WikiLeaks Analysis

Very interesting and thought provoking analysis, http://w3thepeople.blogspot.com/ by Ms. Ghassemian. I agree with some aspects of the review and have questions about others. For one, Ghassemian is right on target on pouring scorn on the US Governments notice to Federal employees and contractors not to read Wikileaks documents. The notice was out of touch with reality as the employees could easily read the documents in the New York Times, Guardian and a few other newspapers. Besides, Federal employees should be able to read any material in the public domain without let or hindrance.  The author gives the impression that a cyber attack or hacking, “…bravo to Julian Assange for at least giving a heads up of how easy it is to get cyber attacks”. Actually the information obtained by Assange is thought to have come from Army Pfc Bradley Manning who had the required clearance to access classified material, so the information was not obtained through a cyber attack, but through old fashioned insider leaks.

In another matter, the author gives credit to the current administration for not attacking Iran even though the Arab governments were pushing for such an attack. This type of thinking is naïve at best, as the reasons the US has not yet attacked Iran is based on its own strategic calculations, and if and when the time comes to attack Iran, the US will not hesitate to do so. A good example of such calculations was the attack on Iraq. All the Arab countries pleaded with the Bush administration not to invade Iraq in 2003, but the US went ahead anyway and did it. Most information security experts are agreed that the US should have done a better job of protecting its classified information. Indications are that US policy is being revised with fewer people having access to classified information on a more limited need to know basis.

Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts

For the first time in US history, the Bush Administration enacted tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 at a time when the US was engaged in two wars. With regards to this article, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/us/politics/03million.html?_r=1) the top marginal tax rate on income was reduced from 39.6% to 35%.  Since Republicans and democrats knew that the cuts were not sustainable over the long run, the tax reductions and a sunset provision requiring the cuts to lapse at the end of 2010. As Paul Krugman wrote at  the time: “The administration, knowing that its tax cut wouldn’t fit into any responsible budget, pushed through a bill that contains the things it wanted most — big tax cuts for the very, very rich — and used whatever accounting gimmicks it could find to make the overall budget impact seem smaller than it is.”
Now that the tax cuts are expiring, the Republicans are engaging in a new round of deception and demagoguery. Democrats have proposed keeping the lower rates for couples making 250,000 or less, the Republicans are pushing for an extension of the lower rates for all tax payers. While deficit reduction was a major part of the Republican’s campaign strategy, their support of the tax extension for the wealthy will add $700 billion to the federal deficit, taking Republican hypocrisy to new heights of fiscal irresponsibility. The GOP plan to borrow these billions, mostly from less well-off Americans and their children, to give already wealthy Americans more continued relief each year than many military officers earns in an entire career, is reprehensible. Have they no shame?  If our economic elites insist lower taxes at a time of war and surging debt, then the people with wealth and power have lost their moral bearings.
Having taken a shellacking as President Obama called the defeat of Democratic candidates in the mid-term elections, the President and the Democratic Party are eager to compromise with the Republicans on the tax cut issue.  It appears that the Democrats will agree to the GOP proposal to extend tax cuts for the wealthy for one to three years or increase the tax cut income cap from $250,000 to $1 million. Based on responsible economics and opinion polls showing 51% support for the Democratic position and 31% for the GOP position of extension for all, the Democrats should agree to no more than a year’s extension of the tax cuts and not fall once again for the Republican trap of extensions that are politically inconvenient to repeal.

Obama's Health Care Plan A Sensible Option

A very interesting analysis of the President Obama’s health care plan by Ms. Klingman (http://maryklingman.blogspot.com/2010/11/obamacare-will-it-hurt-us-more-than-it.html) . However, in several places it appears that Ms. Klingman’s analysis is based on faulty information, or she has bough into the disinformation campaign peddled by the insurance companies and their Republican allies.  As the Nobel-prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman explained recently, there is such depth of ignorance about existing healthcare arrangements in America that many people have no idea about the extent to which the government is already involved.

To start with Obama never characterized his health care plan as “universal” as stated by Ms. Klingman. While the plan’s supporters and backers did campaign vigorously for a “public option” this part of the plan was dropped, when there was very little Congressional support for it. In addition, the author mentions that, “Obama is allowing people to either choose a private insurance company or to choose the national health care plan.”  There is no national health care plan, all the states will have administer their plans through insurance exchanges.

Ms. Klingman’s concerns about funding and taxes are valid to some extent.  However, even without the health care reform, medical inflation has been increasing at double digit rates for the past several years. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the new law would reduce the federal deficit by $143 billion over the first decade and in the decade after that by an amount equivalent in a broad range between one quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP.  There are still about 46 million Americans without health insurance; and ever since 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt came up with the first national health insurance plan, presidents have been putting forward ideas for plugging this gap and achieving universal cover. In 1970, President Nixon a Republican proposed a health care reform in package, which was later shelved due to its assumed high cost of $40 billion.  Four decades later, we now have a much needed, reasonable and relatively affordable health care plan. The American people should take the time to read and understand the plan and not be taken in by Republican demagoguery and disinformation.

Georgia seeks Arizona-like immigration law- Critique

In almost all the states that border Mexico, illegal immigration is becoming a major problem for the neighboring states to deal with. Like Arizona, Georgia is also considering to make stricter laws against illegal immigration. Georgia is not considering adopting the extreme measures like Arizona, and they don’t plan on requiring police to check immigration status, while enforcing laws. But however Georgia is debating the birthright citizenship. Legislators are also debating whether to ban illegal immigrants from Georgia colleges or not. I think this will be a terrible idea for them to do so. Attending college should not be determined by citizenship, test scores and grade point averages should be more important.  For one state to enforce stricter Illegal immigration laws in this country is no good at all. Illegal immigrants can travel from state to state with ease.

