Start a War, No Money Down!

By MATT MILLER

[Infomercial director: " 'The Republican Guide to Wartime Tax Cuts' ... Take One ... Action!"]

ANNOUNCER: In the old days, war profiteering was a grueling round-the-clock job. You actually had to make something, like planes or guns, and then overcharge the government obscenely. Now, thanks to the Republicans, countless Americans are becoming "war profiteers" in their spare time - and you can, too. Riches once thought to be the exclusive preserve of a few unsavory arms merchants have been made available to thousands of successful Americans, many of whom pull in the cash literally as they sleep!

What's their secret? With "The Republican Guide to Wartime Tax Cuts," you can find out what's in the playbook of Republican professionals. You'll get the war you want without laying out a dime, even as you benefit from huge tax cuts to boot (note: certain income thresholds apply).

And here's the kicker: you can slip the bill for all of this - both the war and your tax cut - to unsuspecting children!

I know what you're thinking: "I don't have the self-confidence or social skills to reach for such dreams." But here's the truth: neither did Republicans a few years ago. Yet just this week they came through again. On Wednesday, George Bush signed into law an additional $82 billion for Iraq, which brings the amount America has spent to oust Saddam Hussein and occupy the country close to $300 billion.

Now, whatever you thought about Saddam, the best news is this: we got this war for no money down and zero payments for 10 years. That's right: every penny spent on this war has been added to the deficit. And this latest $82 billion sailed through without a hitch, with no pesky questions as to whether we should actually pay for our own wars today.

(Yes, there was one scare, when Joe Biden said we could do that by repealing a sliver of the tax cuts with which the G.O.P. has incentivized important Americans. Luckily this notion was swatted away as "nongermane.") Now the drive for more tax cuts continues, even as yearly deficits close in on half a trillion dollars!

If you're ready to bring into your own life the power that this total suppression of fiscal and moral reality can offer, "The Republican Guide" is for you. Our CD's and training manuals will teach you how to profit during wartime without ever leaving your home. In an age of everlasting war, we'll show you which congressmen to call to make sure your tax cuts are permanent to match.

But there's more. Beyond learning how to maximize your own wartime tax cuts, you'll master previously undisclosed behavioral secrets that let you act as if there's nothing wrong with getting yours while the getting's good - just as top Republicans do!

Don't take my word for it. Listen to how someone just like you changed his life in a few short hours of study.

[Testimonial]

THIRTY-SOMETHING MALE: I never felt strong enough to utterly ignore Judeo-Christian ethics, even though I suspected that could get me the life I dreamed of. That's why "The Republican Guide" is so inspiring.

Believe it or not, there was actually a time when it was considered offensive to fight wars and cut taxes at the same time. In those days, conservatives were ostracized for wanting to scrap estate taxes for wealthy heirs while soldiers died in distant lands and their families scraped by on food stamps. I know - it seems so far away!

That's when I had to ask myself: if Republicans could find the courage to put these inhibitions behind them, imagine what I could do to reach for the brass ring in my own life. Now, though I'd rather not go into the details, I make more money, pay less taxes and have a beautiful wife and child.

[Back to announcer]

ANNOUNCER: So what are you waiting for? Our operators are standing by at call centers in India. Let "The Republican Guide to Wartime Tax Cuts" change your life, just as it's changed America.

[Voice-over]

WARNING: Support for the Republicans' wartime fiscal policy may include such side effects as 50 million uninsured, crumbling roads and bridges, and swelling inequality. If you are concerned about any of these symptoms, please call Dr. Howard Dean.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Very cogent argument. I'm convinced. Sign me up for whatever they're selling. The jabs at soldier's families living on food stamps really brought it home. I mean stealing 50% of someone's life worth is definitely required when people are actually getting free food. There goes my inheritance. Selling my parent's shop and their house so the little bastards can afford better than their food stamps is just a labor of love at gunpoint I suppose.

