simply a collateral effect of the transfer of money from A to B.
A very perceptive conclusion..They will be brought back when Caesar needs them
He's one of those people that knows something is wrong but is not in the same social class as the rest of our representatives. He knows things are wrong and need to be changed but everyone laughs him off as crazy. He's like a ron paul with a touch of friday night standup so he just sounds insane. In reality he just is trying to do what he thinks will help everyone instead of just the status quo.
Grayson was released way too early from the mental shock therapy. Grayson has little clue as to what the enemies have planned in their dreams. Expect those plans to become more frequent in execution.
as donald rumsfeld asked, are we making more of them than we are killing? and the answer is we are making more of them. we are trapped into a democratic model for these countries we attack: we, ultimately, want them to vote for people we like. dropping bombs on them is not the way to realize this end. pay them money for what they can make or do; give them stuff they want (water purifiers, cell phone networks, renewable energy, affordable medicine) that gives them something to lose; educate them, particularly the women; do what one can to make a middle class; realize it will take generations; try to keep nuclear weapons away from dangerous hands; work for lasting peace in palestine and kashmir as if it really mattered.
those fixated on what one might call the "24 model" or the "israel paradigm" think they are gimlet eyed realists but they are not. just as israel's future has become progressively dimmer with each armed encounter since the 1967 war, so too these wars of ours weaken us and strengthen our "enemies". the warfare analogy is a dead end: we are not fighting armies; we are attempting to win hearts and minds by our own admission. look at vietnam. napalm in the morning may have smelled like victory but it assuredly wasn't our victory. trade and tourism on the other hand.... so too sanctions on iran. they hurt the people and empower the worst of the elites. cuba would seem to offer all the example one would need.
IMO he knows perfectly well that this proposal is untenable. Obvously there would be no savings to distribute to taxpayers, since this money doesn't exist in the first place. The point is to start a serious discussion on one strikingly simple question: why can't our wars be financed by the already enormous US military budget? Would our soldiers be deprived of food, ammo, or medical care? Or would the President simply have to balance these costs against keeping a few thousand extra chair-polishing brass hats (plus well-connected contractors) secure in their Pentagon positions?
Grayson is playing the fool but he is no fool. Like Colbert he uses reductio ad absurdum arguments to expose uncomfortable naked truths to which Americans have become mentally numbed. Those who attack his japes on a literal level will never get it; no loss, they never would have anyway.
+1000 seventree
I couldn't care less about the gossip column-he said, she said-bullshit.
Nor do I care what party affiliation a congressman has.
If it's a good bill, it's a good bill.
Maybe someday the zombies indoctrinated by Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck/Faux News etc ad nauseam will wake up and discover what TRUE conservatism is: the antithesis of a neoCON!
Maybe someday the zombies indoctrinated by Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck/Faux News etc ad nauseam will wake up and discover what TRUE conservatism is: the antithesis of a neoCON!
They can't they are paid for by this party. Without the party backing them there are no book deals, tv or radio shows, no oxycontin addiction without repurcussions (sorry I had to throw that in ), and no fame . Don't get me wrong its the same on the other side.
Let's not forget the morons on the Matthews/Olbermann/Maddow side. Anyone who subscribes to either side of the one party bullshit deserves nothing less than death. Political parties should be banned. State your views, win/lose your votes. Period.
"Math question cannot be longer than 3 characters but is currently 4 characters long."
Then why the fuck ask a question that requires a 4 character answer?!
Grayson, simply put, is not an idiot.
How can the US be so scared as to spend (all but) 1/2 of ALL global spending on defence?
I don't agree with everything my friends say but I don't class them as idiots as a consequence.
Ron Paul, Alan Grayson and the likes of Peter Schiff are actually standing up and saying things that need to be said.
DavidC
When a Libertarian, Democrat, and Republican all come to the same conclusion, they're probably not all wrong.
(especially when the Republican is actually/also a Libertarian.)
Let's clarify it a little more, that would be a libertarian in the Mises/Rothbard/.. sense.
Not to be confused with the Koch-funded Cato-"type" Libertarian.
Thank you.
Grayson, simply put is an idiot.
Latest shot he's fired off............
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0510/Grayson_likens_GOP_in_charge_of_Congress_to_terrorist_in_pilots_seat.html?showall
Want to stir the pot, and work together?.
Dream on.........assclown
The pot needs stirring, a lot of stirring.
Everything in moderation, even K00l-Aid
Everything in moderation, even K00l-Aid
The opium war payoff is easy to understand. Essentially China was like the US today, crippled by drug addiction. England (and to a lesser extent, some familiar family names in the US) played the part of today's Columbia / Mexico, supplying China's fabulously profitable opium market. When China threatened British national security by launching its own "war on drugs" this threat was dealt with militarily and wealth flowed freely again. No doubt the Navy got a fair piece of this action.
What I don't get is how this relates to today's US military power in terms of commerce. I can't think of anyone who is buying from us out of fear. Mostly we are buying, and again I don't know of any favorable trade terms obtained by threat of military force. Iraq was supposedly "all about oil" but we did not annex their oil fields (as probably would have happened 100 years ago); instead we are paying market prices for whatever they are producing just like any other country.
Possibly in my ignorance of global affairs I am overlooking something. I welcome [preferably civil] corrections to my thinking.
seventree big business does the annexing now in this age of imperialism.
By Opium wars, I refered to the establishment by the British of a trade corridor between India and China to pour Opium into China. Not how Chinese managed to wrestle their way out of the extortion scheme. This is what funded the Navy, not the military intervention when the Chinese tried to get out of the extortion scheme.
Buying out of fear? What is that? This is a consumption game. And in a consumption game(it is a consumer economy, never forget that), the consumer is the central actor.
The main concern of the consumer is to buy. And then get people to sell to him.
The consumer in a consumption game is concerned by getting the most of the consumption. In this regard, buying from him might be counter-productive.
The consumer is obsessed by buying, not by selling.
For that, getting people to sell to him out of fear matters.
The mad man from the desert Saddam Hussein showed his madness on several levels. One is that he perfectly understood the Saudi role as a swinger 'producer'. As oil extraction capability is limited, he wanted to wait for the Saudis to exhaust themselves as the US lap dog to branch in and emerge as the new swinger 'producer'
Therefore the mad man was not that keen on selling to the US. A big, big mistake when you are face to face with a ganglord armed to the teeth who comes knocking at the door to tell he is not that happy. The mad man paid the price of his madness and now Iraq is ready to grow as a substitute for Saudi Arabia when the latter grows ineffective.
Annexing oil fields would have been counter-productive. This was the big lesson of the colonization era.
In an extortion scheme, always keep the easiest to extort in the position of the extorted.
Annexing oil fields would have put them under US juridiction and therefore limited the means to extort. Same stuff as Guantanamo Bay or the secret prisons all over the world.