Why reject David Frum and his “advice”

Liberal Republicans, led by David Frum, continue argue for a remolding of the GOP into a ”Democrat-lite” party. Several prominent conservatives, including Todd Tiahrt, Michael Reagan, and Ann Coulter, have made many credible arguments against such a change of the party brand. This article will back those arguments up with evidence that this remolding – which David Frum, the hero of liberal Republicans, calls ”modernization” – would be an utter disaster for the GOP. The evidence is the result of the ”modernization” of the British ”Conservative” Party – Frum’s model for the Republican Party.

In 2005, David Cameron, a wishy-washy moderate Tory from Witney, was elected leader of the Tory Party. He and his ”moderate” aides began a radical remolding of the Conservative Party into a clone of the Labor Party, based on the fallacious belief that the voters of that party and the Lib Dems could be swayed to vote for the Tories, even though the vast majority of such voters are hardline leftists who wouldn’t vote for the Tories under any circumstances. As for traditional Conservative voters, Cameron argued that ”they have nowhere else to go” and so, they would always remain loyal to the Tory Party.

Cameron was wrong. Traditional Tory voters do have somewhere to go. The far-right United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and similar parties welcome these voters with open arms. In fact, UKIP itself was established in 1993 by disenchanted Tories and almost all of the people who subsequently joined the party are also disenfranchised Conservative voters. But UKIP was a small fringe party – until Cameron initiated his ”modernization” program and began to scare Tory voters away from his party.

In 1999, UKIP had only 3 Members of the European Parliament and 0 members of the British Parliament. Today, UKIP has 13 MEPs and 2 members of the House of Lords. All of these gains were made at the cost of the ”Conservative Party”.

Arguably, Cameron’s worst mistake was his November 2009 decision to renege on his ”cast-iron” promise to organize a referendum on the European Constitution (AKA the Lisbon Treaty) if his party wins a parliamentary election. This single decision alienated further tens of thousands of Tory voters (the vast majority of Tories are eurosceptics who would prefer for the UK to withdraw from the European Union altogether, but Cameron and other Tory leaders refuse to listen to them).

As a result, the Tory Party is very unlikely to win a general election. The latest British polls indicate that if an election was organized today, the Tories would win only 296 seats in the House of Commons, 30 seats short of a majority. 64% of Britons believe that the Tories will not win a majority. It is likely that there will not be a majority party, so some parties will cobble a coalition together. It will probably be a Labor Party – Liberal Democrats coalition, thus allowing Gordon Brown to remain Prime Minister and the Labor Party to continue to govern Britain – albeit with a junior coalition partner.

The veteran British journalist Christopher Booker describes this picture thus:

“The real tragedy of what has happened to Britain in the past 20 years is that we no longer have an opposition worthy of the name. It is almost impossible to measure the damage done by 13 years of rule by Blair and Brown. (…)

Yet, as the worst Government in our history has presided over this catastrophe, we have had an Opposition so hypnotised that in fundamental respects it has scarcely been an opposition at all. The Tory party has never really recovered its identity, leaving millions of voters in effect disfranchised. Three virtually indistinguishable parties squabble over trivia, leaving the electorate without any clear alternative – so that on May 6 almost half the voters may well stay apathetically or sullenly at home.”

So this is the state of the UK and of the Conservative Party: after over 12 years spent under the worst British government since the Wilson government, after this incompetent government had done unimaginable harm to the UK, the “modernized Conservative Party” led by David Cameron – Frum’s hero – cannot win even a slim majority of seats in the House of Commons. Not only that, but it will guarantee the British people another 5 years under a socialist government. This is exactly the result of the “modernization” policy which Frum hailed, and this will also be the grim result if the GOP adopts Frum’s advice.

As Booker noted, there is no significant difference between the Tories and the Labor Party – they argue only about petty details, just like Frum and the Democrats. The Tory Party is highly unlikely to win the election, because its traditional voters have been disenfranchised while traditional Lib Dems and Blairites still vote for leftist parties.