I think that the article is right about deficits and fiscal responsibility but don't sign me up for a national health care plan or food stamps. The cost of health care will keep going up until people stop demanding more care than they can pay for. The problem with a national health care system is that the health care demands of everyone are treated equally while the payment i.e. allocation of resources (labor, coal, iron etc.) are not allocated equally. They are dumped on the society as a whole so some people pay a very disproportionate amount. If everyone has roughly the same cost in medical care then the idea of insurance doesn't work and is in fact inefficent because of the added overheard of collecting the insurance. It would be much better if everyone paid as they went. So allowing insurance rates to go up until people start accepting lower levels of health care is the proper approach. Ineqaulity is a rather dubious concept if it means that everyone is the same because some people will always be smarter, richer, better looking, etc. than others. Equality means that the government should not treat those accused of a crime inequally and that the government should not show economic favoritism. Giving state contracts out to women contractors first or proving that there are no women contractors available is economic favoritism and unconstitutional. Favoring white males for presidency of the United States is not equality. Giving rich people a get out of jail free card is criminal favoritism. Mandating a blind quota system based on race, gender, religion etc. when such groupings are not relevant is not equality.

I think socialists should be ridiculed as much as republicans because at best they drag everyone down to a mediocre level that is only slightly better than the previous mean all the while preventing innovation and progress. Does the constitution say promote or ensure the general welfare? Because they are two different concepts.

I agree with a lot of what you said. Health insurance is some kind of weird racket. Did you know that Sen. Bill Frist and his brothers are either at or close to billionaire status from the HMO business? I mean, good work should have its reward but that money's coming from somewhere, and I'm afraid a lot of it is coming out of employers who are struggling to pay it.

Some of the wealth we're seeing today is just a bit sick, IMO. Probably always been that bad, I dunno.

Food stamps might be different. I've heard that it helps to keep farmers afloat and if it keeps starving people from begging on the streets even more than they do (you oughta see it in San Fran...Lohd have mercy) might be worth it. At least with a food stamps only setup, they have the health to go find work and the need to, because all they're getting is the food, ideally anyway.

I hate to admit it, but when I was on an HMO plan for a few years, I did go in more often than I ever had, and some of it was probably unnecessary. Oh well, I'm back to the economy model -- scraping it up however I can.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Is there a problem with Dr/Sen Frist making money?

I'd like for every rich mofo out there to get off his moneybags and try public service. I mean, once you have a billion bucks, you need another billion? Huh? You know how to make money, now try something you don't know.

Bot

sounds like you are contradicting yourself. Maybe Im misunderstanding.

I had kinda thought that we should all be smart enough now to not fall for the "class warfare" fostered by liberals to make us think rich people are unfairly getting a larger share than they should.

Its simply idiotic. If a person has a billion, and then make another billion, who gives a ****ingratsass. They aint gonna buy a bigger house or a bigger car, they are simply gonna invest that money into the economy, it will do much better having the money in the hands of a private citizen than the govt anyday.

WTF?

Heck, I don't care if folks want another billion. Makes no difference to me. Heck, they can make 100Bn. I'm just saying that if you've proved that you can do something better than most other people, what's the value in doing it again? Why not find a real challenge--one at which your outcome is terribly uncertain?

For example, I delight in Lance Armstrong winning the TdF so often. I think it is a wonderful achievement. But I don't think that winning any number of subsequent times could match the exhileration of that first win.

In the same sense, after making your first billion or so bucks, what is to be gained in personal satisfaction from doing that again? Why not sail around the world, go to engineering school, get an MBA, finance private space exploration, etc? It seems a waste of opportunity to continue down the same path rather than strike in a new direction, a new horizon.

But I certainly don't think somebody should NOT work to make a second billion if that second billion is a fullfilling goal.

See what I mean?

I bet it's pretty exhilarating to invest that second and third billion in an offshore bank account or a few slave labor sweatshops in Guangzhou Province.

