What the Gubmint is NOT!

It is not your daddy, your mommy, your bank, your HMO, your 401K, your IRA, your baby sitter, your sugar daddy. It’s time to relearn some self sacrifice and taken care of your OWN business.

A note to the House Minority leader

Sent this to Rep Bohner via his website(http://republicanleader.house.gov/Contact)

Could you please call the members of your party in the house to account?  I have said the same to speaker pelosi, and honor demands I say the same to you.  Your party is behaving badly.
I am not a Democrat, but rather a Republican who left the party after 20+ years to become a Libertarian.
Sincerely
William R Hunteman
USN (RET)

A note to the Speaker nancy Pelosi

Sent this to her via her website (http://speaker.house.gov/contact/).  Not really expecting an answer

will you please call the members of your party in the house to account? Specifically a) refusal to answer a question honestly and in a straight forward manner
Specifically Rep Wasserman, when on Fox was asked Where the savings were going to come from, where did SHE think they were going to come from to pay for the Health care plan.  Instead of giving an actual answer to the question, even an I don’t know, she instead went off on a tangent that never even remotely answered the question.  This seems to be a hallmark of your party.
Now, I am not ‘Astroturf’ I am a Libertarian who LEFT the Republican party because of their stand or lack of one on Civil Rights.
Not expecting an answers
I remain
William R Hunteman
USN (RET)

The Religious Right: A MINORITY!

So I’m sitting here wondering what in God’s name has happened to the Republican party. I know that that is a target rich statement, but I refer particularly to the Far Right, i.e. the Evangelicals and the overwhelming control they exert over the platform and actions of the RP.

The Eve’s HAVE to be a small minority of the party. Only 15% of Americans identify as ‘Evangelical’ and only 20% say they believe that God ‘favors’ the United States. They don’t appear to be the biggest donors giving to the party – that is I don’t think that they contribute more money than all others combined. So how do they manage to drive the RP in a direction that is increasingly counter-productive from a political standpoint? Do they have something on Chairman Steele?

Am I the only one who thinks that this cannot be a good thing for the RP?

I really would like to hear cogent and coherent thoughts on this.

Barak Obama: Some of his ideas actually make some sense.

 

On another BBS I am a member of, this link to a youtube video of Obama was posted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs. The video features some of his ideas about DOD and spending cuts and policy changes he would make, viz DOD.  The comment the poster made was ’Why this man must be kept out of the White House, OR….How to destroy America.’

Now, I am NOT an ObamaFan.  I think that without question he is a populist.  I think that he has one thing in common with Hilary, aside from the obvious – membership in the Democratic Party and being pretty liberal in political thought – he wants to be President REALLY BAD!   So he is pretty much, in my humble opinion, selling the basic populist themes ‘Not your fault’ ‘Give me the power and I will fix it’ ‘It’s those rich people who get all the unfair breaks fault, and we’re gonna stick it to them’ and my favorite ‘All we need to do is CHANGE THINGS’.

OK. We are going to change WHAT? HOW are we going to change it, and perhaps MOST IMPORTANTLY, WHY are we going to change it?  These are questions he has adroitly managed to not answer.  The what and how are obviously important (like How are we gonna fund these initiatives and how is that going to impact who) but I am more inclined to worry about the Why question.

It seems that the younger generation (I am arguably a member, being born in 1964) talk a lot about the NEED FOR CHANGE.  What is never answered is WHY.  Why do we need to change this or that?  I’m not saying that change isn’t needed, but what I have seen is a conviction on the need for change without ever showing any reason why it needs to change.  I guess what I am trying to say is that it appears there is a lot of change just for the sake of change, without ever being shown why something needs to be changed.

Its kind of like this.  Say that there is a new drug just coming out. And this drug will cause the male body to have an erection.  And the drug company starts saying that EVERY MAN NEEDS TO TAKE THIS MEDICINE.  Why? Is every man not able to have erections? Or, as another example, take my brother.