Do Republicans really want their party to resemble the Tory Party?

The Republican Party now stands at crossroads. It must choose one of the two roads it can take. The first road would be the David Frum Highway to Electoral Defeat – or what Frum calls a “modernization” policy a la the Tory Party.

The other option would be to re-commit individual Republican politicians – and the Party as an organization – to traditional conservative principles upon which the Party and the US were established: a strong defense, low taxes, limited government, private enterprise, a Federal Republic, a strict interpretation of the Constitution, and protection of personal liberties. Tens of millions of Americans profess these principles (vide the Tea Partiers) and will vote for Republicans who abide by them. These Americans constitute today’s “Great Silent Majority”.

Currently, the GOP is neither liberal nor conservative. It still hasn’t decided what to choose.

So it’s time for conservatives to take the Party back and make it again an unashamedly conservative party that advocates and adheres to the timeless conservative principles upon which this great Republic was established.

Originally published at TRC (http://www.therealitycheck.org/?p=13521).

The Salazar v. Buono ruling

Yesterday, the SCOTUS correctly ruled that the cross in the Mojave desert, which offended an atheist employee of the NPS (Frank Buono), can remain in the Mojave desert.

The SCOTUS rejected the ludicrous claim that this cross represents a religion officially established by the US government.

A comparison of the Fair Tax and the current federal tax system

The following example should illustrate why the Fair Tax is superior to the current federal tax system.

Let’s assume that a certain product type will be sold under 2 different tax system: under the current system and under the Fair Tax system.

1) Under the current system:

Assumptions:
The federal CIT has been rounded to 40% for simplicity.
All the 4 businesses analyzed are based in Texas, which does not levy a state CIT.
Federal payroll taxes are ignored. (With federal payroll taxes calculated into these equations, the price of the product would’ve been higher than it is.)

The raw material provider dugs the raw material out of the ground at a cost of $10. He sells it to the first level manufacturer at a price of $20, because he must make a profit margin big enough to pay the CIT and earn a profit of $6.

The cost of the product when the RMP sells it: $10+$6+$4=$20.

The first-level manufacturer buys the raw material for $20, processes it at a cost of $5, and sells it to the second level manufacturer at a price of $50 (because he must cover the cost of the purchase of the raw material, cover the cost of processing, and make a profit large enough to pay the 40% federal CIT and make a net profit of $5).

$20+$5+$20+$5=$50.

The second level manufacturer buys this thing at a price of $50, processes it at a price of $5, and sells it to the retail store at a price of $100, because he must pay a 40% CIT (i.e. $40) and make a net profit of $5.

$50+$5+$40+$5=$100.

The retail store buys the final product at a price of $100 and sells it at a price of $180, because it must pay a 40% CIT (i.e. $72) and make a net profit of $8. This is, of course, a minimalist assumption. Almost every retail store requires a higher net profit, which means that the real price of the final product is much higher than $180.

$100+$72+$8=$180.

The price paid by an American consumer (with all the taxes embedded): $180.

2) Under the Fair Tax:

The raw material provider produces the raw material at a price of $10 and must make a profit margin of $6, so he sells the RM to the first level manufacturer at a price of $16.

No federal taxes, no federal tax audit.

$10+$6=$16.

The first level manufacturer buys it, processes it at a cost of $5, and makes a $5 profit margin. So he sells this thing to the second-level manufacturer at a price of $26.

No federal taxes, no federal tax audit.

$16+$5+$5=$26.

The second level manufacturer buys this thing, processes it at a cost of $5, and sells it to the retail store at a $36 price (he must make a profit of $5).

No federal taxes, no federal tax audit.

$26+$5+$6=$36.

The retail store buys the final product for $36, and sells it to the consumer at a price of $54.12 (without the FT the price is $44, because the retail store must make a $8 profit on this product, plus a 23% FT.

Only a retail store pays a federal tax (namely, the Fair Tax), and only retail stores are subjected to federal tax audits – conducted by state tax auditors.

