12 Commitments to the American People
Written by Sam on June 17th, 2007This past week, Rudy Giuliani unveiled his “12 Commitments to the American People” at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
- Keep America “on offense” in the war on terror
- End illegal immigration
- Cut Spending
- Cut Taxes
- Make government accountable
- Push America towards energy independence
- Introduce free-market health care reforms
- Increase adoptions and decrease abortions
- Reform tort law and appoint strict constructionist judges
- Prepare “every community in America” for a terrorist attack or natural disaster
- Introduce a school-choice plan
- Promote free trade and globalization
This is an excellent agenda, no doubt. Now the question is, by what means would he plan on achieving these goals. Bush had a great second term agenda too and we all know where that went.
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Giuliani, I’m sure, will end illegal immigration–by making all immigration legal. Remember that he kept New York a sanctuary city and called President Clinton’s enforcement legislation from 1996 “anti-immigrant.” Now he’s lying about how tough he’ll be on immigration. Do not believe it.
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I couldn’t stop laughing when I read these on National Review a week ago or so. What a joke. 12 Commitments
1.) Will keep America on “offense”? What the hell does that even mean? Rudy doesn’t say which is how he prefers it throughout the “12 commitments”. He goes on to say this:
“We need to continue taking the fight to the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists by increasing the size, strength, and support of our military — beginning with ten new Army combat brigades.”
Ten new combat bridgades, so between 30,000-40,000 new combat troops (depending on the type of brigade) which would require about a 10:1 to 13:1 ratio of support troops in this post-Vietnam New-age military. So that works out to be 390,000-520,000 new support troops. Now let’s say that this is all a little high and that Rudy streamlines the Army, even if it only takes 100,000 support troops for this plan to work where are they coming from? He doesn’t say, he doesn’t even hint at it. Higher pay, bonuses and benefits? The Draft? Maybe we outsource this to illegal immigrants. Look I am all in favor of a tougher, larger Army, but can we cut the fat from this beast already. It takes 13 “fobbits” for one soldier to shoot at the enemy, am I the only one bothered by this?
So Rudy I understand how we are going to increase the “size and support” of the Army but am a little fuzzy on the “strength” part.
2.) In addition to “ending” illegal immigration Rudy also promises to “identify every non-citizen in our nation” which sent my pander meter through the roof. How exactly is that even possible unless we live in a totalitarian state? Well then again this is Rudy we are talking about here . . .
3.) Promises to “restore fiscal discipline” and “cut wasteful spending”. Nothing here about reducing governments size, cost or scope. Only buzz words and no plan for how this will be done other than the wildly optimistic, “Over the next two presidential terms, 42 percent of the federal civilian workforce is due to retire. We should only hire back half, replacing non-essential workers with technology.” Hmmmm, reduce government by 21% over 8 years, not a bad plan, how will it work in practice though? This “technology” is what exactly? He also wants agency heads to find 5%-20% worth of cuts, guess which end of the range they’ll find, if that. Also take note of the exact wording here, he wants the cuts found, not nessecerryily followed through on.
4.) Promises to cut taxes and reform the tax code. Talks about eliminating only one tax, the hated death tax. Says the next president needs to “keep taxes low” and he rattles of a list of taxes that President Bush has already cut which are set to expire during his potential presidency in 2010. Would extending these tax cuts count as cutting taxes? In DC anything is possible.
5.) This is by far the best one. How does Rudy plan to make the government accountable and restore people’s confidence you ask? Why with another layer of government! He will create “FedStat” (but he declines to explain what the hell it even is) which will monitor the government and post the results online so people can be outraged. Any group which is going to monitor and accurately detail the actions of the entire federal government is going to be a massive organization in and of itself. Big government to the rescue!
6.) What is energy independence one might ask? Is it when 100% of our electrical power for utilities is from domestic sources? Or is it when all energy creation period is from domestic sources? Neither will ever, ever, ever happen unless a massive breakthrough in fusion technology renders the energy complex antiquated which I am quite sure Rudy isn’t banking on. I am going to try and translate Rudy’s energy policy into commonsense english:
“We must decrease America’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil.”