My brother is an IT director for a small company.  He is about 14 years younger than I am, and he is a computer geek. All the computers in his house run LINUX.  He is really smart about computers.  He makes the pretty common younger IT guy pitch that “BUSINESS NEEDS TO CHANGE” but when my mom, who is 70 and in many things pretty pragmatic (and this is a woman who in the 60’s was a Goldwater Republican/Conservative, broke a lot of political ground for women in 1960s Florida, and is now a pretty committed Hilary Liberal) asks him “Change What? Why?”, he can’t answer her with anything other than “It just does!”

That’s what’s going on with Obama. All populism, but with no “WHY”.  In my humble opinion, if you don’t know why something needs to be changed, it generally means that you don’t really understand it in the first place.  Again, take my brother.  Great guy, smart about computers.  But he’s never really been IN business.  Being an IT director is an important job.  You have to know a) what computers can do, b) how to make them work together, and c) what you producers NEED in order to produce.  One of the discussions he and I would get into was his frustration with the sales force.  He couldn’t understand why they wanted the Microsoft Office suite of applications, when in his opinion the Lotus suite was far superior.  I tried to explain to him that their needs really overshadowed his, because they, sales, were the only ones in the company who made the company money.  They wanted Office, because, regardless of your opinion of Microsoft, you gotta admit that the Office suite is a pretty well (mostly) thought out approach.  All of the componants interacted and interfaced easily and smoothly (mostly) with each other.  And the Windows GUI is pretty intuitive, whereas the Lotus one was not so much (This was about 6 years ago).  The sales force already knew how to use Office, and it did what they needed to do.

I think what confused him the most about it all was what I said about sales being the only element of the company that makes the company money.  “Without IT (The company makes a high end computer peripheral) and the factory, the company makes no money.” So I explained to him that you can make the BEST widget in the world, and make it cheaper than anyone else, and support it better than anyone else, and none of that makes a hill of beans, if you ain’t selling it. 

Point being here, is that he’d never been IN business. I know IT guys will hate this, but IT is support. It is pretty much on the same level as maintenance. Not saying it isn’t important, but there is a BIG difference between support and sales.  Support is a cost.  Unless you make computers (and really even there, as IT isn’t production) the IT costs you money and doesn’t bring in a single cent. IT expenses are in the liability column, and there is no income column in the IT department ledger. IT doesn’t make money. Sales does, which is why sales is the most important department in the company. No sales, no income. Simple as that.

Now people who are IN business know that. They know that while good production is highly important, good sales is a must.  An effective sales force can market and sell a, shall we say ‘less than optimum’ product. Microsoft is a PRIME example of this.  Netscape was far superior to Microsoft’s corresponding offerings.  To do what Netscape Navigator could do for free, you would have to buy OUTLOOK, IE, and FRONTPAGE. And you still wouldn’t have everything, because OUTLOOK doesn’t really have a seemless newsreader segment. But Outlook Express did. (I never understood that). So you could get free from Netscape what would cost you $100+ from Microsoft. 

Can you even get Netscape anymore? Nope. But Microsoft Office still leads the pack. Now Lotus and OpenOffice are moving up, but still not anywhere near the top of the heap. Why? Because Microsoft hires a good sales force. And sales includes marketing. And someone IN business would know all that. And without knowing things like that, and really ‘grokking’ them, you might be inclined to think that ‘your way’ is better.  But the sales force will tell you that every minute spent trying to learn a new program is a minute you aren’t spending prospecting for new clients.  And that costs the company more money than adopting your new program MIGHT save the company. 

Business people, people who ‘grok’ business know (unlike those in Congress) that POTENTIAL savings a) aren’t REAL savings and b) ARE NOT INCOME. You cant spend potential savings.  They MIGHT (once they become REAL cost savings) enhance the bottom line, but really not by that much.  Put another way, every department in a company (and this is a general rule) represents costs except one – sales. Sales is the only department that shows an income.  This is business.

And yet we have myriads of people advocating change. But they aren’t advocating change for a reason – this or that function, organization or process isn’t working as it should. They are advocating change for changes sake.  Ultimately they are advocating changing the ‘what is’ for ‘what they want it to be’ so they can understand it, because they don’t really understand the why of ‘what it is’.  This is not only bad practice from a management standpoint, it’s pretty stupid and wasteful from an economics standpoint as well. Incurring costs, and make NO mistake about it - change costs money and time – that you do not really need to make causes chaos and confusion in the organization.  I saw that many times in my 23 years in the Navy.  A new ‘fad’ would come along and the Navy would spend oooodles of money trying to force it in place, and what resulted was mass confusion, chaos, frustration and lost productivity, when even a cursory examination of the ‘what is’ would have shown that the change, as presented,  a) would most likelycost a lot of money and time and b) would not produce the desired effects and c) was not grounded in a true understanding of the ‘what is’. 