The price of the product under the current system: $180.
The price of the product under the FT: $54.12.

Under either tax system, you would pay federal taxes embedded in the prices of the products you buy. The difference?

Under the current system, you will pay massive, oppressive, hidden, untransparent taxes (passed on to you by corporations), e.g. the federal corporate income tax and the federal employer payroll tax (a payroll tax paid by employers; it’s an additional tax to the payroll tax paid by employees).

Under the Fair Tax system, you would pay only one, mild, transparent, uniform, simple tax: a 23% sales tax called the Fair Tax.

The Blueprint for a Balanced Federal Budget – 2nd ed.

My proposal is that the US government should reduce only civilian spending – but reduce it to such a degree that would allow it to balance the budget. Most of these proposals are original, and a few were borrowed from AmericanSolutions.com; some of the below proposals are big, others are not. They target various agencies and programs, but they all target those programs that are unnecessary.

Unlike the balanced budget plan of the Republican Study Committee, this Blueprint would reduce the budget by FY2011, not by FY2019.

The total spending reductions would amount to $1.8446805 trillion dollars, i.e. $1844.6805 billion dollars, which would be enough to balance the budget during FY2011. The specific proposals, from huge budget reductions to minor savings, are as follows (the asterisks denote the sources for the numbers):

Expenditure that should be abolished	Saving ($ bn)
National Infrastructure Bank [2]	5
Subsidies for the postal service [2]	4,344
The Americorps [2]	1,438
Subsidies for Amtrak [2]	1
Unspent stimulus money [1]	518
Unspent TARP money [1]	368,8
The Federal Transit Administration	5,335
Farm subsidies	57,6
The Dept of commerce minus the bureau of the census [2]	0,586
The Education Department [2]	49,697
The Dept. Of Housing and Urban Development [2]	41,59
The IRS [2]	12,663
The Department of Agriculture [2]	26,661
Bodyguards for ex-presidents and former first ladies	0,024
Subsidies for the CPB [2]	0,466
The Equal Opportunity Commission [2]	0,385
Neighborhood reinvestment corporation [2]	0,167
The NEH [2]	0,171
The US Institute of “Peace” [2]	0,047
50% of the budget of the DOS [2]	28,385
The EPA [2]	10,486
SS savings caused by a hike of the ret. age to 75 [2]	365
The HRSA of the DHHS [2]	7,512
The National Endowment for the Arts [2]	0,161
The Federal Trade Commission [2]	0,175
The war on drugs	77
UN budgetary contribution	0,44
Unneeded federal property	25
The USDOJ’s BATF [2]	1,163
The SA&MH program of the CDC [2]	3,541
The Food and Drug Administration [2]	2,508
Subsidies for Planned Parenthood clinics	0,3367
The International Trade Commission [2]	0,083
TV Marti	0,01
Pork barrel spending	29
DOE rescissions proposed by Tom Coburn [4]	1,3
DHS rescissions proposed by TC [5]	2,2
DOI rescissions proposed by TC [6]	0,6062
DOJ rescissions proposed by TC [7]	1,38
DOL rescissions proposed by TC [8]	0,6791
Saving money annually defrauded from the Medicaid program [9]	120
50% of Congress’s spending on itself [2] A 50% reduction of the DHS budget minus the rescissions proposed by TC The National Infrastructure Innovation Program	1,4875 19.3 4
Total spending reduction	1781,7275
The deficit created by Obama	1560
The surplus	212,4275

The total annual spending reduction would be $1844.6805 bn. The FY2011 budget deficit is $ 1560 bn, so the budget surplus would be $284.6805 bn. Such a surplus, if used exclusively to pay America’s debt, would make America debt-free after 43 years – by FY2053.

Please note that the abolition of the IRS would be the result of the FairTax Act, legislation that I support.