Translation: “Damn this is a hot campaign issue and everytime I talk about it, it gets me airplay on tv and voters’ ears perk up.” I can only assume he is worried about our massive Canadian and Mexican crude oil imports which quite frankly scare the hell out of me as well.
“We must increase public and private investment in nuclear power, clean coal, and alternative-energy sources across the board.”
Translation: “With massive public funding, tax benefits, subsidies a shift to a command economy and tarriffs I am sure that big government can solve this problem, it has always worked in the past right?” Honestly I don’t know what people see in this man other than a borderline socialist.
“America must lead the world in energy-efficient, environmentally responsible, commercially viable innovation, including wind, solar, geo-thermal, ethanol, and biofuel technologies.”
Translation: “Okay, buzz-word check time, I already said nuclear and clean-coal so I need to include wind, solar, geo-thermal, ethanol and biofuel, wait is ethanol a bio0fuel, d’oh!” No comment.
In summation Rudy’s energy platform will require the following, public investment, increased private investment at the behest of the government and the complete destruction of our economy as we know it, but it’s cool because he is tough on terror.
7.) “We can improve the quality of health care while decreasing costs through increased competition. Solutions can include reforming the tax treatment of health care, expanding portable health-savings accounts, encouraging state-by-state innovations, and reforming the legal system.”
The rhetoric count is rising doctor and there is no sign of clarity in this paitient’s political dialouge!
8.) “We need to take advantage of the common ground in America to reduce abortions by increasing adoptions and assuring that individual choice is well informed.”
How?
“We need to measure our progress toward these goals.”
As opposed to what exactly, starting an adoption program that doesn’t involve record keeping?
“We need to reduce the high costs of adoption.”
I smell federal spending going up.
“And we need to protect our children against sexual predators and online pornography.”
I want to see the canidate that actually supports children being exposed to sexual predators and online pornography! Rudy takes on the tough issues folks.
9.) Well I don’t really have anything snarky to say about this.
10.) Rudy will ensure that “every community” in America is prepared for a terrorist attack. I am not sure this is the best approach to safety, surely we can concentrate on a few hot spots and leave Buckhead, GA alone.
“We need to ensure that local first responders are trained to meet natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks.”
And massive pork flows from DC into the heartland firehouses and police stations.
11.) He talks about school choice while not using the word vouchers, which is fishy.
“We need to promote math and science, while ending the digital divide. ”
Translation: “Buzz-words! I am on fire today, WHOOOHOO!”
12.) Could be code for free trade, but you never know because he doesn’t really say that. Instead he has a buzzwordgasm.
“We need to strengthen our country by engaging aggressively the global economy.”
Ummm, okay. Sounds good to me, where do I sign up?
If you couldn’t tell I don’t trust Rudy and like making fun him. I don’t hate the guy, but he is not what he sells himself as. When he fleshes out these ideas the real fun begins because one of two things will happen: 1.) the numbers won’t add up or 2.) there will a big increase in government with no way to pay for it without deficits.
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You’re right about immigration, if you listened carefully in the last debate to Rudy’s criticisms of the immigration bill, he never emphasized security - he kept harping about a tamper-proof ID card and other nonsense. He’s not against amnesty, he’s just against some procedural aspects of this bill.
Also, Giuliani falls into the trap of many Republicans who think that just because an idea is “conservative” in nature, it’s a good idea to ignore the delegation of powers in the Constitution and implement it on a national level. There should be no school-choice legislation nationally, because there should be no involvement of the federal government in education at all nationally. Conservatives need to stick to Federalist principles, not just when it is convenient for a pet issue.
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520,000 new troops would be fine with me.