This is what ‘We NEED to CHANGE’ will bring you when you have agents of such change can’t offer up the WHAT and HOW and again, most importantly WHY of change.
 ==========================================================

Anyway, I find I have wandered FAR away from where I started this post at. As one of my former Chiefs liked to say, ‘to make a short story long’, my point was to illustrate that while I do  not support Obama, and my reasoning for such lack of support is based on his populist rhetoric of ‘We Need To Change’, I do think that Obama does have some good ideas.  And they should be looked at by whoever ascends to the Oval Office this November.

BACK TO THE SUBJECT AT HAND. OBAMAs Comments regarding DOD as reported in the video on YouTube.

 After watching this video, I felt the following remarks pertinant. Basically just to be fair to the guy.

 

1.  You either agree with unproven, flawed logic supporting going into Iraq or you were/are against the war in Iraq.  Much evidence supports the position that we shouldn’t have gone in, at least with the plan that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield created, which is kinda hard to say ‘it worked’ ’cause by any rational metric, Iraq is an unsafe country to be in.  I firmly believe that we should not have gone in, but that is really a moot point (BTW, I was on active duty at the time, on a combat staff over there at the time, and this war was manufactured – they had made up their minds and put things into motion in 2001/2002, WELL before they said publically that they were going in).

 

Question is, now that we’ve gone in there and basically made a mess, and allowed the situation to develop that created the mess that is there now, what do we do about it?  I don’t think that we can just cut and run.  And I think that if he gets elected he’ll get educated as to why we’re gonna be there awhile.  I’d like to hear what he proposes to do about the abysmal situation that is there now. 

 

2. Eliminate wasteful spending. Well, there is certainly enough of that in DC – WHAT a target rich environment.  My question is WHAT EXACTLY does he plan to eliminate?  There is ALOT in DOD that is wasteful.  DDG-1000, LCS, etc etc etc.  I like the idea of an independant review board vetting DOD programs.  Just because DOD wants something doesn’t mean they need it. There are quite a number of programs that in reality have no current defined Operational Requirement (No new weapon or other system is SUPPOSED to be developed except in response to a combatant commander defined Operational Requirement. That ain’t happening), and exist merely because the program happens to be produced by a company in a congress critters district. NOT the way we need to be doing business. 

 

Case in point. 

I was at a conference several years ago (Late 2003), that dealt with a particular weapons system.  At the conference the CAPT in charge of the conference gave a brief about a program that they were worried was going to be forced on the Navy.  An activity within the Navy was tasked to evaluate the target aimpoints shoot at during OIF, and determine which of the aimpoints could have been serviced by this proposed new weapon system. Only about 5% of the targets could have been hit with this weapon.  Funny part of the story. The company that was developing this system was headquartered in the House Armed Forces Services Committee chairmans district.  The Navy didn’t want and didn’t need the system, but for a time it looked like the system, which had 1/10th the range and 1/5th the warhead of my weapon system, was going to be imposed on the Navy.  So I like his idea of an independant commission keeping DOD grounded in fiscal realities.

 

Missile defence systems? Well, look at me with a straight face and tell me how North Korea or Iran is going to attack the US with ICBMs.  And those were two of the countries that this administration cites as ICBM threats.

Russia? Umm, maybe.  I MIGHT be more inclined to support the Missile Defense System if they were putting the interceptor bases closer to where real threats are…i.e. Middle East.  Israel and Bahrain.  Maybe Qatar.  Don’t see a need for them in Poland or that other country (forgot which one it is). 

 

Not saying we should shut down the entire thing, but I do think that the pace of it should be scaled back.  Also think that the interceptor launch platform would better be the AEGIS platforms.  Fixed launch sites can be negated.  That’s why SSBNs were and are better than bombers or Silos.  Basically I think that the Navy should take over the program.  After all, we’ve proved we can hit a satillite, which in reality is about as hard as hitting an ICBM – same basic orbital mechanics. Less time of response, but it’s a ballistic trajectory which is the simplest and most predictable of flight paths.