As a final note: significant revenue could be raised for the government even if SS program costs were not halved, by privatizing Amtrak, the US Postal Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, GM, GMAC, the CPB and other Government-Owned Enterprises, as well as federal lands, the 50,000 vacant homes owned by the Federal Government, and all unneeded federal property (collectively worth $83 billion). Additional revenue could be raised by permitting oil corporations to drill for oil and natural gas in the ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf and the Rocky Mountains. Certain savings would also be made if the federal government was computerized and adjusted to the information age (http://newt.org/tabid/102/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2835/Default.aspx). An additional spending reduction could be made by restoring the 1996 welfare roll reform legislation, by denying all federal, state, county and city benefits to illegal aliens and their children (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/the_fiscal_burden_of_educating.html), by abolishing all dysfunctional federal housing programs (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/04/64_government_housing_programs.html) and by reducing the limit of the period during which a person can receive welfare rolls from 5 years to 3 years (http://www.megwhitman.com/platform_sub_topic.php?type=spending&id=638&page=6). Significant savings could also be made by replacing only 50% of retiring federal workers,  streamlining the structure of the federal government, reducing the number of contractors, and halving the number of presidential appointees (as recommended by Paul Light – http://thecynicaleconomist.com/?p=14522). Government printing costs should be reduced by half (from $4 bn per year to $2 bn per year). All federal pregnancy prevention programs and child development programs should be consolidated (most of them should be abolished, however). The SCHIP program should be abolished. But entitlement programs are growing on autopilot, and they will eventually bury American children under a mountain of debt, unless their costs are significantly reduced; hence, such a cost reduction was included in this Blueprint.

The US government should eliminate expenditures #1, 2, 3,  6, 7, 13, 15, 22, 26, 31, 34, 35, and 47. (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/10/50-Examples-of-Government-Waste)

The US government should sell all of its unneeded property (whose value is $83.8 bn) and all of the 50,000 vacant homes that it owns. (http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ConstituentServices.PorkBusters; http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/10/50-Examples-of-Government-Waste).

All tax credits and all subsidies for ethanol (which cost $6 bn – $7 bn per year) should be abolished. (http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/27/corny-capitalism)

All figures in this article are for FY2010 unless otherwise noted.

The sources (denoted in square brackets):

[1] http://www.americansolutions.com/economy/2010/02/sampling-of-deficit-reduction-measures.php

[2] http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Funding

[4] http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=b18906fd-7c58-4dc0-b535-e3dcd5106758

[5] http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=73d3d2c0-0db1-4806-a686-491b8ca97f1a

[6] http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=7dbc4b34-4c68-4c73-b9dd-2a188b6060f9

[7] http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=e29a3472-3703-40d7-b8f9-b088ee145a5f

[8] http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=be60cc13-5107-42a5-9e07-f83f79b0bbf3

[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQWWuEo3H30 – 6:07

[10] http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/10/50-Examples-of-Government-Waste

*Note: The US government should abolish the entire Department of Commerce except the NIST and the US Census Bureau, which should be maintained.

Originally posted at TRC. (http://www.therealitycheck.org/?p=12105) This is the 3rd edition – an updated, amended and expanded version of the original Blueprint.

Why the Euro is collapsing

The woes of the Euro are not caused by the currency itself, but rather by the irresponsible, profligate, big government financial policies of most Eurozone states.

And as Charles has rightly remarked, the Eurozone is hardly the only monetary union suffering from such problems – so are the US, Britain and other statist monetary unions.

The root causes of the Euro’s downfall, as I remarked, are the irresponsible, profligate, big government financial policies of most Eurozone states.

These policies, in turn, are caused by the European economic model, i.e. the statist economic system prevalent in Europe. This economic system, often called the “social democracy” system, is a statist cradle-to-grave economic system whose subjects are punitively taxed, while simoultaneously spoon-fed by the state (which plays a dominant economic role) and coddled with statist policies.

Such schemes include early retirement schemes, “public work projects”, generous welfare rolls for lazy people, subsidies for unprofitable enterprises, generous entitlement programs, agricultural subsidies, and huge bureaucracies whose only raison d’etre is to employ people.

