dog-gone-right.com Blog

Middle East and Domestic Policies

ATTACHED COLUMN BY JAMES BAYNE

Some six months ago I wrote a column asking the question “Why Afghanistan?” and have been following events there since that time. In those ensuing months we have seen an increase (almost double) in our troop commitment there and have witnessed new highs in casualties in two successive months. It is also now being reported that Secretary of Defense Gates “may be open to troop increases” in Afghanistan. This represents a shift in policy from positions stated earlier and reminds me of the actions of an earlier Secretary of Defense and an earlier administration as they piece mealed efforts during the Vietnam era.

It has always been my belief that when you engage in armed conflict that you do not “tippy toe” about it but that you put your entire effort forward and crush the enemy. Piece meal efforts will not do and serves to attrite your forces and the will of the people to support the continuation. So, Secretary Gates, let us not be wishy washy about troop increases but see that the military commanders on the scene get whatever it is that they need to get this endeavor over with. We must not have another quagmire.

While the current administration is following through on reducing the combat forces in Iraq (where, in my opinion, we should have never been in the first place), it is also increasing the number of mercenaries hired to protect U.S bases there at a potential cost of almost $1.0 billion. I have to feel that the attempt to establish a stable, safe, pro-United States government there has not been achieved.

Some comments about domestic policies. Do you recall that when the “Clunkers” program was initiated that the government said that they had 700 people working on the program and then a few days after it started they said they needed 2000 people to do the job. Well a few days ago they said they had 5000 people working on it and it is not done yet.

In the Washington Post of September 8, 2009 there were a grand total of 5 want ads for help: two were for one job each; two apparently were for multiple hires; and one was for two positions (that same paper had over 14 pages of foreclosure ads. Is the stimulus program working?) Now that was interesting enough but elsewhere in the paper was an article about the government needing to hire 600,000 people with some 120,000 in the Washington metropolitan area. Now that is one way to combat the growth in unemployment but it seems that fewer and fewer of us are left to pay the taxes that support their salaries. Let’s take a look at some of the figures. According to statistics from the Congressional Budget Office there were roughly 2.7 million federal employees (this is actually down from a high of some 3.2 million in the late 1970-1980 time frame) with an average salary of $63,431.00 in December of 2005 (this excludes the benefits package which has a value of from 26 to 50% of salary). From the Heartland Institute we find that the average household paid a total of $26,798.00 in taxes in 2004 of which $17,338.00 went to the federal government and $9,400.00 to state and local governments. Of the $17,338.00 some $7,062.00 was attributed to income tax. So it would thus appear that it will take the efforts of some 5.4 million households to pay the salaries of the 600,000 people the government intends to hire ($63,431.00 divided by $7,062.00 times 600,000). I presume that some of the 600,000 will be replacements for those retiring or otherwise leaving the federal work force so let us say that the federal employee total is 3,000,000. That means that roughly 27,000,000 households will be working to support the federal work force and that is not counting the military, the contracted out services, etc. Thus approximately 25% of the households (estimated 113.5 households in 2004) work to support the federal employee work force.