October 31, 2008
- OK, I knew Bush was against nation building, but these quotes are worth repeating: “Let us have an American foreign policy that reflects Amercian character. the modesty of truth strenght. The humility of real greatness.” and “I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say’ This is the way it’s got to be’ … I think one way for us to end up being viewed as ‘the ugly American’ is for us to go around the world saying, ‘We do it this way; so should you.’”
- In 2007 (I wasn’t paying attention to this issue then), the National Intelligence Estimate reported Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
- We have troops in 130 nations; 700 bases around the world, and our $623 billion military budget is the largest since World War II.
- Article 43 of the U.N. Charter did not authorize Harry S Truman’s “police action” in Korea.
- Ronald Reagan opposed registration for the draft.
- The National Endowment for the Arts received 121 million in taxpayer subsidies in 2006. Private sector contributions — which tend reward merit over grant writing ability — totaled $2.5 billion.
- Seventy percent of the welfare budget goes to paying for its bureaucracy.
- Personal income tax accounts for 40 percent of the Federal budget. To imagine what the Federal budget would look like with 40 percent less in revenue, you need to go all the way back to 1997.
- I sort of knew this, but it’s worth repeating: Every day, pay $1.4 billion in interest on the national debt.
- We face $50 trillion in looming entitlement payments.
- Right now, I can’t find the exact number, but earmarks (pork) account for less than 5 percent of the Federal budget (I’d heard the same thing recently from another source, but again, worth repeating).
- The first Congressional act against use and possession of marijuana was passed in 1937, and was passed in the face of opposition from the American Medical Association and on the testimony of one “scientist” who claimed to have injected 300 dogs with the active ingredients of canabis (only two showed any negative reaction) and he once claimed two puffs of smoke caused him to become a bat and fly around the room. His finds led to many “insanity” acquittals in criminal cases when the defendant claimed to have smoked a joint prior to commitment his crime.
- There was very little flux in the price of goods and services, the value of the dollar, in the U.S. until the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Inflation is largely, in the U.S., a 20th Century phenomena.
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