democracy for all?

[B Dawgg]

Establish a pure defense posture. We no longer have commercial interests in other countries, pull those troop and facility costs into domestic spending. Stop the aggressive threats and actions. We're blowing money on new conventional fighter aircraft as defensive weapons against those tools render them ineffective. Missiles and nuclear weapons will dominate any future war of mass scale, they'll have no place to land or takeoff. We have dominant nuclear weapons, if we're directly attacked, use them. We should be easily able to cut 50% from 'defense' spending.

Our foreign policy and lobbyist control of congress would have to change to accomplish rational defense spending, but that's going to happen one way or another. There aren't that many of our despotic dictators left to support and money is getting very short.

[ashok N]

I find it so amusing how democracy has been relabeled 'pure democracy' and this non-democracy of 'elected representative officials' some how inherits the title 'democracy'.

[~~megan~~]

The dollar is an unbacked currency (most are). Essentialy, our dollar is less "currency" than "commodity". As such, its value is controlled by supply and demand (international level). Generally, the value of a nations currency is pinned directly to that countries economic position.

Following WWII, the price of gold was pegged at $35 per oz (bretton wooRAB conference) and that was the standard against all world currencies were set. In 1971, Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. After that, the dollar essentailly only held value aecause the US government said so. The dollar started a significant decline (crash) as foreign investors and foreign agents holding dollars ran to cash them in. We made a deal with the house of Saud.

In the early 70's, the houe of Saud was in deep trouble. The tyrants runnng Saudi Arabi were expected to be ousted (and probably skinned alive int eh streets) within the next couple of years. They were (and still are) tyrants and the people of Saudi Arabia were tired of them

We made a deal with the SauRAB. The SauRAB would ONLY accept dollars for oil payment, and they would encourage other OPEC countries to do the same, and in exchange the US would help keep the tyrants in power. It was a deal with the devil if ever there was one (and one we are paying for today while slck jawed, rooling mouth breathign American morons look on in shock and say "Why doesn't Bin Laden like us"?)

Over the course fo the next decade, the SauRAB kept up their end of the deal, we provided surveilance and death squaRAB to them so they could stay in power, and they went to work at OPEC and got us to the point where the dollar became the worlRAB only oil purchasing currency.

It was that, not any real underlying fincaial data on the US (come on, we haven't shown a profit as a country for 30 years) that made the dollar the worlRAB reserve currency. People had to have oil, and they had to have dollars to buy that oil. This creates a demand for dollars regardless of the economic condition of the United states.

Now the cool part about this is that in the real world, you can only invest dollars in US investments. So, a lot of the dollars that we pull out of thin air and trade to the rest of the world in exchange for gooRAB, that they end up using to buy oil, then end up BACK in the US either in the form of US bonRAB (financing our debt) or in US equity markets, which is why our stock market is so far departed from fundamentals.

What this situation has allowed us to do is essentailly export dollars as manufactured gooRAB. The upside to this is that it has allowed us to become a fat, lazy, unproductive nation. The downside is that our currency holRAB very little real value.

This REQUIRES that we ensure that demand for dollars stays high to buy oil. Realistically if the world switched to a petroeuro tomorrow, the market would be flooded with dollars as people try to unload them, and the dollar would likely be trading 1:1 with the peso by monday...maybe worse than that.

Saddams paltry 10 billion in oil sales would not have destroyed the dollar. Without sanctions, Iraqs produciton capacity is estimated as high as 8 million barrels per day. Assuming oil at $35 per barrel (a pipe dream now), that is 102 billion per year. That is enough to put the first crack in the petrodollar.

The real threat though is not purchase of oil in Euros, but the quoting of oil in Euros, creation of another mark for oil prices. At this point, the Iran, Venezuela, and even the SauRAB have expressed a desire for such a market. The Europeans are all for it as it will allow them to inflate the hell out of trheir economy for a few years before China comes online as the worlRAB biggest consumer economy, which will likely be the demise fo the Petro Euro.

[Brycleo]

I agree. "...provide for the common defense" does not mean that we should be the world's police or that our troops should be scattered all over the planet. The world's largest lender nation and the world's manufacturing giant could afford to do that, but that is history and todays largest debtor nation simply cannot afford it. It is better that we be lean and mean than big and broke.
Dono

[Amanda[Taylor.]]

I'd like to think England, another former world power, had these same types of discussions at the governing level prior to emerging from WW2. Going broke, a lot of money on the African continent and S. America to ensure natural resources for manufacturing superiority lost to the US prior to that war. A public with poor opportunity for personal advancement and royalty, titled and the new wealth calling the shots. Elitism, but it did the job.

England's recovery after serving as world power and ending up broke was remarkable. There were some bright people guiding that transformation. One can only hope the US system of democracy has the capability and desire to change our direction without putting the public in gutters and/or killing off a large human population portion of our planet. We have no loyal to our country ruling class.