Such schemes are very costly, however, and they are financially unsustainable. The policy of maintaining these schemes is what caused the euro’s woes. The problem is that once you give an entitlement program to some people, they’ll fight you if you try to abolish it. Vide the Greeks, who have been rioting for a few months now because the Greek government announced that it would curtail the Greek socialist government programs.

The problem is that a strong currency can be maintained ONLY if the public sector spends its money wisely and doesn’t rack up huge debts. Disregarding this fact, many Eurozone countries, including Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France and Germany have been accumulating large debts over the past decade (and no pre-2007 Budget Minister has posted BIGGER budget deficits than Nicolas Sarkozy).

And now, faced with this financial disaster, European countries will have to choose one of the following options: either to allow their currencies to collapse, or to maintain credible currencies. The latter option, however, will require European countries to DRASTICALLY reduce the economic role of the state and DRASTICALLY increase the economic role of the private sector.

In France’s case, the best solution would be to implement bold reforms,including the abolition of special retirement schemes and the solution blueprint I published on 16/12/2009:

http://zbigniewmazurak.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/my-response-to-sarkozys-rfp/

Half-measures, tiny reforms and tiny spending reductions will not solve any problems.

The Wehner-Gerson article

Peter Wehner and Michael Gerson have written an interesting article for the Commentary magazine. That article is their recipe for a new Republican majority; that is, their advice on how to make the GOP the majority party again.

I don’t always agree with Wehner and Gerson, but Republicans should heed their advice that

“Any serious attempt to revivify the GOP might begin with a full-throated stand for a strong national defense.

The United States, after all, is engaged in two hot wars—in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Pakistan, the situation is fragile and, if things go badly, potentially catastrophic. North Korea is an already existing nuclear threat; Iran is rapidly becoming one. While Obama has acted impressively in some areas, especially in Afghanistan, his response to crisis has often been timid and tardy and nowhere more delinquent than during the recent spontaneous revolt of Iran’s citizens against the dictatorship of the mullahs.

Obama’s effective freeze of defense spending over the next five years is inconsistent with American global commitments. Republicans would be astute to offer as an alternative an increase in defense spending in the range of 4 percent real growth per year, including support for an ambitious missile-defense program to counter the rising ballistic threats from North Korea and Iran. Obama’s worldwide apology tours radiate a weakness that arouses hope among America’s enemies, dismay among America’s allies, and discomfiture among many American citizens. As for his trust in diplomacy and charm, they have, to say the least, shown themselves to be ineffectual in motivating despots to change their ways. Obama has already been defied, and he will be defied again, and how he responds will go a long way toward determining the safety of the country and the course of his presidency.”

Wehner and Gerson also warned Republicans of so-called “realist” foreign policies:

“

In response, some Republicans have been tempted to promote their own brand of retreat from global engagement out of the belief that, the cause of democratic internationalism having been severely damaged by the war in Iraq, the GOP should seize the mantle of foreign policy “realism.” Thankfully, the Republicans who nominated John McCain in 2008 did not succumb to this temptation, and it would be disastrous if the party were to yield to it in the future. A durable national consensus holds that American interests are served by the promotion of free trade and classical liberal ideas. With the spread of weapons of mass destruction, it has never been clearer that America and the world have the most to fear from dictatorship and radicalism, the most to gain from liberalization and reform.

A moral component to our foreign policy is, moreover, part of the American DNA. It would have been impossible to maintain the seemingly endless exertions of the Cold War without the American people’s instinctual concern for those held captive and their no less instinctual abhorrence of oppression. The same is true in the conflict with Islamist extremism and other current global challenges. Americans have an interest in liberty and human rights because they are Americans—and because America’s safety is served by the hope and health of others. Republicans can be forthright about the foreign-policy tradition that mixes toughness with generosity, the willingness to confront threats forcefully with the active promotion of development, health, and human rights. Since the midpoint of the last century, this has been the GOP’s watchword. Among younger Americans focused on global issues like genocide, poverty, women’s rights, religious liberty, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, it can resonate loudly.”

