George W. Bust
This morning President Bush spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The Wall Street Journal set the scene.
Mr. Bush spoke to the boisterous crowd shortly after 7 a.m. EST. The ballroom erupted in cheers when someone shouted “Are there conservatives in the house?” When the president walked on stage, they clapped and chanted “Four more years! Four more years!”
Obviously the McCain campaign is going to have to run on the mantra of “four more years”, as there seems to be no variation with Bush’s view of the War in Iraq, lower taxes on the rich or eliminating regulation on business. Whether Republican’s will still be chanting “four more years” in the heat of August at their convention, when we may be in a full blown recession, is another matter. Last night at dinner, a friend from Texas said our President should be named George W. Bust. Only time will tell if that is the moniker hung on our departing resident of the White House.
Just curious, what are your views on these subjects? I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and it’s not hard to figure out your stance, but I’d just be curious as to precisely why you disagree. I guess I constantly hear the below arguments, which seem to make sense to me. I’ve never heard an argument against them that holds up, so I’m wondering if you could educate me on your side of thinking.
The War: At this point what would you do? Hind-site 20/20 and all that, do we just pull out and leave a country we screwed up to the wolves?
Taxing the Rich: Why should tax breaks be biased towards the lower income who only pay 3.3% of the total tax? The top .1% alone pays 17.4% in taxes, top 1% pay 37% and the lower-tier “wealthy” top 5% ($137,056+) pay 57.1%. Couldn’t you argue, even just focusing on the top 5%, that these are the small business owners that create the jobs?
Regulations on Business: Along with taxes, the more restrictions you would place on a business, again, would cut back on job growth and incentive for a business to even operate in the US. We already have a hard enough time keeping tech jobs here.
Thanks.
Psychon-The history of western powers trying to impose their will in Civil Wars is a tale of tragedy, extending back to the 40 year effort by the British in Afghanistan that ended in the 1890′s. The whole Al Queda “crusader” narrative is based around our military occupation of Islamic lands. As the great British documentary, “The Power of Nightmares” proves, Bin Laden and Zawahiri failed in Egypt, Sudan, and other Arab states to create their Islamic revolution. It was only when we invaded Iraq that their narrative took on the Arab street.
Taxes-If Warren Buffet says he pays a lower marginal tax rate than his secretary, you know somewthing is wrong. The top 1% controls 42% of the wealth in this country, why shouldn’t they pay 37% of the taxes?
Regulation-Whether at the Treasury, FDA or the FCC , the lax regulatory standards have led to the Sub prime crisis, lax regulation of new drugs and media consolidation. Outsourcing tech jobs to India is not about regulation, its just cheaper to hire over there.
Good response sir.
I totally admit that initially I was for the war and on that bandwagon, but the spin was mind numbing and I let emotion sway my judgement. We’ve now slept with the proverbial hooker… Do we pay a fortune to treat it with special tactical ointment or cut “IT” off? What of the “We created Al Queda during the cold war.” theory? Couldn’t we possibly fuel the fire even more so by repeating the same mistake leaving a very moldable, now young, country to the dogs?
Taxes: touché
Regulation: Makes sense.
Thanks for the response and keep going with the blog. I live in a very Red State and it’s refreshing to get a better look into alternative views to what I am constantly surrounded by. I’m independant, raised conservative in a conservative environment. Don’t worry I will be voting for Obama , but if Hilary wins I’ll write you in on the ballot.
My sense is that some of the devolution/ federalism notions of what Iraq should look like make sense. Joe Biden has consistently been smart on this and I think Iraq could prosper with a much less powerful central government.
> The War: At this point what would you do? Hind-site 20/20 and all that, do we just pull out and leave a country we screwed up to the wolves?
America is the wolves. You went in, raped a nation for recreation, and now you want to make it better? It’s not that you don’t want to, it’s that America’s nature makes it impossible for it to do anything but destroy.
Todd
Where are you? What is your nationality?
Christiane Amanpour is on CNN right now with the five former Secretaries of State- Colin Powell, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Henry Kissinger, and Madeleine Albright- and every one of them said, in no uncertain terms, the first thing the new president is going to have to do is restore the world’s confidence in America.
George W Bust is the biggest disaster ever to hit the United States.