cross-posted at Progressive Blue
Hiya ;)
You know what I think, right? If not let John Feffer explain it.
Particularly over the last eight years, the United States was one big mouth. We lectured the world. We berated the world. We threatened and wheedled and roared. From the world's perspective, however, the United States was like the teacher in the Peanuts comic strip: an incomprehensible wah-wah sound in the background. You generally ignored this voice of authority — so predictable, so monotonous, so deafening — unless it happened to pick on you.
Follow me...
Then I think of this.
Let’s say that President Barack Obama appointed me as his Karl Rove. My advice: Don’t move on. The best way to tie the opposition on the right into a pretzel is to go after the Bush administration for all of its high crimes and misdemeanors. The radical right will fall back to defend its conduct for the last eight years. It will have less time and energy to battle the current agenda. The administration should embrace Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Truth Commission, prosecute the Justice Department lawyers for their torture memos, rake the top Pentagon officials over the coals for war crimes in Iraq, and uncover as much dirt as possible on how the Bush administration subverted the constitution, undermined international law, and hijacked America
Just so you know...
The budget released today does show signs of a modest course correction. A "sweeping shift" will have to wait. The main cause: While the new administration has slowed the rate of increase in the base military budget, it has still requested more money for the Pentagon than the Bush administration ever did. Its request of $534 billion is $20 billion more than the amount Congress appropriated for FY 2009.
(snip)
If President Barack Obama gets the budget he requested today, we'd be spending 13 times the money engaging the rest of the world through the military as by any other means. And under his budget request, the Department of Homeland Security would receive a slight increase of $2.6 billion over the FY 2009 appropriation. We would be spending $16 on military force for every dollar we spend on homeland security.
Overall we would be spending seven times as much on military force as on international affairs and homeland security combined.
We want to save money right? We as a nation need to save dollars. I'm paying mine daily and am more than willing to contribute. Let me rephrase that...I'm willing are they? Once again I refer to people much smarter than myself...
• Introducing a modest financial transaction tax that will chill speculation and generate $100 billion a year.
• Implementing an estate tax reform that taxes inheritances over $2 million at progressive rates.
• Setting an emergency tax rate on extremely high incomes that would generate over $60 billion a year.
• Eliminating the tax preference on capital gains and dividend income, generating $95 billion.
• Closing overseas tax havens for individuals and corporations, generating $100 billion.
• Scrapping $18 billion in tax breaks that subsidize excessive CEO compensation.
Rant Ends Here