Wehner and Gerson also commented on the most controversial question of all American political issues:

“Then there is the key question of immigration. No national party can hope to succeed in the long run without broad support among immigrants and the children of immigrants—particularly, these days, Hispanics and Asian Americans. Immigrants, like other Americans, hold a variety of views on American immigration law and on how it has been applied. But uniformly they resent being made into debating foils. Republican leaders have a positive duty to confront careless rhetoric and to appeal consistently to new Americans, welcoming their overwhelmingly positive contributions to the American economy and American values. During the last presidential primary season, most Republican candidates, to their party’s cost, were no-shows at Hispanic forums.”

Wehner and Gerson are wrong about one issue, though: they claimed that “Republicans would be well advised here to borrow a page from David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith in their revival of the British Conservative party.” “Revival of the British Conservative Party”? That party is on its knees now! Polls indicate that if a parliamentary election was organized today, the BCP would fail to win even a small majority of seats in the House of Commons, and that the result of the election would be a parliament without a majority party, thus causing a LAB-LIB coalition, with either GB or Nick Clegg as Britain’s PM. So after the socialist UK government drove Britain into the ground, after a 12-year-tenure of the worst British government ever, Cameron cannot win back Downing Street.

The URL of the article: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-path-to-republican-revival-15212

The Obama Admin has ruled out an attack against Iran

The Bush Administration “kept the military option related to Iran on the table” and refused to rule out an attack against Iran. President Bush even once threatened to attack Iran to protect Israel.

Not so with President Obama, though. As an avowed pacifist, Obama -like his SECDEF, his USD(P) and his Secretary of State, believes that a policy of appeasement towards Iran, and the unilateral disarmament of the US (ordered by the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, Obama’s budget decisions and the START-3 Treaty) are the solutions to the Iranian nuclear program and that a bombing of Iran is not a solution. So his administration has explicitly ruled out any attack against Iran. Obama’s Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)), Michele Flournoy, said so.

“The US has ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program any time soon, hoping instead negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons, a top US defense department official said Wednesday.

“Military force is an option of last resort,” Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy said during a press briefing in Singapore. “It’s off the table in the near term.”"

The URL: http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=173602

According to the above source, Flournoy also said:

“Right now the focus is a combination of engagement and pressure in the form of sanctions.”

But then she said:

“We have not seen Iran engage productively in response.”

So neither a policy of  “engagement” (read: a policy of appeasement) nor “pressure in the form of sanctions” have encouraged Iran to behave responsibily (“engage productively in response”, using Flournoy’s words), yet the Obama administration continues to pursue these flawed policies.

A policy of “engagement” (which is nothing more than an euphemism for appeasement) is always doomed to fail. The West’s enemies can never be benevolently, diplomatically convinced to change their aggressive policies or to stop endangering the West. They will never do so. This policy didn’t work with the Soviet Union, it didn’t work with North Korea, and it has spectacularly failed with Iran.

Sanctions will not work, either, though they’re based on a better assumption. Sanctions are supposed to be penalties for countries which behave irresponsibly or endanger the world. Theoretically, this is a good proposition, but there are 2 problems with it:

1) To force rogue states to behave responsibly, or at least reconsider their policies, you need very harsh sanctions. Only the UNSC can impose UN sanctions on any country. Russia and China (both of whom are veto-wielding members of the UNSC) will NEVER permit harsh sanctions against Iran or North Korea because a) they believe that anything that’s bad for the US is good for them; b) they have vested interests in Iran, which is a crucial buyer of Russian weapons and a key supplier of oil and NG for China.

2) Rogue states that are already almost-totally isolated on the world scene (like Iran and NK) cannot be convinced to change their policies by sanctions. Trying to use sanctions to induce them to give up their weapons of mass murder is like trying to force a Benedictine monk to forfeit money and girls.

The only way to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program is the military solution. It won’t be easy, but it’s the only solution.

The lost SK ship was struck by NK torpedoes

As Korean investigators have proven, and as the Defense Minister of South Korea has stated to the South Korean parliament, the ROK Navy ship which sank last month was deliberately sunk by the North Koreans with torpedoes.

