Idkal

Romesh Ratnesar takes to the pages of TIME to ask, in apparent seriousness, “Is It Time to Invade Burma?”

The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma’s infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.

So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. U.N. food shipments have been seized. U.S. naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come.

[…]

That’s why it’s time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — “I can’t imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday — but it’s not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government’s consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.

Let me just go on the record: Hell no, it’s not time to invade Burma. Are you friggin’ kidding me?

Frankly, I don’t care what the junta in Burma wants. The international community doesn’t recognize them as legitimate. If the people who do these things for a living decide that ignoring the junta and dropping relief supplies will do more good than harm, I don’t have any problems with it.

But coercive humanitarian intervention? No, thanks.

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Popularity: 88% [?]

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues for abolishing the minimum voting age and letting kids vote “when they decide they want the vote.” Matt Yglesias seconds the emotion.

Gobry’s argument is long and largely defies excerpting. It boils down to:

• Setting maturity at 18 is arbitrary.

• Kids will grow up and face the consequences of current policy decisions, so should have some say over them.

• It would diminish the ability of the elderly to succeed in rent seeking behavior.

• Any argument that justifies denying the vote to children could be applied to some class of people that is now allowed to vote.

These things are all true. But, really, this argument just illustrates reductio ad absurdum.

We have a representative democracy and believe that those who will have to pay for and abide by government policies should elect those who make said policies. We also believe that those who are voting should be educated, have a stake in society, and be mentally competent to make decisions.

These goals are, however, not fully mutually achievable.

We don’t want people who are seriously insane or otherwise truly incapable of understanding what they are doing to vote even though they are nonetheless subject to the laws of society; then again, we also limit their criminal liability. As a practical matter, though, there are few enough of these people that we can decide on a case-by-case basis.

Similarly, it would be absurd to allow infants to vote. They obviously can’t communicate their ideas in a manner comprehensible to us and they have limited ability to process information. How about a 5-year-old? They can walk and talk. But so few of them have even the slightest understanding of the workaday world that it would be silly to give them the vote. At best, they’d just reinforce their parents’ choice. And, as with mentally incompetent adults, they have far less culpability under our law. They can’t sign contracts and are seldom held accountable by the state for their actions.

But, of course, we can find individual 8-year-olds who are smarter and more mature than some 18-year-olds. And, certainly, nothing magically transforms a person who is 17 years, 364 days old into a responsible human being the next day.

So, 18 is arbitrary, right? Well, no. It’s an age where we expect most people to have the requisite maturity to be responsible enough to make certain decisions. They can sign contracts and be held accountable for them. They can join the military. They can get full-time jobs. The burden is on them to demonstrate that they’re not mentally competent to be responsible for violation of the criminal code.

Could we maybe lower the age to 16? Or 15? Maybe. Certainly, I was very interested in politics and had decided preferences that I could articulate as a 14-year-old. But, frankly, most people at that age aren’t paying attention. And, while that’s true of many adults, few 15-year-olds are paying taxes or otherwise contributing to society.

The last consideration, incidentally, is something that no one has mentioned in the comment sections of Gobry’s or Yglesias’ posts, despite some pretty interesting discussions taking place there. One of the fundamental ideas of our Republic is that the right to participate in government flows from the duty to fund it. “No taxation without representation” was one of the rallying cries of our war for independence. The two were always thought to be linked.

Indeed, suffrage was once restricted to landholders on the basis that only those who were paying for government had any right to have a say about it. We ultimately democratized, coming to see that disenfranchising the poor was wrong since they faced many of the burdens of citizenship, including military service. (And the passage of the income tax rendered the issue moot, regardless.) Eventually, attainment of majority was deemed enough to satisfy the “stake in society” principle. We even lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 because we came to believe that forcing people to go to war at 18 but not allowing them to have a say over whether we sent them was wrong. (Although, oddly, we’ve since decided that we can withhold their right to drink alcoholic beverages or smoke cigarettes.)

