War Tax

If they could promie the money wouldn't go towards something retarded I would be behind this as well. I have no problem helping to fund the war beyond the ways I do now.

IMO, it should be the way ALL programs are paid for.

You want something, you put a tax in place to pay for it. When whatever program it is fades awa,y the tax gets repealed.

*shrugs*

I guess that attitude is what gets you labeled a conservative, Fishin'.

If we just stopped the entitlement programs for a year and used the funds to pay to finish off the war in Iraq and Afghanistan... remind you - social security was never supposed to be an entitlement program... but just take all those who don't work, never worked, and won't work, and let 'em starve while we get the job done and our fighting men and women home. I guess that's what gets me labeled a conservative.

Word

Cycloptichorn

I love this idea as well.

Re: War Tax


Nice to see you have come around to support this police action.

This is just another ploy by democrats to make people think they support this police action when they do not (and should not).

Have the balls democrats to stop this waste of taxpayer dollars now.

As an aside. How many believe that if taxes are raised to pay for this police action, that your taxes will be decreased when it does finally end?

Not I.

from Adam Smith http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/03/smith/

You mean something even more retarded than the war? That's hard to imagine.

I know you have no imagination, but I was thinking more along the lines of the following.

Pork Project Recipient
$725,000
Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
$200,000
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland, Ohio
$1,800,000
2003 Women's World Cup Tournament
$6,000,000
Police Athletic League
$250,000
Call Me Mister program, Clemson University
$500,000
New England Amer-I-Can Program
$150,000
Rock School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
$16,000
National Distance Running Hall of Fame, Utica, New York
$225,000
Hawaii statehood celebration
$325,000
Construction of a swimming pool in Salinas, California
$100,000
History competition during National History Day in Iowa
$175,000
Therapeutic Horse man ship center, Hoffman Homes for Youth, Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania
$315,000
Formosan Subterranean Termite research
$100,000
Public service recognition week
$50,000
Father Maloney's Boy's Haven, Louisville, Kentucky
$75,000
Vintage Radio Programs and Jazz Museum, East Stroudsburg University
$100,000
Kids Rock Free educational program, Fender Museum of the Arts Foundation,
Corona, California
$100,000
Renovation of the historic Coca-Cola building in Macon, Georgia
$100,000
Construction of an intergenerational daycare center in San Fernando
Valley, California
$372,000
B&O Railroad Museum emergency restoration, Baltimore, Maryland
$75,000
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, Washington, DC
$225,000
Construction of Blue-Gray Civil War Theme Park, Kentucky
$75,000
North Pole Transit System JARC Program, Alaska
$250,000
Feasibility study of establishing Suffolk (Virginia) Workforce
Development Center
$350,000
Construction for a folk cultural center in Pinellas County, Florida
$400,000
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
$90,000
Olive fruitfly research
$150,000
Traffic light, Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District, New York
$100,000
People for People, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
$100,000
Amphitheater construction, North Star Productions, Inc., Bracken County,
Kentucky
$2,000,000
First Tee program
$150,000
Regional Youth Baseball Complex Lancaster, California
$100,000
John Singelton Mosby Museum Foundation in Warrenton, Virginia
$180,000
Seafood waste research, Fairbanks, Alaska
$400,000
Walla Walla Public Schools, Walla Walla, Washington
$900,000
Kincaid Park Trail Connection, Alaska
$20,000
Southern Star Development Corporation, Louisville, Kentucky
$85,000
Comprehensive Transportation Plan for Lewisburg, West Virginia
$100,000
Norman Hall project, University of Florida
$225,000
Museum of Aviation Foundation Inc, Warner Robins, Georgia
$250,000
Lou Frey Institute of Politics, University of Central Florida
$270,000