The UK Daily Telegraph says that:

“A South Korean warship was destroyed by an elite North Korean suicide squad of ‘human torpedoes’ on the express orders of the regime’s leader, Kim Jong-il, according to military intelligence reports.

The attack on the 1,220-ton Cheonan, which sank on March 26 with the loss of 46 of its 104 crew, was carried out in retaliation for a skirmish between warships of the two nations’ navies in November of last year, South Korea claims.

The South Korean government has refused to comment officially on the reports but Defence Minister Kim Tae Young told a parliamentary session that the military believed that the sinking was a deliberate act by North Korea.

Officials in military intelligence say they warned the government earlier this year that North Korea was preparing a suicide-squad submarine attack on a South Korean ship.

“Military intelligence made the report to the Blue House [the presidential office] and to the Defence Ministry immediately after the sinking of the Cheonan that it was clearly the work of North Korea’s military,” a military source said.

“North Korean submarines are all armed with heavy torpedoes with 200kg warheads,” the source said.”

The URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/7619087/South-Korean-ship-sunk-by-crack-squad-of-human-torpedoes.html

This fact and this statement by the SK Defense Minister have refuted the myths that America is not going to wage any new conventional wars, that America is not facing any conventional threats, that the conventional threats to the US are “nonexistent” or “diminishing”, that such threats have been “conjured up”, and that conventional weapons and conventional weapon programs are not needed.

The fact that this ship was sunk by the North Korean military, and the relevant statement by the SK Defense Minister, also utterly discredited the people who propagate the forementioned myths, including Carl Levin, John McCain, Lawrence Korb, Michael Gerson, Fareed Zakaria, Rick Moran, Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Ted Galen Carpenter. No intelligent person would ever take any of the above-mentioned people seriously, and if these guys don’t know that, they’re idiots.

Budget process reform

Many people have rightly complained that the US Federal Government needs not only to reduce its budget, but also to reform the budget process.

Any budget process reform scheme should be based on the following principles (which should be codified):

1) All civilian spending reductions and savings, including all savings by all civilian agencies (i.e. agencies other than the DOD) shall be devoted exclusively to deficit reduction and debt repayment – not to new spending projects.

2) All DOD savings must be reinvested at the DOD.

3) All earmarks must be publicly debated and subjected to a public vote.

4) Earmarks must not be added to legislation after it has been voted on by the Congress.

5) The Congress shall adopt a Balanced Budget Amendment and a Spending Limit Amendment.

6) All funding authorized for civilian federal agencies, but not spent during the designated period, must be cancelled.

7) All debt repayments by foreign countries shall be devoted exclusively to deficit reduction.

Defense: Neglected, ignored, and fought against – by Republicans

We all know that we cannot count on the Democrats to maintain America’s current defense, let alone strengthen it. Even the first glance at the unfavorable arms reduction treaty the Obama Administration has recently negotiated, its defense budgets or its Nuclear Posture Review (which says America won’t retaliate with nuclear weapons even if attacked with chemical or biological weapons by a foreign country) reveals this. It has been known for many decades that the Democratic Party is the party of a weak defense. Hundreds of Democratic politicians and an entire string of Democratic governments – from the Kennedy Administration to the Obama Administration – confirmed this.

What is surprising is that many Republicans also oppose a strong US military.

The easiest-to-point-out example is Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who, according to the 2010 CPAC straw poll, is the most popular potential GOP presidential candidate (even though he’ll be 77 in 2012). During the 2010 CPAC, he delivered an incoherent, unconservative speech directed not against liberalism, not against Barack Obama, but against a strong defense, which he derisively called ”the military-industrial complex” (this is the favorite straw man of liberals, by the way). Instead of booing him, the CPAC crowd loudly applauded his anti-defense jeer.