If rights and responsibility are linked, then the voting age must also be the age of accountability. If you’re mature enough to vote, you’re mature enough to be liable for you conduct. Consideration of lowering the voting age should be made with that in mind.

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Popularity: 86% [?]

The latest report issued by the Medicare Trustees is not good.

The HI annual cost rate is projected to increase from 3.11 percent of taxable payroll in 2007 to 11.40 percent in 2082—8.02 percent of taxable payroll more than the projected income rate for 2082. Expressed in relation to the projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP), HI cost is estimated to rise from the current level of 1.5 percent of GDP to 4.8 percent in 2082.

[…]

The financial outlook for the Medicare program continues to raise serious concerns, and a “Medicare funding warning” is triggered again by the findings of this report. Total Medicare expenditures were $432 billion in 2007 and are expected to increase in future years at a faster pace than either workers’ earnings or the economy overall. As a percentage of GDP, expenditures are projected to increase from 3.2 percent in 2007 to 10.8 percent by 2082 (based on our intermediate set of assumptions). Growth of this magnitude, if realized, would substantially increase the strain on the nation’s workers, Medicare beneficiaries, and the Federal Budget.

[…]

HI tax income and other dedicated revenues are expected to fall short of HI expenditures in 2008 and all future years. The HI trust fund does not meet our short-range test of financial adequacy, and fund assets are projected to be exhausted in 2019.

So, in 11 years the Medicare Fund assets will be exhausted. And yet the solution to this problem is to expand government programs for health care and as a result increase demand for health care resources…which will some how work some sort of magic and make everything cheaper.

In the long range, projected expenditures and scheduled tax income are substantially out of balance, and the trust fund does not meet our test of long-range close actuarial balance. Currently, this imbalance is relatively small, with dedicated revenues estimated to cover 94 percent of costs in 2008, but it will grow rapidly in the absence of changes to current law: taxes would cover 78 percent of estimated costs in 2019, and only 30 percent at the end of the long-range period. Closing deficits of this magnitude will require very substantial increases in tax revenues and/or reductions in expenditures.

In other words, the party is about over and either taxes have to go up, expenditures have to be curtailed or both. The idea that we can have more health care (i.e. universal coverage at current levels of care)¹ and lower costs is simply not an option. Anybody who says otherwise is either a liar or an idiot.

As noted previously, over the full 75-year period, the fund has a projected present value unfunded obligation of $12.4 trillion. This unfunded obligation indicates that if $12.4 trillion were added to the trust fund at the beginning of 2008, the program could meet the projected cost of current-law expenditures over the next 75 years.

Oh no problem there, our current GDP is….$14.185 trillion, we’ll simply move over an entire years worth of GDP to Medicare and there we go problem solved.
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¹I imagine some might not quite understand this point, I’m saying that sure we can have universal care, but that that care will have to decrease in quality if you are not to spend more money. You can’t get better care at a cheaper cost.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Sure, sure, sure, let’s all give the damn gummint some extra money by raising taxes on oil corporations. Sounds all great and nifty, right? Hillary Clinton says it has to be done!

Just who the hell do these people thing end up paying those taxes, anyways?

Oil companies, just like any other companies, have an obligation to one group, and one group only: Their shareholders. And that obligation is to make a profit. Period. Everything that a business does, from research to employing people to producing a product is simply actions directed at meeting that one obligation.

So, the gummint comes up and says “Even though we make more money off a gallon of gas than you do, you’re STILL making too much money, so we’re gonna tax you more!” And the gummint promptly slaps Oil Company X with a billion dollar tax bill. Well, the company has to pay it, because otherwise they’ll be out of business and unable to fulfill their obligation, right? But now the company is in a hole. They’re out a billion dollars. They can’t grow money on a tree. They can’t get the magic money fairies to give them more. So how can they raise a billion dollars?

By selling their product at a higher price, that’s how. Which means that a gallon of gas, currently at $3.50, will now sell for $4.00.

