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Uncle Roany

The following is an editorial comment

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 06/28/2010 - 15:56

 

Chad Selweski, the local columnist for The Macomb Daily, published an opinion piece in Sunday's edition of that newspaper the beginning of which follows below.

The point of the article being that issues having to do with the deficit are extraordinarily difficult, and the real problem with Tea Party types being that they want to enjoy the services provided by government, they just don't want to pay for them.

Click anywhere below to read the entire article.

 

I wonder how our local Tea Party activists spent their Saturday afternoon.

How many took advantage of yesterday’s national forum, a teleconference held in 19 cities (including Detroit) and for thousands of individuals online, to seek solutions to the nation’s bulging budget deficit?

Organized by a nonpartisan group, AmericaSpeaks, the unprecedented event provided a sobering view of our country’s $13 trillion debt and the limited options facing Congress if it tries to tackle the problem.

 

The op-ed ends as follows:

 

Much of this entire fiscal responsibility issue centers on arithmetic, not politics.

 

The following is my reply.

 

To begin with .....

I'm not a member of any Tea Party affiliate.

I do like them and will support them.

I belong to no organized political party, I'm a Libertarian ..... probably.

Having said that.

Here are some ideas which if applied would probably enable principal payments on the deficit in year 1.

Not necessarily in this order.

 

1.  Remove all American troops and military bases from foreign soil, excepting those troops stationed within embassies.

Leave NATO, abandon Okinawa, and allow Europe, Japan, The House of Saud etc. to defend themselves.

American military personnel are presently posted on some 760 military sites within 63 countries.

I haven't checked it today, but most years our military budget has exceeded that of the rest of the world combined.

Europe is cutting military spending in response to their deficits because we defend them.

Europe, Japan and the rest of the world needs to defend itself.

Their defense ain't our job.

We need to maintain fearsome defensive military power.

We do not need offensive military weaponry such as carrier groups (they are nothing more than big assed targets anyway), long range bombers, etc.

Scrap half of them out.

We do not need to be maintaining military bases on foreign soil, anywhere.

And we damn sure don't need to be defending foreign despots while allowing them to abuse their own people.

Ya listening Faisel?

As an aside.

While you're at it, reduce our payment to the United Nations to a pro-rata share.

Those guys are hopelessly corrupt and largely a waste of skin.

 

2.  Raise the retirement age to 67 and 71.

From 1950 to 2005, life expectancy for an American male has increased from 65.47 to 75.2 years while the median retirement age has decreased from 66.9 years to 61.7 years.

At it's inception there were 41.9 workers per Social Security beneficiary, we are now pushing toward 3 workers per beneficiary.

As you would expect, we now have over 50 million beneficiaries, 10 million of which are collecting Social Security benefits for disabilities.

While we're on the subject, reviewing every last disability claimant seems prudent.

 

3.  Rather than paying 100% of medical costs for medicare and medicaid recipients and attempting to fix costs by legislation, provide for the federal government to reimburse 67% of all health care costs for those eligible for medicare and medicaid benefits.

Prudence will reign by virtue of people now being responsible for a third of their own medical expenses.

They can insure or not, negotiate or not, get care or not, but the fact that a third of the cost is skin (so to speak) will save a ton of money and probably improve care.

If you're flat broke, charities can and will pick up the slack.

Hell, you might be able to provide 30% to maybe 50% coverage for everybody else under that kind of an arrangement and still come out ahead.

And while we're on the subject.

 

4. Loser pays.

As a sop to my many and dear attorney friends, limiting liability is nonsense, but nuisances gotta pay.

 

5. Deduct the first $20,000 of income for every individual and corporate taxpayer, and apply a flat 20% tax on every dime of income thereafter, from every source, cash as well as the cash value of benefits.

End all payroll taxes, they're going into the general fund anyway.

Remove all deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions (Americans give because Americans give, the deduction is gravy ... lose it), IRA's, dependants, state and local taxes, depreciation, depletion ..... and every other damn thing.

 

Bigger incomes pay higher taxes.

Identical incomes pay identical taxes.

Account across the board, Cash in, Cash out.

While you're at it require public companies to account to shareholders exactly as they account to the IRS.

Businesses acquiring buildings and capital equipment can write purchases off in the year acquired (the economy will boom), that's cash out.  If buildings and equipment are sold or scrapped later on, that's cash in.  

Removing mortgage interest as a deductible item will cause huge problems in such a debt infested environment, and as such would probably have to be phased, do it as ruthlessly as possible.

In the interest of financing growth, you probably want interest to be a deductible item for business adventures, but not against personal income, you want to prohibit the LLC from buying the homestead, or at least deducting the mortgage interest.

Dividends should be a deduction at the corporate level (cash out) and income to the recipient (cash in) at the ordinary rate. 