 

3. Eliminate Nuclear Weapons.  I don’t think that this is a bad goal……as long as the other guys do the same thing.  Now I’m suspicious and pragmatic enough to believe that the other guy, if so inclined, is gonna make it really hard to find ALL his nukes. So, there does need to be a minimum number of warheards.  And this would necessitate a given amount of maintenance and replacement activity.  But how many would this number need to be?

 

Projected operational U.S. strategic nuclear warheads and bombs after full enactment of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in 2012: 1,700-2,200.  Additional strategic and non-strategic warheads not limited by the treaty that the U.S. military wants to retain as a “hedge” against unforeseen future threats: 4,900

(Source: http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/50.aspx Accessed 3 MAR 08)

So at a MINIMUM DOD wants 6600 Nuclear warheads.  Do we REALLY need that many? 4,900 warheads, JUST IN CASE SOMETHING COMES UP?  What do they know that they aren’t telling us?  4,900 is a LOT of firepower.  Assume an average yield of 100KT.  You are talking about 49 GIGATONS of firepower.  That is WAY more than you would need to blow up the entire planet.  And thats what DOD wants as a HEDGE?

 

Oh, just a curious factoid about nuclear weapons.  I had thought that the following number was around 2-3. Number of U.S. nuclear bombs lost in accidents and never recovered: 11 Where are they at? Is anyone ELSE worried about that?

 

SO reducing absolute numbers of nuclear weapons isn’t a bad thing.  And a goal of zero in the world is a nice goal.  Not gonna happen, but it’s nice to shoot for.  ANd he NEVER says that he would (and he couldn’t anyway) engage in unilateral disarmament.  So you really can’t fault him on his position on that.

 

Now, all that being said, I don’t support Obama no matter how crazy I am.  He is a populist that has provided very little substance on how he’s gonna pay for all the benefits he wants to provide.  He’s offering a lot of head patting and class envy to suck people into buying what he’s selling. Which is ‘elect me!’ and nothing more.

 

But just because I don’t support him doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some good ideas.  Just because he’s a liberal, doesn’t mean he can’t have ideas that make sense.  Ain’t NONE of us cornered the market in the smart ideas department, so it behooves us to be open to all quarters when it comes to ideas on how to fix what’s broke in America. And there is so very much broke.

 

The Games Islam plays – they play for keeps

First

Don’t judge Islam by the Muslims you know, and do not judge the Muslims you know by Islam.

 

That being said, we as a people, westerners, need to really get smart about Islam.  It is quite likely the biggest long term threat the west faces.

Now I am about religious tolerance.  But it has to be a two way street.  Islam DOES NOT believe in such a two way street.  Islam cannot even concieve of the concept of plurality.

 

I am a Libertarian by belief. My ‘credo’ if you will is that my rights end where your’s begin, and vice versa.  So I’m pretty tolerant of most things.  I am pretty open minded.  But.  The more I read nad research, the more I see that Muslims pose the greatest risk to the west of all the threats out there.  There can be, as far as I can tell, from their side of the aisle, any form of compromise or co-existance.  Their belief system won’t allow it. 

 

One of the reasources below, the tretise, outlines in great detail why we cannot co-exist.  Islam is NOT just a religion.  It is even more than a way of life.  It is a complete societal contract that brooks NO possibility of anything other than Islam.  No co-existance.  No plurality.  No tolerance of anything other than reimposition of the caliphate.  Islam a) says that there is NO religion save Islam. Period.  b) Muslism are to impose Islam on the world c) Islamic law, as laid down by the prophet in the koran and the hadith(sp), is inviolate. Period. Cannot be re-interpreted in the light of new events.  If it’s in the 9th sura, then it’s more than gospel.  d)  Islamic law is THE law.  Period.  Any treaty or constitution or any other rule, regulation, code whatever is SUBORDINATE to Islamic law. Period.

 

MAJ Stephen Coughlins’ tretise explains it all much better than I do.