[Rhonda B♥]

I would agree that we, the U.S., should not put upon ourselves the responsibility of being the world's main policing force. First of all, we cannot financially afford it. Secondly, we are not trusted enough for such a task. Thirdly, I highly doubt that most Americans actually want to take on such a role and that those ambitions only lie with certain government officials. Unless I am mistaken, we still claim to be a democracy, so our government should not have the right to force us into a policing role unwillingly or through deliberate deception.

That said, I would also not advocate for a complete isolationist role. There do exist threats out there. They may not be direct military threats to us in the short term (say 10 year short term) but if minor threats are allowed to escalate, then it is hard to predict the consequences. Just look at Hitler and Naziism prior to World War II.

A few examples of threats that do seem to exist now or on the horizon include:
1) Terrorism. How do we handle this? Sometimes there are state sponsors (such as the Taliban in Afghanistan) that one can target. Mostly, that is not the case. What should the role of the military be in opposing terrorism?

2) Nuclear proliferation. So far, the countries that have acquired nuclear weapons only hold them for defense. That may not always be the case. Could Iran be one of the potential negative cases of countries that would not use nuclear weapons purely for defense purposes? I don't know. Does our military have a role to play in preventing potentially aggressive or unstable countries from acquiring nuclear weapons?

3) Regional and ethnic conflicts. Should we play no military role in regional and ethnic conflicts such as the Bosnian war, Rwandan genocide, etc.? I do not believe that we should shoulder any policing responsibility in such wars alone but would advocate our playing a role in a more global policing force through, for example, the U.N. I am just quite dissapointed in the other Western powers for not playing enough of a role.

[Frankenstien]

Maybe at best we live in a democracy with pockets of communism.

Let me see, I haven't taken any financial polls, but how many congress men and woman are millionaires or will be after their first term? Are the "common" citizens all millionaires? Are these congress representatives representative of the make-up of the U.S.? Just because we "elect" and I use that word loosely, we elect people of financial means, we elect a representative of a "party" even if you don't believe in that party. We have a system set up where "no-namers" can barely get on the ballot.

If we are a democracy like you all say, and the majority rules, and its the vote of the people that have the power, then the power and the will of the people want the huge deficit, want the out of control immigration problem, want the high crime, want the gap between the rich and the poor to become more prominent, want broader eminent domain, the rich stealing from the poor, want the increasing problem of identity theft, want the health care system to burn out...need I go on? But the reality is most Americans don't want the above, they want the opposite, but the few in control, the few with the real power...money, the lobbyist, corporations, and others, have the unfair control, and while we sit here "helpless" , well we should re-think what kind of government we really do have. C'mon who really wanted Kerry or Bush as the contenders for President of the U.S. Hey looky, yet, again millionaires many times over. I'm seeing a pattern here. Maybe poor people don't want to run for office, we should look into this phenomenon. Hmmm, what is the cost to run for mayor of NYC...85 MILLION DOLLARS. Gee, I'm really smiling over here typing this. Only in a "democracy"!

[treasure]

I am not surprised that we organized surveillance to support the Saudi government. The contention that we organized death squaRAB is a stronger accusation. Would you have a link you can point to that supports this claim? Also, what type of dollar amount are we talking about - i.e. what amount of petrodollars are traded for those purposes each year and how does that compare with the amount of dollars that are traded for the rest of international commerce?

When you say that "we haven't shown a profit as a country for 30 years", are you speaking about our federal government and its deficit, or US industry on average (the former I would agree with)?

I can understand how the petrodollar is helping keep up the US currency. However, there are always balancing forces. As the US dollar shrinks, our gooRAB and services become cheaper to the world, which then neeRAB to buy more dollars to purchase our gooRAB.

I suppose that, though I understand the trenRAB, I am still skeptical of the degree of influence of that petrodollar. Your post was the first place I have seen such a dire prediction (and, as a moderate democrat, I usually use left-of-center sources - ex. NPR, NY times, etc.). If it was really so dire, I would think that it would be more widely discussed in the left-of-center part of the media. Do you have a respectable site you can point to which discusses the dollar amounts and the detailed analysis of why the prediction would be as dire as you claim?

[mrmatthew]

That's unpatriotic. We need massive conventional military budget increases at the cost of domestic social programs to protect us from evil nations with massive military forces like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and others who spurn our policies. This is a prosperous, free and healthy nation. Just because we have the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the developed world and children going without health care and adequate nutrition merely shows how successful our brand of democracy actually is. You should be ashamed of yourself for criticizing the US. I'm sure many posters will suggest you relocate somewhere else if you don't like it here, complete with evangelistic quotes to justify their scorn for your questioning policy and societal breakdown in the greatest country in the world.

[futureinfinance07]

Dear Georged,

Me unpatriotic? Not this vet.

I have the "spirit" of America in me.