This comment was received by an anonymous reader (the negative ones always are anonymous - pretty cowardly if you ask me) in regards to my August 1, 2006 post titled: Mexico's plan for the American Southwest.
A lot of guilty people out there "Oh no their coming to take us away" get serious Mexico doesn't have money or troops but look out for China we owe them billions we are totally dependent on them for everything China's merchandise trade surplus soared to $102 billion in 2005 Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for therichest Americanssinexpensivee consumer products that no longer are manufactured in significant quantities in theUnited Statess Thee United States and China share the most imbalanced bilateral trade relationship in the world. The United States imports more goods from China than it exports to a tune of$202 billion dollars each year. All told, China alone accounts for nearly 26% of the United States'$725.8 billion tradedeficit. Watchh your backs conservatives And we are dependent on the middle east for oilThe last year Mr. Clinton was in office the nation borrowed an additional 18 billion dollars,the first year Mr. Bush Jr. was in office he had to borrow 270 billion. The tax cut that caused this borrowing was supposed to stimulate the economy, but two years later Bush had to push through yet another tax cut. The second tax cut was needed because it was clear that the first one did not work. Economic history tells us the second did not work either. As a result of all his tax cutting and no cutting in spending President Bush set a record in 2003 for the biggest single yearly dollar increase in debt in the nation’s history, he did it again in 2004. The debt is now increasing at the rate of 600 billion dollars years soso keep thinking the Mexicans are taking over the best they can do is have a permanent office at Home Depot
Mexico does not have to have money or troops. Their invasion is by pure numbers - just like China. And yes, we owe billions to China, and I agree that it is a mistake, but because of the current global trading situation, it is a necessary evil. Personally, I had a real problem with NAFTA and all open trading with any communist country.
And when everybody starts complaining about the deficit, they forget the reason we have it. The deficit began when Ronald Reagan began to borrow money to beef up the military budget, forcing the Soviet Union to spend 80% of their budget on their military - - which eventually bankrupt them and brought down the great Soviet bear. Could you imagine the world situation if communist Russia was still in the picture?
China learned from that, however, and they are now waging war with us economically.
Nonetheless, running wars with a huge budget and trade deficit and tax cuts is not a bold economic experiment by Bush in the sense that the commenter makes. The war is a necessary evil. We were attacked. 9/11 was an act of war. We are obliged, for the safety of America, to wage war against the aggressors. As for the economic end of it, don't be fooled when the left makes the cry that the Republicans are delivering huge handouts for the richest Americans -- the richest Americans pay an enormous percentage of taxes.
The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.
The Top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes.
Our tax system is not so much progressive as it is confiscatory -- Frederic Bastiat called this phenomenon "legal plunder." A progressive tax is based on the premise that those with more income can afford to pay more taxes, and conversely, those with little or no income should pay no tax. However, a quick look at the way our system is set up and of recent history regarding the numbers in regards to income taxes paid shows that the U.S. tax system has become far beyond progressive. Fully half the taxpayers (the lower half) contribute almost nothing in individual income taxes.
The Top 1% of income earners (comprising of about one million families) earn approximately 15% of the total income earned by all wage earners in the United States, yet they pay almost 30% of all individual income taxes.
Furthermore, the Top 1% are shouldering a roughly 50% higher proportion of the overall income tax burden than they did in the 1970's.
The argument most oft used against tax breaks are that they benefit only the wealthy. It is clear from even a cursory look at the numbers that the 'wealthy' will receive the majority of any income tax reduction because they pay a disproportionately huge percentage of the income taxes! To structure a tax break such that those in upper income brackets are excluded would constitute nothing more than transfer of wealth from those who have it to those who don't (i.e. legal plunder.) You might as well put a gun to the head of the concept American Opportunity and the American Dream.
Engaging with China in economic warfare is dangerous, I agree. Becoming independent from the middle east for oil would be a huge weapon in the economic battle with China. Fact is, China's Communist Party has "anti-American objectives and plans, but don't be fooled, China indeed has its own domestic turmoil, including a new trend in which 100,000 people have quit the Communist Party. Despite this, China has made it clear that it really only wants three things: to conquer Taiwan; to become Asia's leading power; and then, world domination. And, what stands in the way is the United States.