Yo man, I've built multiple $20 million plus houses and I've seen up close the kind of over consumption that people with this kind of $$ think they are entitled to as a gift from God. It was a quandry -- I like working with mahogany, and I didn't mind the income, of course, but mahogany rain forests are being clear cut for this ****.

Right now, land use decisions go to the highest bidder most of the time. The Repubs are pushing for that to happen all of the time. Essentially, the guy who wants to rape the land for the maximum short term profit is going to get his way. I'm sorry, money is not God and some pinhead who thinks making a few $mil from gold mining, with the requisite leaving of a scarred landscape, replete with cyanide pond aftermath, polluted rivers, is just fine.... well I want to pound that mo fo.

Does the mere presence of hypocrisy reduce the relative veracity of the argument?

[RDHRNG] What do Chinese forums have to do with anything here?[/RDHRNG]

It is a quandry, I'll admit. Confusion is not something I'm proud of but a certain amount seems to be unavoidable, for me anyway. And I am happy for the freedoms in America. I don't think it would be healthy to try to outlaw the building of big houses.

The point I'm trying to make is that it might not lead to our best overall health and welfare to consume so much. I often thought, while building those grand palaces, that I would rather build more modest stuff for more average people. Well (be careful what you wish for) I'm doing that now. The money is not quite as good but I'm learning more as most of what I do is completely independent, so I have to know more to run things start to finish. No health plan, no dental, but I'm getting by.

The longest job I was ever on (2 1/2 years) was the building of a 16,000 sq. ft. house in Portola Valley, which is a bedroom community just west of Palo Alto, Stanford, et al, for a heart surgeon/inventor/Stanford prof. This guy invented the first balloon catheter in '62 or '63 I think. Took him 3 years to find someone who wanted to manufacture it. He has around 70 medical patents. Oh man, just one month's worth of his checks in the mail. He was/is one of the finest, most likeable guys I've ever met, rich or poor. Some of the mega bucks dudes I worked for were insufferable, IMO, but this guy was a class act. He would visit the job almost every day, walking around, and when he would come into a room I was working on, if I didn't say anything (which generally you shouldn't) he would linger and say in this inimitable style, "So....how ya doin'?" If you saw this guy in a coffee shop, you'd never suspect he was a billionaire.

It is estimated that his first device alone has saved the lives or limbs of around 15 million people (blood clot removing device). One of his devices is or was in Dick Cheney's chest, but I won't hold that against him.

My point is, no way am I going to begrudge this guy his money. Nonetheless, his two sons, 30ish, have all the earmarks of idle playboys. Official occupation, both: stock car racer. One of the guys on the job, a steel framer, was an avid weekend racer and he says neither one of them was especially good. I don't mean to knock the doctor on this. Money can be weird $h!t, with all sorts of bizarre manifestations. My dad was way poorer in his youth that I was with growing up with him, and he matured a lot quicker....hell, I'm still a bit flaky, sorry to say. Which brings me to my estate tax rap, which I'll hold off on.

But, I don't mind the question/assertion Narwhal. It's a fair one. To me, a lot of modern life is like being in the middle of a herd of buffalo that may or may not be stampeding towards a cliff. What d'ya do?

Full on hippie idealism is not too groovy and I'm not shooting for that, but I'm not in the kind of world I want either. Oh well...

cmac

Ha ha...those funny Chinese pleople..

.http://www.humorsphere.com/confucius/

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[http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/01/14/youve-got-problems-not-issues/ ]

"A liberal is someone who feels they owe a great debt to their fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."

I'm gonna have to finish reading that after my stomach stops hurting..

Careful dude, that can haunt you when you start dumping all over this or that hypocrit with whom you disagree.

Hypocricy shouldn't be used to automatically dismiss an argument. A pattern of hypocricy on the other hand...

And what necromancer divines that pattern?