Sustainable olive production
$5,000,000
Kennedy Center Potomac River Pedestrian and Bike Path
$100,000
National Civil War Museum, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
$200,000
Cedar glades research
$250,000
Theater construction, Studio for the Arts, Pocahontas, Arkansas
$2,000,000
Intermodal Transload Facility, Quincy, Washington
$110,000
Construction of a dental clinic in Bassfield, Mississippi
$220,000
New Mexico Retail Association, Albuquerque, New Mexico
$400,000
Davenport Music History Museum, Davenport, Iowa
$3,000,000
US 12 Widening, Wallula Junction to Walla Walla, Washington
$25,000
Alex Haley House Museum, Henning, Tennessee
$225,000
Rialto Square Theater, Joliet, Illinois
$5,000,000
Project SOCRATES
$90,000
Rabbit Run Community Arts Association, Madison, Ohio
$150,000
Renovation off Farmers market, Dallas, Texas
$200,000
Merit School of Music's after school program
$200,000
Advanced Traffic Analysis Center, North Dakota
$250,000
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
$400,000
National Center for American Revolution, Wayne, Pennsylvania
$1,000,000
Hal Rogers Parkway, Kentucky
$1,000,000
Ship Creek Improvements, Alaska
$2,000,000
I-SAFE America
$50,000
National Canal Museum, Easton, Pennsylvania
$100,000
Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and the Sea
$200,000
Renovation of First National Bank Building, Greenfield, Massachusetts
$250,000
Martha's Village and Kitchen, Indio, California
$270,000
Potato storage
$1,000,000
Transylvania Community Hospital, Brevard, North Carolina
$6,000,000
Treasure Island Bridge
$80,000
Hot Springs Bike Trail, Arkansas
$90,000
Karnal bunt research, Manhattan, Kansas
$175,000
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas
$210,000
O. Winston Link Museum, Roanoke, Virginia
$250,000
James S. Taylor Memorial Home, Louisville, Kentucky
$250,000
Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago, Illinois
$500,000
Traffic Signal Replacement Program, New Rochelle, New York
$2,000,000
Parents Anonymous
$100,000
"Servicing our Youth"
$275,000
Refurbishment of the Coach George E. Ford Center, Powder Springs, Georgia
$150,000
Piper's Opera House Programs, Inc., Virginia City, Nevada
$270,000
U.S. Vegetable Lab
$1,250,000
US-2, Dover Bridge, Bonner County, Idaho
$25,000
Capitol Area Boy Scouts
$113,000
Healing Place, Louisville, Kentucky
$500,000
Jim Thorpe Bridge Renovation Project, Pennsylvania
$600,000
Web Wise Kids
$800,000
Mammoth Lakes Bus Purchase, California
$100,000
Renovate the Jamestown (Ohio) Opera House
$400,000
Ed Roberts Campus transit center, California
$750,000
The Doe Fund's Ready, Willing & Able program
$160,000
Grapevine Bus Purchase, Texas
$500,000
Round Rock Higher Education Center, Southwest Texas State University
$1,400,000
Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, Arizona
$25,000
Transylvania County, North Carolina, Sheriff's Citizens Observer Patrol
and Education Team
$200,000
Chaldean Community Culture Center, West Bloomfield, Michigan
$300,000
Milwaukee Summer Stars
$450,000
Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center, Inc., Ashland County, Ohio
$750,000
Intelligent Transportation Systems, Wichita Transit Authority
$1,500,000
Operation Streetsweeper
$125,000
Planning for new route over Cape Fear River, North Carolina
$300,000
Omnitrans-Paratransit Vehicles, California
$500,000
Bike path, St. Petersburg, Florida
$1,000,000
WestStart Vehicular Flywheel Project, Washington
$15,000
Pines of Peace, Inc., Ontario, New York
$75,000
U.S. Dream Academy, Inc., Columbia, Maryland
$200,000
Oneonta Bus Replacement, New York
$450,000
Trout Genome Mapping
$500,000
LOVE Social Services, Fairbanks, Alaska
$750,000
Broken Bow rail spur, Oklahoma
$2,000,000
Tools for Tolerance program, California
$150,000
National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation
$1,000,000
DelTrac Statewide Integration, Delaware

Economics, modern conservative movement version...
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

It's a simple premise that one should be willing to pay for a service one wishes to receive. The modern Conservative denies this premise and instead insists that things be loaned from our kids.

I honestly believe that taxes need to be raised in addition to imposing a 'war tax.' But, first things first.

