Mitt Watch - The Man Without A Plan

July 1st, 2012

While everyone is justifiably preoccupied with the SCOTUS decision regarding the ACA in its potential political impact, it's worth remembering that the upcoming election is meant to select our Commander in Chief. On that count, we are still faced with a choice between Obama's frustrating pragmatism and absolute disaster.

Fred Kaplan writes:

"What is Romney’s position on drone strikes? What’s his position on Afghanistan? During the Republican debates, he once said that his position was not to negotiate with the Taliban but to defeat them. What does that mean? Does he want to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops there after NATO’s 2014 deadline? To what end? Doing what? He also once said that military spending should consume at least 4 percent of gross domestic product. Obama’s most recent military budget ($525 billion, not counting the cost of the war in Afghanistan) amounts to 3 percent. So Romney intends to raise the budget by one-third, or by about $175 billion a year—by more than $1 trillion in the next six years. Where is he going to get the money? What’s he going to spend it on? No details. None.

Is Romney an extremist? Or, in keeping with the GOP approach to politics in general these days, has he simply calculated that it’s best not to agree with Obama on anything? Either way, one thing is clear: He is not a serious man."

You don't have to support Obama's foreign policy. You just have to be smart enough to reject its opposite. And vote accordingly.

Preparing To Fight The Hawks

Dec 2nd, 2011

As substantial (not to mention long overdue) cuts the U.S. defense budget loom, Kevin Drum takes aim at one of the more dubious arguments against them.

"Defense hawks like to insist that we should judge the Pentagon budget as a percentage of GDP. The Bill Kristol contingent, for example, claims that we should never allow defense spending to fall below 4 percent of GDP. But is this a sensible way of looking at things? For some programs it is. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are both inherently tied to population growth and living standards, so as those go up so will outlays. But in other areas this doesn't make so much sense. Do we need more embassies overseas just because our GDP has grown? Not really. There will be some increase in wages that's tied to economic growth, but that's about it."

What DOES Herman Cain Know?

Nov 1st, 2011
by F. Grey Parker

It has been a longstanding complaint of the Republican establishment that President Obama "lacked experience" at the time of his election. Apparently, their base has enamored itself to a candidate who lacks basic knowledge.

Herman Cain has very recently topped his public display of ignorance regarding the Palestinian claim of a "right of return." In an interview with Judy Woodruff, Cain appeared to be very worried that the Chinese might, someday soon, actually develop nuclear weapons.

Worth 1,000 Words

Sept 19th,  2011

Meet the world's largest employer... and still growing.

Via The Economist

Ending "Duplicative" Spending?

March 22nd, 2011

Where did all that Republican zeal To End "Duplicitave" Spending Go? Gosh, it was everywhere right up through last week. The "non-partisan" Heritage blog, The Foundry, even ran a piece lionizing Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) under the banner "Lawmakers Form House-Senate Effort To Eliminate Duplicitive Government Programs." Sounds good to me. Seriously. As a progressive I have always argued for better government, not less.

Then came the weekend. Suddenly, there is a lot less chatter around this initiative. I suspect it is because a certain piece of data from the GAO has been picked up more widely. We'll be watching this one closely.

Some Interesting Conservative Thought On Libya

March 22nd, 2011

Since the start of hostilities, there have been some genuinely intriguing observations over at the National Review. Kevin D. Willaimson writes in response to some derision regarding the use of our military dollars:

"With all due respect to Mr. Felzenberg and Mr. Gray, I’m not sure that our Libya campaign shows the folly of cuts in defense spending. One might argue as easily that our $1 trillion or more in defense spending shows the folly of the Libya campaign. We’re lobbing missiles that go for about $750,000 a copy into a country for the entirety of which I would not trade the change behind my sofa cushions, inasmuch as Libya strikes me the very definition of a negative asset, one that we are in the process of taking custodianship over."

"Yes, I wrote $1 trillion. Even though the last DOD budget was only — only! — about $550 billion, supplementary war funding brings the number up to about $663 billion. But lots of military spending takes place outside of DOD: at NASA, at DOE, DHS, Veterans’ Affairs, etc. And NASCAR, for Pete’s sake. Throw in all that, and the interest payments on debt incurred for previous military spending, and you get a number between $1 trillion and $1.4 trillion, depending on how you count it up. I’ll be conservative and call it a cool trillion. That’s a lot of money for a national-security system that has repeatedly, predictably, reliably failed to address our actual security threats."

Although I disagree, at points strenuously, with Williamson's recommendations for change, it is refreshing to see the truth about our defense budgets so plainly stated at NRO.

Defending Ourselves To Death

March 22nd, 2011

In a typically thoughtful piece by Jim Manzi discussing the current Libyan misadventure, I found this observation:

"Yes, we ”spend more on our military than all other major powers combined.” But, depending on how you measure it, the U.S. has about 20 – 25% of world GDP. In the long-run, we cannot win an arms race with the whole rest of the planet."

We are also not the world's policeman. Please consult the following graphics. The first makes clear that it is not merely the corporatist revenue schemes of the last ten years, but the previously unheard of increases in military industrial spending that poise our nation for admittance to the dustbin of history.