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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (30773)	12/27/2008 11:02:51 AM
From: Jim S	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I sure hope nobody listens to this guy. Using the military as a reservoir for governmental control of the economy is a decidedly bad idea. To buy things,just for the sake of spending money, is really stupid. It would be better to fly over a city and throw out $100 bills. Feldstein's plan would encourage waste and present huge problems of storage and distribution. "Don't sharpen that pencil, soldier, get a new one!" "Don't fix that flat, use a new tire!" We have a professional military. The best way to ruin that ethos is to bring in a flood of marginally qualified, non-career minded 2-year recruits. We've tried this before, and it causes huge problems. To raise enlistment quotas means reducing enlistment standards. With less qualified people flooding in, training standards have to be changed, probably by shortening training courses and reducing the quality of training so 90% of new classes can pass the courses. If the plan is to flood the civilian job market with sub-qualified and undertrained applicants two years down the road, this is the way to do it. If you think the homeless/unemployed veteran problem is bad now, just see what happens when Feldstein's plan is enacted. It would be far more efficient, and much less harmful, to provide training money to businesses to allow them to provide the training their workforces need, and possibly even credits for new hires. A professional military is not the place for social or economic experimentation. I can't speak for Homeland Security or even your local police force, but I'd guess their opinions would be similar. I know I sure wouldn't want a cascade of new undertrained cops, firemen, or EMTs responding to an emergency at MY house.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (30773)	12/29/2008 12:16:19 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

If just having the government spend money on anything amounts to "an effective stimulus" than military spending would be such a stimulus, but I'm skeptical about the first part. I oppose any additional large new stimulus by government spending effort. To the extent that any type of stimulus might be useful, tax cuts are more likely to be useful. I'm even skeptical about them (not in general, but as a stimulus, using them to try to tune the economy as part of government policy), but at least they would allow people to spend the money on what they want to spend it on, rather than increasing the amount that government policy decides what is produced.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (30773)	12/29/2008 3:53:11 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Raising Afghans Above Terror — CIA Style [Andy McCarthy] From the Washington Post (for now ... By Sunday, I expect this story to be worked into a commercial, aired sometime during the first quarter of the 1 o'clock game): The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift. Four blue pills. Viagra. "Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam. The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills... corner.nationalreview.com