Do not delude yourself on this. Islam is and will be the defining threat until a) they defeat and subjugate us or b) we defeat and subjugate them. Period. 

 

I refer you to the following sites/resources:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/019465.php 

 

http://www.strategycenter.net/docLib/20080107_Coughlin_ExtremistJihad.pdf

A tretise by Maj Stephen Coughlin.  This is about a 330 page dissertation.  BUT, a) it is pretty readable and b) it explains in a straitforward coherant and thorough manner why Jihad is 1) MANDATED by the Koran, despite what Muslim apologists say and 2) Why Al quida et al are not ‘extreme’ in their beliefs (in the Muslim/Islam context) and practice regarding jihad.

 

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Games-Muslims-Play.htm

A good exposition of the games muslims play promoting/defending Islam.

 

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Myths-of-Islam.htm

A good shootdown of various ‘myths’ promulgated by the muslims and their apologists.

Explain this to me, conservatives

George Bush, whom many call conservative, has managed to do something interesting.  He has drawn, publically, the ire and criticism of the President of the John Birch Society, arguably one of the most conservative of organization.

 

What appears to have pushed Mr McManus over the edge, was bush’s use of a signing statement regarding the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act.

“Congress passed the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act and sent it to the President for his approval. Citing his designation as “commander in chief,” Mr. Bush added a signing statement that voided four sections of the law. “

“The National Defense Authorization Act recently passed by Congress prohibits the use of federal funds to establish permanent military bases in Iraq. Mr. Bush’s signing statement cancels that sensible directive. With the stroke of his pen, his action also voids protections for whistle-blowers who complain about corruption in government contract work, impedes turning over to Congress intelligence reports, and cancels the creation of a bipartisan commission designed to investigate allegations of waste and mismanagement in federal contract work.”

This is the act of a conservative?  Aren’t conservatives committed to the rule of law?  Isn’t there something that sets out who writes the laws and who executes the laws? Oh yeah, the Constitution.  Funny, I’ve read the Constitution many times now, and I have yet to see ANYTHING that could even remotely be construed as granting the President the authority to ignore the parts of a law he doesn’t like.  He can veto a bill sent to him, but CONSTITUTIONALLY, it is an all or nothing proposition.  He doesn’t get to pick and choose.  Didn’t he (and all of us on this BBS) take an oath or something? Oh Yeah, to UPHOLD AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST ALL ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.

 

It seems to me when you disregard something, something you have sworn to defend, you fall out of the support and defend catagory and slide into the enemy catagory.

 

http://www.jbs.org/node/6982

And still, they waste time

I read today that, contrary to any sense of propriety or shame, the Congress, specifically the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform,  still feels compelled to hold hearings on steroid use/abuse in Major League Baseball.  I am, as I have observed previously, outraged over this politically motivated headline grandstanding.  I still cannot see by what strange interpretation of the Constitution that Congress has any jurisdiction over this.  It appears to have only one purpose – to get congresscritters additional press headlines. 

Further confusing things, is that this non-issue is being examined by the Government Oversight and Reform Committee.  (http://oversight.house.gov/contact/http://oversight.house.gov/contact/) to contact the committee.

What possible stretch of interpretation could land steroid use in MLB in the Government Oversight and Reform Committee? This is bizarre.  I mean, I could MAYBE understand Commerce, but Government Oversight and Reform?

We have many issues facing this country.  A war begun under questionable premeses at best,  spending out of control, etc etc ad nauseum.  And yet, the Congress can waste time on this. 

And they wonder why their approval rating is lower than even Bush’s

REAL ID – OVERT FACISM IN THE GOOD OL USA

REAL ID is essentially Facism cloaked in 9/11 hysteria. It would not have prevented 9/11.  Fellow ops types and intel weenies back me up on this – REAL ID mirrors almost exactly the internal controls the Soviet Union employed.  Do we REALLY want that HERE?  We seem to have spent so much effort studying the Russians we appear to be trying to become them.  The type of controls imposed by REAL ID are dictatorial, un american, and completely against the stated principles of Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals.  In other words, REAL ID is based on fear-mongering.  