American business interests are always going to want to minimize and deny any political tensions with China. They are financially motivated to do so -- they want the trade with this nation of (potentially) 1.3 billion customers. That leads to wishful assessments, and even discussions of geopolitical military strategy driven by the wishful line, "China? They're not expansionist." China is an aggressor, and is an expansionist country. Ask any Tibetan. How do they feel? Colonized! Ask anyone in East Turkestan. How do they feel? Colonized! Ask anyone in Taiwan. How do they feel? --In the case of Taiwan, they are staring down the barrel of a gun, but they are more fortunate than the Tibetans and East Turkestanis, in that the gun has not fired yet. The key word is "yet." China has been very explicit -- loud and clear -- in naming Taiwan as an objective. This point is not even a stretch of debate. The statements about Taiwan are issued regularly from China's foreign ministry, and are as explicit as they are chilling. The only way that business strategists can arrive at their wishful assessments is by averting their eyes, shrugging off Tibet, Taiwan, East Turkestan, and even prior occasions like the Korean War, where Americans faced Chinese troops.
American politics, and the Republican party, for that matter, then, is not to blame for the situation with China. Greed on the part of corporations, and a misunderstanding as well as a tendency to underrate China's true position is largely to blame. The communist party in China, people tend to forget (and this is why it made me sick when Clinton was calling China our friends and rubbing elbows with them) began as a branch of the Soviet Communist Party. The Soviet system was taken as a model, and the Chinese Communist Party is born of the same example, as a carbon copy. In this way, we can also understand that the communists in China are a "foreign influence," not indigenously Chinese. In relation to Taiwan, China is not just making statements -- it's moving hardware. Over 700 ballistic missiles have now been arrayed against Taiwan. In addition to its new manned space program (also cloned from Russia), and nuclear weapons (with nuclear secrets stolen from America under Bill Clinton - thank you very much slick Willy), China has a new long range air force. China has a new deep water navy. Even nuclear submarines, to have a "second strike capability" against America in a nuclear war. (One might ask, where did this nuclear-armed communist superpower get its wherewithal? --And the answer is that they are enriched by America trade, by the exact amount of the U.S. trade deficit with China. If someone gave you $160 billion a year, you too could have your own army, navy, air force, and space program!)
Anybody who remembers the Soviet Union as a threat will already see a "Chinese threat," but, there is more. Li Zhaoxing (the Chinese foreign minister) cannot definitively offer us assurance of a "peaceful rise" on the part of China, even if he means what he is saying. China is instable, even when it claims to have, or to value, stability. The key word here is "claims." Claims from the Chinese government are chiefly excuses to stay in power for one more day, and for that government (like their American Liberal cousins), lying is a way of life.
The Chinese communists are guilty of the diabolical treatment of people, double standards, profound corruption, trickery, treachery, and no respect for China's own constitution. China is already in violation of prior international agreements and its own constitution (which, oddly, says freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to criticize the government exist). (This raises the question, "Who, in their right mind, would sign a contract with an opposite party of that little reliability?")
China's system is reputed to be a dictatorship, but even the dictator can be rudely surprised by matters blowing up in his face. It might be fair to say that no one man is truly in charge of China. (China contains many fiefdoms, reporting cooked statistics to the other fiefdoms. For more reliable statistics, Chinese turn to the CIA's web site, just to figure out what's the case in China.) In other words, China is an interplay of forces, and due to inevitable frictions as forces collide, China is unpredictable, perhaps deadly so. For those in Tibet, in East Turkestan, and for all domestic dissenters, China is already deadly. Now, it is threatening to become deadly in a military sense, especially where the United States has a role to defend Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act.