If the Federal Government really wanted to drop the price of gas, it would eliminate the many taxes that have been added on to it. Federal. State. Local. When I lived in Seattle, and gas was around $1.50 a gallon, the state of Washington got $0.38 out of every dollar of gasoline sold.

That’s a 38% tax rate, folks. The oil companies might make anywhere from 8% to 20% profit, depending on conditions and supply, but the Federal Government was taking 38% of every dollar!

But according to people like Hillary Clinton, that’s too much. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Ignorant bint.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I have to admit, that with being in school at Ft. Jackson, not having much internet access (had to share four computers with over 100 students) and basically being busy as hell, I haven’t had much time to check the news as of late. So when I sit down yesterday, plug in to the net and catch up on what I’ve missed, I’m a bit overwhelmed. But one thing sure sticks out -

Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are so completely unfit to be President that it scares me. It scares me that they are the potential nominee for one half of the political side of this country.

What kind of special moron thinks there’s 57 states in the Union? Hell, we can go over his “I’d meet with Iran! No, wait, no I wouldn’t, and I never said that!” moment as well. The man is a hack, and idiot, and a liar. He espouses a political philosophy that has killed more people in the 20th century than any war the US has been involved in. And he’s in the running to become our next president.

Hillary Clinton wants to punish “Big Oil” for making money. Obviously she’s never taken a single economics class, nor has she looked at where the money from a gallon of gas goes. Not to mention that the ONLY reason she’s even in politics is because she rode the coattails of her husband for years. And she’s crazy as a shithouse rat.

The political platforms of both these people can only be described as “UnAmerican”. Anti-gun? Yep. Anti-capitalism? Yep. Anti-free trade? Yep. More State control over everything? Yep.

And one of these people is going to be the nominee for half the country. As much as I hate John McCain, compared to Clinton and Obama he comes out looking like a saint. I swear, this country has a gun in it’s hand, but the gun isn’t pointed at anyone else. It’s pressed firmly against our own head, and our finger is on the trigger. At this point, the only good thing I can say about the election is that when it rolls around, I should be back in the States where I might be able to actually DO something about the impending doom.

Blah. I have to head to work. I’ll see you all later today.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Now, call your mother!

Popularity: 8% [?]

I made it. I graduated Friday, traveled yesterday and I’m finally back in my own house for the first time in six weeks.

And it looks like I have a lot of catching up to do. Amazing what happens when you’re gone, eh?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Or… how Mario demonstrates that Stephen King is an ass…

Popularity: 6% [?]

Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters reports : Writer Stephen King: If You Can’t Read, You’ll End Up in the Army or Iraq

Remember shortly before Election Day 2006 when Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) suggested that if you don’t get a good education, “you get stuck in Iraq” (video available here)?

Well, last month, famed horror author Stephen King was speaking in front of a group of high school students at the Library of Congress, and he virtually made the exact same statement.

Yeah… we remember
The fact is that the average serviceman, and service woman, is above average.
While the average LibRule (D)emocrat hates free speech…

Horror Author Tells Fans to Email NB, Shuts Down Discussion of Anti-military Remarks

The saga of horror novelist Stephen King’s disgraceful comments about America’s military took an interesting turn Monday when shortly after instructing visitors to his website to send me a message stating “Hi, Noel—Stephen King says to shut up and I agree,” his own message boards were shut down.

If you buy Stephen King’s paper-backs used, he doesn’t get any money… just sayin’
Cross Posted at DANEgerus

Popularity: 6% [?]

VIDEO– Edinboro Peace Thugs Boot & Pummel Military Wife!!

The video shows that every physical action was initiated by the peace thugs.
Every action that escalated the conflict was started by the peace thugs.
They were out of control and unrestrained in their actions.
Every physical action taken by the veteran and his family was in self defense or in seeking to stop the violence.

Carrie Swartout suffered a concussion from the kick to the head.

So… why weren’t they arrested and charged?

Popularity: 6% [?]