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AMERICANS INSATIABLE THIRST FOR ENERGY MUST BE MODERATED R2
By Jay Draiman, Energy Development Specialist
As you know, many serious problems are associated with our insatiable thirst for energy. The reason is simple: To gain the energy we must burn the fuels. The combustion, by the way quite inefficient, causes huge gaseous emissions polluting the air and forming an invisible screen responsible for the famous “ green house effect ”, i.e., blocking the dissipation of heat and thus causing the feared warming up of our planet, with deadly consequences for nature and man.
There is only a finite amount of oil in the world. Everybody knows this.
Someday, we’ll run out. It will be gone.
Meanwhile, our insatiable thirst for oil — which we burn — has put enormous sums of money into the hands of fanatics who hate us and everything we stand for, and who use that oil money to fund the terrorists who murder Jews and Americans wherever they can.
We can’t burn oil forever.
And it’s bad strategy to base our economy on cheap oil when we have to buy at least some of it from our enemies.
Optimists tell us that the free market will eventually deal with the problem. Their theory is that as oil gets harder to extract cheaply, the price will go up; then other forms of energy will become economically attractive and we’ll switch over to them.
Here’s why their optimism is nothing short of suicidal.
First, there’s no guarantee that without intense government-funded research and financial incentives now, the new energy sources will be available in quantities large enough to replace oil when it does run out.
In other words, if we wait until it’s an emergency, our economy could easily crash and burn for lack of energy sources sufficient to drive it.
It’s easy to supply energy for an economy that’s only a tenth the size of the world’s economy today. The question is how many people will die in the resulting chaos and famine, before new free-market equilibrium is established?
Second, how stupid do we have to be to wait until we run out of oil before acting to prevent its waste as a fuel? Petroleum is a vital source of plastics. We could use it for that purpose for hundreds of generations — if we didn’t burn any more of it. But if we wait till we’ve burned all the cheap petroleum, it won’t be just fuel that we have to replace.
Third, market forces don’t do anything for our national defense, our national security. We had a clear warning back in the 1970s with the first oil embargo. What if terrorism in the Middle East specifically targets all oil exports, from many countries?
And even if they keep the oil flowing, why are we pumping money into the pockets of militant extremists who want to destroy us? Why are we subsidizing our enemies, when instead we could be subsidizing the research that might set us free from our addiction to oil?
You notice that I haven’t said anything about polluting the environment. Because this is not an environmental issue.
In the long run, it’s an issue of whether we wish to provide for our children the same kind of prosperity that we’ve luxuriated in as a nation since World War II.
It is foolish optimism bordering on criminal neglect that we continue to think that our future will be all right as long as we find new ways to extract oil from proven reserves.
Instead of extracting it, we ought to be preserving it.
Congress ought to be giving greater incentives and then creating mandates that require hybrid vehicles to predominate within the next five years.
Within the next fifteen years, we must move beyond hybrids to means of transportation that don’t burn oil at all.
Within thirty years, we must handle our transportation needs without burning anything at all.
Predicting the exact moment when our dependence on petroleum will destroy us is pointless.
What is certain is this: We will run out of oil that is cheap enough to burn. We don’t know when, but we do know it will happen.
And on that day, our children will curse their forebears who burned this precious resource, and therefore their future, just because they didn’t want the government to interfere with the free market, or some other such nonsense.
The government interferes with the free market constantly. By its very existence, government distorts the market. So let’s turn that distortion to our benefit. Let’s enforce a savings program. But instead of putting money in the bank, let’s put oil there.
Oil in the bank … so our children and grandchildren for a hundred generations can slowly draw it out to build with it instead of burn it.
Oil in the bank … so we’ll be free of the threat of fanatics who seek to murder their enemies — including us — with weapons paid for at our gas pumps.
Do you want to know who funded Osama bin Laden? We did. And we continue to do it every time we fill up.
You don’t have to be an environmental fanatic to demand that we control our greed for oil.
In fact, you have to be dumb and a fool not to insist on it.
But … foresight just isn’t the American way. We always seem to wait until our own house is burning before we notice there’s a wildfire.
Oh, it won’t reach us here, we tell ourselves. We’ll be safe.
Talk about foolish optimism.