Anyone who thinks that China is "gradually building up" to "someday" be a military challenger, is wrong. The Chinese are already there in the sense of military might, and will probably conquer Taiwan within the next five years, if not sooner. In fact, some believe that the war over Taiwan could begin by the end of this year. And if anyone believes that it would be a regional, limited war, a related current of opinion says that they must flatten the U.S., because that is what stands in the way. A war over Taiwan could find China striking hard at the American homeland.
And remember that their system is officially atheist, and requires unswerving loyalty and adherence to the Chinese Communist Party, which in their system is placed above all else -- the state, the military, and the constitution are all malleable tools able to bend to the will of the Chinese Communist Party. They answer to no one, including international conventions -- not even to standards of civilization within China's borders. The party assumes itself to be god, not constrained by any law of anybody -- not of man, not of heaven. This system effectively installs the Chinese Communist Party as a deity.
China is neither predictable or orderly. In fact, Chinese history is loaded with twists and turns that no one could predict. Even if a gullible person starts by thinking, "the party is always right," and tries to comprehend the official line, that person would be rudely surprised, and could not read very far through Chinese Communistic history before asking the question, "How can this be right?" As a deity, the party (even if we suppose it to be infallible) has changed dramatically, simply based on who wins the power struggle in the periodic shifts of Chinese politics. It has changed so dramatically as to make a mockery of any pretensions to intellectual consistency, credibility, or an upright, mature nature.
If this party were a deity, we would have to describe it as a criminally insane deity, or perhaps with words such as adolescent, anti-social, and deranged. This amounts to another reason why China should be considered dangerous, no matter what is said by Hu Jintao or Li Zhaoxing. Their job is chiefly to keep face, in the midst of the train wreck of what is the Chinese government. They can speak of a "peaceful rise" for China, and they can cross their fingers and hope for the best, but what is it that lies over their shoulders?
Over their shoulders are two different forces: Jiang Zemin, and the Chinese democracy movement. These may also be known as the "leftist" and "rightist" forces in Chinese politics. The rightists are down, but not out -- upon his recent death, it was learned that Zhao Ziyang (the reform minded former party leader) still has many friends, even deep inside the Communist Party itself. The rightist element exists, and may yet find its champion for leadership.
The bigger problem is over the left shoulder of Hu Jintao, because former President Jiang Zemin could provoke or start a war, while the rightists are a peaceful, unarmed movement. We do not know that Hu Jintao is a leader committed to peace. We know that in late 2004, Hu approved a massacre of villagers in Hanyuan County, and by some reports, more people were killed than in the Tiananmen massacre. But, suppose that Hu wants peace, and Jiang wants war. Jiang Zemin may still be able to provoke a war, even from retirement. We may learn soon that he's really not retired, but is remaining active while he is titularly out of power for public relations purposes.
So I suppose it is safe to say that the commenter is partially correct in the sense that we share an imbalanced bilateral trade relationship with China, and that it is a very dangerous position indeed. But who began this? Who pushed for globalism in the trade market?
The answer is, the left. Clinton, especially, hob-knobbed with China to a point that it sickens me.
The tax cuts, however, has stimulated the economy. Unemployment numbers have been down, stocks have been strong (except during minor glitches attributed to fears based on the happenings in the war on terror), but despite the economic growth, cyclictic lows are on the horizon (we see some of that now in the housing market - what goes up must come down) and the deficit continues to grow.
So, I suppose, the commenter is correct in the sense that worrying about the Mexicans taking over is the least of our worries - - but that does not make the situation along our southern border unimportant - - and the fact remains that there are three kinds of people living in America: citizens, legal residents, and illegal aliens. The word "illegal" should make it obvious as to what should be done. Illegal activity is criminal activity, and criminals should be treated as criminals. And regardless of all of the other things going on, the threat of these criminals is very real, not only because of the illegal Mexicans crossing the border, but the other elements coming across with them. The border needs to be sealed for many reasons, and terrorism is one of them. This is more complex than groups of Mexicans hanging out at the local Home Depot. Besides, every other nation in the world protects their borders, so shouldn't we? A nation without borders is not a nation. We have too much else to worry about than to have to worry about the petty Mexicans, so seal up the border good and tight with an impenetrable wall and be done with it.
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