Cycloptichorn

Considering that the Iraq War costs us about $200 million per day, I'd wager that the programs you listed would, together, pay for maybe a couple of hours worth of that idiotic conflict. I'd gladly support every one of those projects in exchange for bringing the troops home immediately. Think of the money we'd save.

Yeah, yeah, you're anti-war, we get it. How about talking about the topic instead?

Mr. Mountie quotes Adam Smith on war and taxes, and i find this interesting, although not necessarily for the reason that he intended.

Mr. Smith is speaking of war and taxes from the rather narrow, parochial view of the English. War largely left England untouched. The only significant economic effects of war on England were the burdensome cost of the Seven Years War, which lead the stubborn and unimaginative George III to attempt to take the cost of their deficit out the American hide, leading to a revolution which was by no means inevitable. And the "continental system" of Napoleon had the effect of eventually destroying the steady growth of mercantile revenues which England had enjoyed for more than a century, even despite the American revolution--but essentially, the lives of the majority of the population of England were untouched. The novels of Jane Austen were written, from her juvenilia to her final novel, in the period in which the English participated in the Wars of the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars--although one would hardly know it from reading her work. The brother of the heroin of Mansfield Park obtains, through patronage, a berth as a midshipman, but the war is only oblique alluded to, and then only in the context of his prospects of "finding a place." In Persuasion, the hero is a naval officer who hopes that by success in taking prizes at sea, he can accumulate the capital which will allow him to make a reasonable offer for the hand of the heroine--the enemy is not even named.

And why should those wars have appeared in her novels? Those wars were fought with men whom one famous English general (the quote is attributed both to "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne and to Charles, Lord Cornwallis) was pleased to describe as "the scum of the earth." The Royal Navy relied so heavily on press gangs to fill the crews of her warships that Scots employees of the Hudson's Bay Company were uniformly short, being too diminutive to be the objects of the press gangs. Impressment of men who could not appeal to a master to seek their release was a source of so much of the Navy's personnel that mutinies were common, almost routine in that brutal service; mutiny became a form of work action, with violent mutiny almost unknown, but men refusing to come from below decks for their watches eventually a routine matter--the mutinties at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 were in large measure a result of relentless impressment by Royal Navy press gangs.

So the majority of England remained unaffected by her foreign wars because it was not the children of the middle class who fought those wars, unless a second or third son sought a career in the army or the navy. In fact, it was not usually even the sons of the working class who served. It was the sons--and the fathers, husbands and brothers--of the very poorest people who gave England her "thin red line of heroes."

Which makes Mr. Smith's comments the more germane to our situation for a reason which would not be immediately apparent from the quote. This war, with an all-volunteer service, only began to be widely unpopular when the Army National Guard and the Reserves were required to serve. The men and women of the enlisted ranks of our volunteer army are rarely the children of the middle class, and almost as rarely the children of the prosperous working class. Those children have other opportunities open to them than military service to provide for their education and a career in life. So long as the children of most of the public, and especially the middle class, are not at risk, and so long as there is an administration willing to put the economic future of the country in hock, likely for generations, foreign wars will be much easier, and for exactly the narrow, parochial reasons which Mr. Smith rehearses--because such wars do not routinely impinge on the apparent prosperity and security of the bulk of the nation.

My prissy opinion is that since that more than 1/3 of Iraq war spending goes to Bush campaign donars, Halliburton, Brown and Root ,to name a few ,who have received billions and will continue to receive billions compounds the reality that "War is Big Business". "Privatization of Government Services" ends up costing the tax payer more not less.

I do not want a tax imposed on myself or my children because of those oil-suckers and their no bid contracts.

And dammit, I AM a West Texas conservative Cyclo.

Lol. Nobody else does either; but you are getting a tax imposed upon you whether you like it or not. The proposal merely asks you to pay for it now. Which saves money and gives every citizen a realistic impression of the cost of the war.

Cycloptichorn

The Rock HOF is headed up by the former chief of Gun Control, Inc. He's also gay. And you wonder why Nugent isn't in the hall?

I hate liberal terrorist sympathizers. Suck my Glock.