Find and contact your state and federal representitives

http://www.vote-smart.org/

Urge the federales to repeal REAL ID

Urge your State government reps to FIGHT implementation of REAL ID

Following from (Sources: EPIC: http://epic.org/press/011108.html

ACLU: http://www.realnightmare.org/

Libertarian Party: http://www.lp.org/media/article_557.shtml

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-healey22jan22,0,5551102.story ) Homeland Security on REAL ID: http://www.dhs.gov/xprevprot/programs/gc_1172767635686.shtm

On January 11, the Department of Homeland Security released its final rules on  what states must do to implement REAL ID, the national identification law Congress passed in 2005.  Homeland Security has taken the gloves off. States have until May to accept the  plan. Beginning May 11, 2008, says Homeland Security, residents of states that have not agreed to implement REAL ID will not be allowed to use their state drivers licenses to board airplanes or enter federal buildings. They can use a U.S. passport or possibly other documents in some circumstances, but they must  expect to “suffer delays due to the requirement for enhanced security screening.” In other words, take your shoes off, pal, and get in that LONG LONG line over there.

States that agree to comply may be granted extensions of several years to fully implement REAL ID. But when REAL ID is in place, notes CNET NEWS, in addition to flying and entering federal buildings, “REAL ID could in theory be required for traveling on Amtrak, collecting federal welfare benefits, signing up for Social Security, applying for student loans, interacting with the U.S. Postal Service, entering national parks” as well as purchasing firearms.

In practice, it may be impossible even to get a job or open a bank account without REAL ID. REAL ID is widely expected to become the standard ID for the private sector. And that’s just the start. Homeland Security is already floating additional uses for the cards, including “reducing unlawful employment, voter fraud, and underage rinking,” and monitoring the purchase of over-the-counter medicines. The REAL ID Act explicitly says that REAL IDs shall be required for “any other purposes that the Secretary [of Homeland Security] shall determine.” A more open-ended grant of power could not be written.

REAL ID requires all states to make major changes to their driver’s licenses, turning them into police-state national ID cards that will be loaded with sensitive personal information, all of which will be tied together in huge databases. These databases will make it easy to routinely track, monitor, and regulate the movements and activities of all citizens. The cards would also be computer-readable, allowing government and private-sector scanners to collect the personal information on the cards.

The stakes are incredibly high, says former U.S. Congressman and current Libertarian Party National Committee board member Bob Barr.“The massive database that would be created by the REAL ID Act, containing all manner of private information on citizens, is potentially one of the most privacy-invasive laws in the history of our country,” Barr says. “Anything less than scrapping this offensive national identification card law is unacceptable.”

The ACLU points out that the REAL ID “will become tantamount to a license to leave your house,” since it will be required virtually everywhere you go. “The end result could be a situation where citizens’ movements inside their own country are monitored and recorded through these ‘internal passports.’”And so the stage is now set for a massive battle right out of the movie “V For Vendetta”: Big Brother at its most evil and intrusive versus outraged citizens who cherish civil liberties and privacy rights. A true grassroots rebellion against REAL ID is forming. So far, 17 states have passed laws or resolutions rejecting REAL ID: Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, llinois, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.

Twenty-one other states have either introduced legislation or had legislation pass in one chamber opposing REAL ID. But all those states are facing tremendous pressure from the federal government. Like so much recent statist legislation, REAL ID was sneaked into law. It was slipped into a May 2005 emergency-spending bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and provide tsunami relief. Such bills are almost impossible to defeat. It passed the House 368-58 and the Senate unanimously. There was not a single debate on the Act in the Senate, and insufficient discussion in the House. President Bush, who, his spokespersons once said, “does not support a national ID card,” strongly backed it and quickly signed it into law.

There have been attempts to kill the REAL ID beast in Congress. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to repeal the act, but thus far they have not progressed.

As this battle begins in earnest, state by state, no one should be fooled into thinking REAL ID has anything to do with fighting terrorism. The federal government has pushed for a national ID card for years, well before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Previous justifications have included health care, the War on Drugs, protecting children, and controlling immigration. Any excuse, it seems, will do. This is all about massive, Orwellian control of Americans by a federal government run amok.

As Ron Paul said when the bill was introduced in 2005: “National ID cards will be used to track the law-abiding masses, not criminals.”REAL ID is a Real Bad Idea: a giant move towards a 1984-ish police state where the government monitors and controls everything you say and do.