Income from federal debt should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

Capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

 

6.  Close the Commerce Department, the Department of Education, and HUD, as well as the Department of Homeland Security (it's a joke).

Somebody has been stealing from HUD my entire adult life.

End it.

 

7.  Sell Fanny, Freddie, Ginnie Mae and whatever acronym handles student loans.

Never guarantee or imply a guarantee of anything or anybody, to anybody, ever again.

 

8.  Legalize it!  Then tax it.

 

9.  Tax foreign oil at the border ... big time.

Develop gasified coal (it worked for Hitler, it'll work for us), along with nuclear, wind, solar, etc.

 

10.  Invest a little money and finish the fence.

Invest a little more to find and deport every last illegal residing in this country.

While you're at it fine employers of illegals, while significantly reducing unemployment benefits.

Think it through.

Jobs will come open, wages will probably increase with subsequent increases in tax revenues and reductions in federal expenses.

That Compton might have to drive out to the fields and pick a little lettuce is a also good thing.

 

You may choose to disagree with individual items, but that there be one helluva start.

Do the arithmetic!!!

People should listen to their Uncle Roany ... I got answers.

 

Declarations of War

Submitted by Roanman on Thu, 06/10/2010 - 15:00

 

Sometimes, I deliberately forget to take my medicine before I go to bed, knowing full well that I will come wide awake between 3:05 and 3:15 AM

Back in the day, I used to wake up making deals, deal making being one of the things I do for a living.

Now days, I usually wake up free of a thought.

I like it.

To my way of thinking, my head empty of noise is a good thing.

So having failed to take my medication last night I came wide awake at precisely 3:12 AM as expected.

Only this time, I was thinking about War.

War with Iran feels inevitable to me.

Paranoid Roany is pretty damn sure that "The Powers That Be" are goading Israel into a war with Iran that's gonna blow up into an ungodly horror in an effort to change the subject away from the absolutely criminal job they've done on our economy.

Evil Roany is pretty sure there's a mess of those Iranian assholes that need killing anyway.

Good Roany on the other hand ........ is uhhhmm ........ well ........ Good Roany ........ you know ...... is pretty much in agreement with Evil Roany on this one.

Which brings me to my point.

In the past, if we were mad at somebody, we'd declare war on the whole damn country.

We declared war on Germany (twice), Japan, I'm pretty sure we declared war on Italy.

Korea was a little different.

That was a "Police Action".

It was authorized by the United Nations Security Council.

Basically, everybody was still sick of war after two "World Wars" so ......... they called it something different.

Same basic theory as "Liberal" and "Progressive".

Vietnam was also different in that it was authorized by "The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" which was not a formal declaration of war, but rather provided then President Lindon Johnson with the authority to do whatever was necessary including the use of military force to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty (in this case South Vietnam) without a formal declaration of war.

Close enough for government work.

The "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678" authorized "The Gulf War".

The "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists" got us started in Afghanistan.

Congress authorized the present war in Iraq with the "Iraq War Resolution (formally the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002)".

Ok, so here's my thought.

I don't want to have a war with Iran.

Sure, there's a bunch of guys over there I'd like see dead, and would even cheerfully chip in toward their demise.

But I kind of like a lot of the Iranian people.

I'm on their side, I don't want to hurt em.

Hell, I think a lot of them are heroes.

So, instead of naming the damn thing something that's gonna drag a lot of people that I like into a mess they don't need, like "The resolution to get nuclear weapons the hell out of Iran".

Why not just declare war on the assholes?

Leave the Iranian people out of it.

So, if it's me, I'm naming it "The resolution to kill deader'n Hell; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mullah Ali Khamenei, the entire Iranian Parliament, the couple hundred pricks still around who attacked our embassy, and anyone else dumb enough to want to attempt to defend the above named assholes.  After which we'll be as gone as Keyser Soze and wishing the rest of you (and your children) long, healthy and happy lives."

I know it's long, but it is beautiful in it's precision.

Here's where the beauty resides.

Let's just for fun pretend we're Iranian citizens.  And the word gets out that The United States of America has just declared war on us.

Ahmadinejad is all over the TV about how we must defend our country against the American invaders.  This is scary stuff, and because we're scared, we're getting real damn mad.  Our hearts are in our throats as we prepare to defend our families, our wives, our children, our selves, our country.

Then the word gets out.

The Americans aren't coming after us, they're coming after that dickhead Ahmadinejad.

Aahhhhhhh!!!!

This changes everything.

Now, instead of being scared and madder'n Hell, we're starting to channel Tonto,

"What do you mean we, white man?"

Now, instead of oiling up the AK-47 and running off to some damn barricade to fight, we're oiling up the AK-47 but staying home, just in case one of the assholes decides they want to hide under our bed.

I like to think that (if I thought I could get away with it), I'd pop a cap or two in one of the bastard's asses myself, if only to save a little time.

People should listen to their Uncle Roany.

I got answers.

 

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