The results of the CPAC straw poll itself were disappointing. One of the questions asked, ”which statement comes the closest to your beliefs and ideology?”. Understandably, 58% chose the statement that spoke about reducing the size and the scope of the government. But the statement that prioritized defense and protecting America from its enemies – which was deliberately worded to suggest it was a Big Government statement to make it sound bad – received the votes of only 7% of participants. The statement that prioritized protecting unborn children and traditional marriage received 9%.

So for the participants of CPAC, dictating to American women what they are not allowed to do, and dictating to people whom they can or cannot marry, is more important than defense, which was relegated to the very last place on that list of issues.

A day before the 2010 CPAC, a group of ”conservative” leaders went to Mount Vernon and wrote the Mount Vernon Statement, a statement that reaffirmed every conservative principle… except the principle that a strong defense is necessary to protect America from her enemies. That one wasn’t mentioned at all.

Also troubling are some of 2010 GOP candidates for the Congress. Look at the campaign websites of Rob Portman (an Ohio candidate for the Senate), John Hoeven (ND), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Tom Campbell (CA), or Sue Lowden (NV). Neither defense nor the broader term „national security” is even listed on their website as a campaign issue, even though it is a Constitutional duty of the federal government. If elected to the Senate, these people might sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and will certainly be presented with defense budgets to vote on. How can they not even write one word about defense?

There are also reasons to be worried about incumbent Republican politicians. Running for a 5th consecutive term is Senator John McCain, who loudly praised and defended Obama’s defense cuts, including the decision to close the F-22 program and cut the airborne laser program. Because the F-22 program is closed, the US military is now reliant on a single, troubled, tri-service fighterplane program, the F-35, which is supposed to yield 2443 jets for the US military. Absurdly, this chief Republican advocate of a weak defense will become the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee if the GOP recaptures the Senate.

Another example is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who also praised Obama’s defense cuts.

No less troublesome is the Republican ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, who will become its chairman (for the third time) if the GOP retakes the Senate. Lugar is one of the chief backers of nuclear disarmament and misled the American people about the missile defense clause of the recently-negotiated START-3 treaty.

Among those who don’t appreciate the need for a strong defense is also young author Jonathan Krohn, who has been named the leader of the next generation of conservative Republicans. His definition of conservatism, and his book that extrapolates on the subject, doesn’t include or even mention defense at all, but it does include social conservatism.

Examples of Republican opponents of a strong defense abound. During the 1990s, the GOP-dominated Congress did not reverse or even stop Clinton’s defense cuts – it approved them. During the Bush era, the Bush OMB was eager to reduce the defense budget and Secretary Rumsfeld restrained aircraft modernization programs. But the current Republican politicians are the most worrisome ones. They will be the ones making the decisions on America’s defense, if the GOP recaptures the Congress, whether this year or during another election year.

Of course, there are several Republican advocates of a strong defense. Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Pence and Tim Pawlenty, for example. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with them on the rest of issues, it’s hard to argue that they want a weak defense, on the basis of what is known about their beliefs.

But they are ”standouts”, exceptions from a crowd of people who don’t really appreciate how important defense is and why it is needed. Defense is nowadays seldom heard of, unless the Obama Administration is announcing new defense cuts or other pacifist policies, and most Republicans don’t seem to care. Many Republican politicians don’t even bother to oppose these policies.

Thus, today’s GOP is totally different from the Republican Party of the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s or the early 2000s, when defense was one of the most important issues for Republicans, both candidates and incumbent officials and lawmakers, whether it was candidate Barry Goldwater, candidate/President Ronald Reagan, or candidate George W. Bush.

Today’s GOP doesn’t seem to care about the single most important issue on Earth, and usually, when it protests against Democrats’ policies, it protests mildly and doesn’t attack the fundamental principles upon which the Dems’ weak-defense policies are made.

Defense has very few friends and many enemies, some of whom are Republicans.

It is time to re-commit the GOP to a strong US military. If the Congress and the White House don’t get this issue right, no other political issue will matter.

Zbigniew Mazurak blogs at http://zbigniewmazurak.wordpress.com.

Originally posted at: http://www.therealitycheck.org/?p=13216