 

Find and contact your state and federal representitives

http://www.vote-smart.org/

Urge the federales to repeal REAL ID

Urge your State government reps to FIGHT implementation of REAL ID 

The realities about a draft being enacted

With no credible enemy actively attacking the US, and a war based, at best, on questionable premises, enacting a draft would be just about the worst thing for the military. The ‘bad days’ of the 70s were in part the result of the draft, the pains from the retreat from and abandonment of Vietnam, and the backlash from the vocal minority against the Military Industrial Complex.

 

Upsides to a draft. 

1.  Theoretically you achieve a broader cross section of society, both economically and otherwise.   This will ensure a more diverse military population.

 

2.  Theoretically a steady state influx of personnel that are predictable, statistically, i.e. you know that in week 1 of month 1 you’ll get x number of people inducted at location x, and that in week four of month ten, same numbers.  For combatant commanders this would be a great thing. 

 

3.  Theoretically, the burden of supporting a war is shared more equally among all classes. This will bring more national cohesion due to shared sacrifice. Theoretically.

 

Downsides to a draft

1.  Realistically, you’ll never achieve the mythical cross section of society. And is that REALLY an upside? The jury is still out on that. No definative studies that I am aware of have shown that this is the plus that pro-draft people say it is.  I have my doubts.  Is an unwilling conscript who has no desire to be in the military really an asset? I don’t think so. 

 

2.  Realistically, any steady state numbers are doubtful.  There is MUCH more information available today about the draft, how it works, and how to beat it.  Local draft board and appeals boards will be swamped with requests for deferments, reclassifications, exceptions and the like.  Training for these boards, and staffing them is spotty at best.  Based on my converstations with key players in the Selective Service System; a) there are not enough people signed up to fill all the slots that would be needed, and b) the system is not funded nor trained enough to actually respond to what will happen in the event of a draft being enacted.  One of the things that isn’t addressed is security of/for the draft boards.  There WILL be violence directed at them, and they do not have a security plan in place. So the system will be overwhelmed and that will prevent any semblence of predictable input/throughput numbers.

 

3.  Realistically, the burden will NEVER be equally shared among the classes.

The rich/upperclass/influential/politicians will take great pains to ENSURE that their kids will NOT have to serve.  Always been that way, pretty much always will be. Just the facts of life.  Same principle as the tax system.

 

4.  The backlash against a draft would be astronomical.  In EVERY conflict the US has been in, where there has been a draft, there have ALWAYS been draft riots.  In WWII they were toned down, but mainly because Japan and Nazi Germany were clearly aggresive threats against the contiguous United States, and the US Government made a very credible case that the war HAD to be fought. But remember, this ONLY came about AFTER Pearl Harbor.  Prior to 12/7/41, the overall mood of the US was isolationist.  And the backlash and societal upheaval would be more on the order of what we saw in the late 60’s/early 70’s.

 

5.  Unwilling conscripts are not the answer, unless what you need is cannon fodder.  And I submit that that approach is too cynical for me.  Unmotivated draftees are worse than empty files.  I’d rather be several sailors short, than have people filling the slots that required me to expend extra time motivating, monitoring and supervising because they didn’t want to be there.  And it would be even worse if you were in ground combat.  Imagine what it would be like, being on the line and you couldn’t trust the guys around you to watch your ass. Oh, THATs a great solution to the thin green line. 

 

6.  Unwilling conscripts are a poison in the heart of a military.  They lead, in absence of a direct threat, to discontent, resentment and bad morale.  I refer you to why you don’t want your new guy to get in with the punk on restriction. 

 

I could go on about the downsides to a draft, but the truth of the matter is that a draft is not in the cards.  The politicians KNOW why it’s a bad idea. The truth is, the morons in congress squawking about bringing back a draft (Of note, the only ones who are mentioning a draft are Democrats)  are only doing so in a cynical ploy to screw the Republicans.  They (those pushing for a draft) only do so to force the administration to have to oppose it, giving the dems an opportunity to say ‘See how the administration doesn’t care about the troops’ when they (again, the dems) don’t care either. Its merely yet another political ploy.