SHOOTING THE FOOT, PART 3

Continuing my little series on how the Des Moines Register editorial page manages to embrace contradictory principles only days apart (see here and here for parts 1 and 2), today the focus is again on government spending. One week ago, the Register complained about the cost of the war in Iraq:

The White House told Congress this week it would be requesting $60 billion to $70 billion to help cover the costs of Iraq. That's in addition to the $79 billion war appropriation approved earlier this year.

Getting those dollars means one or more of the following: Raise taxes, cut spending in other areas, drive up the deficit.

There will be both short- and long-term effects.

In the short term, the effect will almost certainly be to drive up the deficit. Congress will neither raise taxes nor cut spending at this point in the fiscal year.

But just two days ago, they praised Congress because

They voted to approve an amendment that saved funding for bike trails and environmental endeavors in the 2004 transportation appropriations bill. Amid all the money for paved roads is a slice of dollars for alternative transportation and beautification.

The vote restores $600 million in dedicated funding to the Transportation Enhancements program for 2004. Since this program was instituted 11 years ago, it has brought $170.5 million to Iowa. That was money for the Lincoln Walk Trail in Ogden, the Four Corners Park Trail in Carroll, the Fleur Drive beautification in Des Moines. The dollars have contributed to hundreds of other projects, large and small, all over the state.

It's hard to believe lawmakers even considered cutting money for trails and environmental endeavors. Fortunately, they came to their senses.

So, we can’t spend more on the War on Terrorism, but we can spend more on bike trails. I wonder, which one do you think is more essential to our future.

posted by David 8:55 AM

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WHILE I’M AT IT

Let’s take another look at that editorial from a week ago:

Long term, adding to the national debt will slow economic growth. It will mean inflation and higher interest rates as the government borrowing competes for capital with the private sector.

There is no evidence that debt leads to higher inflation or interest rates—that’s a liberal myth perpetuated to stymie tax cuts. We had high deficits in the 1980s, and robust economic growth.

Also longer term, it probably means less spending on the needs here in America. The billions of taxpayer dollars America spends in Iraq will not be spent in the United States. Lives will be affected when there's less money for schools, human services, health care, roads, bike trails, libraries and everything else the federal government helps finance.

I guess all the spending on health-care, schools, bike trails, gumball machines, origami figurines (insert pet cause here) doesn’t crowd out private capital. That’s, well, spending that boosts the economy! The other implication is that we don’t spend enough on those things as it is. Well, government consumption currently absorbs more than 19% of GDP. If almost one dollar in five isn’t enough to meet those needs, then maybe we need to look into how government is providing those needs.

Nah, we just need to spend more.

posted by David 8:53 AM

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SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

I was in Iowa City the other night. The kook brigade is still at it.

posted by David 8:43 AM

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TWO YEARS LATER, EASY TO FEEL DESPAIR

I was a little torn on what to write for the two-year anniversary of 9/11. Perhaps just reprint what I wrote last year, or something remembering the grief and shock. I’ve finally decided to say to hell with that, and instead engage in a little spine stiffening.

What finally sunk it was an article in today’s Daily Iowan, the college paper at the University of Iowa. There’s nothing particularly bad about the content of the article. What chapped my hide was the title “Groping for Meaning in 9/11’s Wake.” Why does anyone need to search about for “meaning”? The “meaning” of that awful day was pretty clear: There are bad people out there who will kill good people, and we are going to have to break our collective foot off in their collective asses to get them to stop. The meaning smacked us upside the head, but two years later we have to grope for it? Reading that headline made me think that I was back in the unserious, therapeutic decade called the 90s.

Alas, in the last year or so it has become increasingly clear that there are more than a few people in this country who are still unserious. And it is very easy to be despondent about it. If you read the editorial pages of papers like the New York Times and Des Moines Register about everyday, as I do, it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that America is in decline, that we’ve become soft and will lose this war. In fact, you don’t necessarily have to be daily readers of such tripe to feel despair; tuning into things like the Presidential (and I use that term loosely) debate on Tuesday would more than do the trick. It is because of such pikers that we now have to “grope for meaning.”

Such folks continue to inundate us with hyped-up concern over the dictates of the United Nations, alienating France and Germany, and the need for the international community to get involved in Iraq. That last one belies their true lack of gravitas. How will sending in the U.N. peacekeepers be an improvement over the U.S. soldiers that are already there? If the thugs in the Sunni triangle view U.S. soldiers as a threat, why would they view the blue helmets any differently? After all, won’t the U.N.’s objective be the same as ours, that of establishing a democracy? Given that, why would the thugs in the Sunni triangle attack our boys but give the peacekeepers a pass? The fact that they never think of such questions, let alone address them, shows how much trouble America could be in if it marches to their drums.

They also try to overwhelm us with myopic and disingenuous concerns like invading Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden, or Iran and North Korea pose greater threats. To see this as only a battle against al Qaeda would be like concluding that after the bombing of Pearl Harbor our only focus should be the Japanese. Like WWII, there is a broader focus than just those who attacked us. It is called radical Islam, and we must defeat all of its adherents and enablers. As for the threat posed by other countries, does anyone believe that the Times or Register would have been supportive of an invasion of Iran or North Korea had President Bush decided to go after those countries instead? For that matter, would they have been eager to topple Hussein if a photograph had surfaced of the Iraqi butcher and Osama shaking each others’ hands with shit-eating grins the size of Texas on their faces?

The fact is that many on the left—after a brief detour following 9/11—have reverted back to form. (Not to mention a small portion of those on the right.) They have gone back to their old, post-Vietnam way of thinking, that America isn’t a beacon of freedom and hope; rather, it is the bully in the world, and its power must be circumscribed by international organizations like the U.N. If that’s the thinking that guides our foreign policy in the years to come, then those who perished on 9/11, and the brave men and women who were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq will indeed have died in vain.

And these days it seems almost natural to come to that conclusion. With the media hyping every bit of bad news out of Iraq, with the editorial boards like those at the Times and Register screeching that Iraq is a failure and a quagmire barely six months after we invaded, and the Democratic candidates taking every opportunity to bash the Administration on foreign policy, one can’t help but see visions of the white flag being raised.

But before I get too depressed, I have to remind myself that it’s largely the whining of the angst-ridden, mamby-pamby upper West-Side crowd (and the upper West-Side wannabes at the Des Moines Register). It’s not the vast majority of America. Visiting Georgia and Colorado last week, I met no one who had the jitters about our presence in Iraq. No one complained about the Bush’s decision to invade. That America is out there, and glimpses of it pop up now and then, like the recent Gallup poll showing that 60% of Americans think the United Nations is doing a poor job. It’s just not the America that’s making much noise right now.

The despair I feel deflates very quickly when I remember that most Americans have to resolve to see this thing through, and that we have a President who has the courage of his convictions leading us. It is then that I know that Isalmofascism will someday go the way of the Berlin Wall. It is then that I know that 9/11 was not wasted.

posted by David 2:51 AM

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