If the United States really wanted to keep the illegal immigrants out of the country they can do so by enforcing national laws, such as stronger employer sanctions and penalties, more manpower and funding for border control.  But the majority of the Americans do not mind the illegal immigrants in their country, as long as the immigrants are doing the “dirty” jobs here in America.

 To illustrate this, Stephen Colbert recently testified before the U.S. House of Representatives about the day he spent working with farm workers in the fields of California. The farm workers had invited interested Americans to spend a day working with farmers to see for themselves what farm work is really like. Only a handful of people accepted the invitation, showing most Americans don’t want to do the back breaking labor that illegal farm workers do to support their families and earn a wage much higher than in their native countries.

The immigration debate is complex, emotionally charged with serious political, economic and social consequences. Some politicians and political commentators would rather demagogue the issues rather than try to reach comprehensive immigration reform.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/24/stephen-colbert-appears-capitol-hill-hearing-illegal-immigrants/

Americans Still Cling to Ignorance Critique

Victor Davis Hanson’s analysis, (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/30/americans_still_cling_to_ignorance_107366.html) is full of distortions half truths and inaccuracies.  It is astounding that in this day and age Mr. Hanson is celebrating and proud of the ignorance of the average American. Survey after survey has shown that American high school students score near the bottom in math and science compared to high school students of the top twenty industrialized nations.

He rips into President Carter’s failings, with barely a mention of his many successes, such as the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel which still holds today. Carter was right to pursue a policy of energy conservation and independence. One of the major reasons that the US maintains a bloated defense budget is to maintain its dominance of the Persian Gulf to keep the only flowing freely.

Mr. Hanson next turns his sights on Senator Kerry. Kerry is absolutely right to bemoan the electorate’s tendency to fall for "a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." A stark reminder of this is the health care reform debate. At one of the many public rallies organized by the Tea Party this summer, one of the angry participants was heard to say that he didn’t want a government takeover of health care and that the Democrats should “keep their hands off his Medicare plan.” By many measure of health care spending and outcomes, the US places near the bottom among the industrialized countries.

About Kerry’s remark to students to study well in school lest they end up stuck in Iraq. Hanson once again takes a cheap shot at Kerry, by stating: "He apparently had forgotten that soldiers volunteer for military service, and are overwhelmingly high school graduates.” It is quite obvious, that Mr. Hanson has not done his homework on the subject. It is well known that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being fought disproportionally by minorities, and the less well educated. In addition, due to short of qualified recruits the US military lowered its standards to accept convicted felons.

In the final analysis it appears that Hanson is blinded by his ideology in trying to justify his opposition to a host of issues, such as health care reform, the need to close Guantanamo and immigration reform. His extolling of the Tea Party’s positions and Republican obstructionism is deplorable. He would do well to read “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free” by Charles P. Pierce.   With his sharp wit and sound reasoning, Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching and humorous lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States, and how a nation founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow degenerated into a nation of simpletons more likely to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate.

Downhill With the GOP Critique

In the September 24 edition of the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote
a very interesting and engaging analysis of the Republican Party’s
obstructionist tactics leading up to the midterm elections in
November.  Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist has frequently
skewered Republican policies on a number of issues, such as Obama’s
stimulus package, health care reform, and the Bush tax cut extensions.
Krugman’s intended audience are the readers of the New York Times who
are generally considered to be more liberal than conservatives and
independent voters who are not wedded to the Republican Party’s flight
from realism.  Krugman’s credibility is quite high, while he generally
writes articles critical of the Republican’s he has not spared the
Obama administration from his incisive analysis, and razor sharp wit.
He was quite critical of Obama’s stimulus package, arguing that it was
too small to have a quick impact on economic growth.

Krugman makes a convincing case in demolishing Republican posturing
and hypocrisy surrounding the Bush tax cuts. In their public speeches
and positions papers the Republicans go to great lengths to portray
themselves in favor of wanting to control the federal deficit, while
at and the same time proposing a permanent extension of the tax cuts
for all taxpayers, which will add 3.7 trillion to the deficit over the
next decade.  Whereas, the Obama administration’s plan to leave the
tax cuts in place for those making under $250,000 a year and let the
tax rates for those making over $250,000 revert back to where they
were before the Bush tax plan came into effect, would save $700
billion over the Republican proposal.  Using flawless logic, backed by
relevant facts and figures, Krugman characterizes the Republican
stance as a “war on arithmetic”.

Krugman then analyzes the real motives of the Republicans. He asserts
that the man goal of the GOP is to gain power and not be bothered
accounting deficiencies of government. This is the argument makes
eminent good sense, as why would the Republicans, supposed to be the
party of fiscal restraint, make such reckless and irresponsible
proposals to saddle the economy with huge deficits.  The ultimate goal
is to eliminate Medicare and privatize social security and render the
Federal government ineffective and ungovernable, like a real banana
republic.  Here, Krugman is being a bit charitable to the Republicans
as in the words of one of their ideologues, Grover Norquist, founder
of the Americans for Tax Reform, the the Republicans goal should be to
so hamstring the government with deficits, that there will be no
choice, but to shrink the government so much that it can be “flushed
it down the toilet”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Illegal immigration

In the New York Times I found an interesting article relating to illegal immigration in the United States. Democrats are attempting to pass a bill that will allow illegal residents to apply for legal status, if they attend a college or university for two or more years. Some republicans are against illegal residents attending universities, and colleges. However this is a great bill to implement for the United States. We can not deport all the illegal residents in the United States, but we can help them by giving them an education, which will keep most of them out of trouble, and put them on the right tracks. This article is worth reading because it shows that the Democratic Party is attempting to gain the Hispanic vote, while the Republicans are doing just the opposite.