posted
That's just one of the few issues they're enacting their version of morality (usually religious) into a set number of laws that restrict the freedoms of others. Stop drinking the kool-aid. Yours is the party that cries about freedom of choice and anti-government control, and then turns around and makes laws or fights for laws all over the place that restrict individual choice and freedoms. See to your own sins.
And what money are you talking about?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Democrats are doing away with (for this year anyway) ALL earmarks, which have grown to 11,000 for the next budget. Earmarks are what allow Congressmen to put, at the last minute, with no scrutiny, spending projects into major bills that allocate thousands or millions of dollars back to their home districts.
For 2007, there will be zero ear marks.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
An interesting moral question, I think that the money going into local projects is one of the few things that we can point to the government doing that positively impacts the economy. Still it seems underhanded the way it is handled...
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
I'd be okay with maybe 5% of that money being used, because I don't think any more than that would have a snowball's chance in hell of being improved by the Iraqi population at large, if the benefits are to be spread across the entire country. Besides, as soon as you bring regional money into the mix, the Sunnis are almost automatically kicked out of the benefits, where the argument falls apart.
And payments shouldn't start for a few years. You know the US government at large gets billions of dollars a year in royalty patments from companies that drill on Federal land, and that money is funneled right into the government to pay part of the budget. Iraq needs billions for security forces, for infrastructure upgrades, to help revitalize their farm lands (one of the most arable territories in the ME and they are a net importer of food? Ridiculous), and various other things. Overall, until there is security there, you won't get major investment in their oil industry, no one wants to see their investment blown up by an insurgent, to say nothing of the half million barrels a day that are funneled off to the black market.
The people will never agree to this, because the north and south will want ALL profits to be confined to the north and south, and the center will not agree, and you have an impasse, OR the other two outnumber them, and you have a screwed center area of the country, and you have more violence.
I swear, seriously, if you tell people you're going to start handing out checks, you'll get people who will register twice, you'll get ministry officials skimming off the top, you'll get foreign insurgents who register and steal basically, and use that money to fund a war against Iraqis. You'll get corruption. Even if the US did it, we still don't know who is who there, and we'll make huge mistakes. Militia forces will stop by the houses of normal citizens and demand their protection fees, just like in Mexico.
You're just asking to have the entire thing go awry. Giving out checks isn't what solves the problem. Creating jobs in a nation with 40% unemployment is. They need billions in foreign investment, they need stability, they need to know that they aren't going to die on their way to work from a suicide bomber. And before giving them all that, you want to give them checks, removing money from the national coffers, and throwing it at the problem in the hopes that it'll just fix it magically.
It's not a plan at all, it's blind hope, with little basis to back it up, and a whole lot of proof of the real situation flying in the face of your claims.
Edit to add: I think this is all academic anyway, because the only way this happens is if we tell them it's going to happen whether they like it or not (just wait and see how THAT goes), because they will never agree on this. It was discussed in the Baker Report, some of which agrees with you (you know, that Report you claim to have read that is full of lies). They don't agree on who gets the money. And either way, corruption ensures that millions are sucked away by officials. How are you going to get Iraq to agree to it?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