Fair Threat to World Economy But Oil Boycott Improbable
Energy Efficiency Must Be North America’s Priority but Canada and
U.S. Fail on Energy Efficiency Policies
“The despots of the moderate Middle East are non-players save for
their oil in the ground… My concern is that my grand kids might see parts of the
Middle East turned into a nuclear waste land, and Ali Baba and The Forty
Thieves. The world community needs to see a checkmate within the next 60 -
90 days. Failing that, Iran and Syria will be emboldened.” Reiterating an almost
universal view on the panel, this CEO emphasized that the world’s seemingly
The Chinese contribution to the energy crisis
The quest for resources. The dynamic Chinese economy, which has averaged 9 percent growth per annum over the last two decades, nearly tripled the country’s GDP, has also resulted in the country having an almost insatiable thirst for oil as well as a need for other natural resources to sustain it. The PRC has been a net importer of petroleum since 1993, and has increasingly relied on African countries as suppliers. As of last year, China was importing approximately 2.6 million barrels per day (bbl/d), which accounts for about half of its consumption; more than 765,000 bbl/d – roughly a third of its imports – came from African sources, especially Sudan, Angola, and Congo (Brazzaville).
To get some perspective on these numbers, consider that one respected energy analyst has calculated that while China’s share of the world oil market is about 8 percent, its share of total growth in demand for oil since 2000 has been 30 percent. The much publicized purchase, in January of this year, of a 45 percent stake in an offshore Nigerian oilfield for $2.27 billion by the state-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) was just the latest in a series of acquisitions dating back to 1993 whereby the three largest Chinese national oil companies – China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), and CNOOC, respectively – have acquired stakes in established African operations.
Our insatiable thirst for Middle East energy is “the oil [that] feeds the fire.”
This idea that we can live in a homogenous cul-de-sac suburban development in our plastic homes driving 50 to 100 miles to work in a 4700lb SUV to our middle management job at Bed Bath and Beyond and expect this way of life to just continue on indefinitely with no consequences represents mind boggling ignorance and negligence towards our future. The “American Dream” is a relic of the Baby Boomer generation and will die with our parents and grandparents. To quote author James Kunstler: “Suburban development in this country represents the single largest misallocation of wealth and resources in the history of the planet.”
So could a 900 acre photo voltaic array power a major metropolitan grid. No, probably not. But the question isn’t how do we squeeze enough energy out of the technology to accommodate our seemingly insatiable thirst for electricity and fuel but rather how do we cut the fat and waste out of our civilization and our lives and actually live WITHIN our environment with some sort of sustainability. There is no one technology that will provide all our solutions. It will have to be a combination of wind turbines, solar and hydroelectric excluding the remote possibility that some new form of energy production (i.e. cold fusion or something equally fantastical) is unleashed on the world by CERN or ET. These power plants will operate primarily at a local level servicing on a much smaller scale than what we here in North America have been so used to in the last 70 or so years.
If the American public’s insatiable appetite for automobiles continues, uncurbed by any sense of responsibility, someone must, like a parent with a selfish child, at least start slapping wrists.
Perhaps we should ration gasoline, and insist that all cars meet a miles-per-gallon minimum — one higher than many sport utility vehicles, for example, achieve now. The rationing would not be a wartime figure, of course, but a reasonable amount allowed for business and pleasure.
Americans consume the largest portion of gas in the world and cry the loudest about the price.
The government should repeatedly increase the price of gasoline in an effort to slow our country’s insatiable thirst for oil. Utilize the excess profits and taxes to fund research and rebates for renewable efficiency and renewable energy.
Jay Draiman, Energy Analyst – 6/18/2007
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Where do they come from, a draft? How many of those are going to fight vs. sit in their air conditioned tents? The military is horribly mismanaged and throwing men and money at the problem won’t help us at all. We don’t need more troops to win in Iraq, we need more troops to actually engage, pursue and kill the enemy. A larger military is all fine and good but the Pentagon needs a massive culture overhaul.