What a Waste by Dayve

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

What a Waste

POSTED BY: DAYVE
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 11:38
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VIEWED: 1178
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Monday, August 28, 2006 5:12 AM

I pulled this up from www.crooksandliars.com this morning - There are many of us who feel the war in Iraq was wrong from the beginning. The cost of human life has been devastating; of this there is no doubt.

But for those who can only see things in terms of dollar signs (and there are more than a few of those), here is an example of the cost to California taxpayers.

Go check out what the trade-offs are for your state by using the link below.

http://nationalpriorities.org/

The Cost of “Staying the Course”
By: Nicole Belle @ 4:16 PM - PDT
The National Priorities Project has a real eye-opening website that calculates the cost of the War in Iraq and them compares it to what we could do with that money.
As a resident of California, here’s what they say we could be doing:
Taxpayers in California will pay $40.3 billion for the cost of war in Iraq. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
16,733,296 People with Health Care or
627,551 Elementary School Teachers or
4,767,634 Head Start Places for Children or
25,168,314 Children with Health Care or
235,246 Affordable Housing Units or
4,390 New Elementary Schools or
7,685,109 Scholarships for University Students or
616,017 Music and Arts Teachers or
741,482 Public Safety Officers or
117,140,845 Homes with Renewable Electricity or
601,790 Port Container Inspectors
end quote

edit: some of you may say that this is a small price to pay to protect the American way of life – but what (or who) are we really protecting..? IMHO this whole fiasco will haunt this country for many years to come.

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Monday, August 28, 2006 5:27 AM

CHRISISALL

Come on Dayve! You think we could whistle up that taxpayer money for just and noble uses?
What planet YOU livin' on bro?
The good of our children and country AIN'T A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE!!!
The potential loss of business and revenue connected to a 'war slow down' is the concern! THAT WILL RELEASE THE FUNDS, JIM!
F**K Head Start, they don't need to grow up all fed n'edjimicated to go fight an Oil-War!

Disgusted and all sarcastic Chrisisall

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Monday, August 28, 2006 5:42 AM

DAYVE

oh yeah, i forgot - we're only raising little militant goosesteppers... ah, the world we live in!

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Monday, August 28, 2006 8:24 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Doing nothing would have cost more.

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

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Monday, August 28, 2006 9:38 AM

FELLOWTRAVELER

What the Hell, I'll bite... Although, let me preface this with I am against the war and playing the devil's advocate.

I had read that the last straw between Iraq and the Bush administration was Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela were in discussions about starting to price barrels of oil in Euros instead of US dollars.

The article also stated that the pricing of oil in dollars keeps the value of the US dollar artificially high and it would collapse if any change ensued.

From their prospective, the collapse of the US dollar would be a whole lot worse than the temporary redirection of funds.

It could be BS, but if true, aren't we better off?

Ignoring, of course, the total loss of credibility on the world stage and a generation of Muslim kids that now want us all dead...

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Monday, August 28, 2006 9:46 AM

DREAMTROVE

Auraptor,

Nonsense.

Dayve,

I saw this post on C&L. The problem is there argument is full of liberal agenda items. That's an amazingly unconvincing argument to a conservative:

"Look, you could have spent all of this money on all of these liberal agenda items" is going to promp a big "no thanks."

I think there should be a few things in there like the number of small business loans it would pay for, or how many of the world's black market nukes could have been purchased with this kind of cash. Then I think you'd see less of a partisan split.

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Monday, August 28, 2006 9:47 AM

DREAMTROVE

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Monday, August 28, 2006 9:55 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Doing nothing would have cost more.

How do you figure? Doin' Jayne math now are we?

Oh, that's right, Saddam was positioning himself to take over the world!

Silly? Well, yeah, sometimes I am. Okay, so toppling his administration with a combo of political sanctions and black bag ops to make him 'dis-appear' would have certainly cost less.

Unrealistic? Yeah, I can be that too. So what about targeting those responsible DIRECTLY for 911, and KILLING them to be a warning to the rest in Iraq?
Oh yeah, no one in Iraq was directly linked to 911....

Wait, you mean LITERALLY doing nothing? That wasn't gonna happen on any playing field...

AURaptor, you always make a simple thing complicated, don't ya???

Hey, is the 'AU' in your handle symbolic for the distance 'twixt you and reality?

A very bad man Chrisisall

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Monday, August 28, 2006 10:03 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

Dayve,

I saw this post on C&L. The problem is there argument is full of liberal agenda items. That's an amazingly unconvincing argument to a conservative

DT, surely you ain't sayin' that schoolin' our next generation of future registered voters ain't high on a conservative's list of important issues?
A little money spent now conserves our nation's future, doesn't it?

How is that partisan Chrisisall

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Monday, August 28, 2006 10:47 AM

DAYVE

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
"Look, you could have spent all of this money on all of these liberal agenda items" is going to promp a big "no thanks."

DT i understand what you're saying - heaven forbid we ever try to help the future generations or :gasp: the poor... but i believe the california example also listed 741,482 Public Safety Officers or
601,790 Port Container Inspectors..... what? they don't count towards 'National Security'??...

When a conservative calls me a "bleeding heart" liberal... all i can say is... at least i have a heart.....

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Monday, August 28, 2006 11:26 AM

FREMDFIRMA

That's been my point from the very beginning.

This dumb jackassery isn't cost effective.

We wanted Saddam dead/deposed, there were much easier and cheaper ways to do it - all this madness does is feed a bloated and incompetent military-media-corporate-industrial combine that gives 1/100th of the results for ten times the price.

Bullets are cheap, stupidity ain't.

You ever want REAL capitalism to happen in america, as opposed to the "must-protect-our-monopoly" so-called 'capitalism' bought and paid for in congress by the MMCI Combie's lobbyist cash, you have to slay the beast... and starving it would go a long way towards that.

Also, now that their in bed and humping away with the Big Oil combine, one has to wonder what nightmare monstrosity is that going to create ?

This isn't a war, it's a corporate feeding frenzy.

And shut up with that "liberal agenda" shoveljob you morons, it's naught more than a list of EXAMPLES of what that money could fund - not what it necessarily would.... for my own thought securing our southern border would be worth the freakin investment.

Of course, could be the programming is looped again on line 20 *pushes control+break*
/RUN

-Frem

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Monday, August 28, 2006 6:12 PM

DREAMTROVE

Chris

Public education is often actually just left wing indoctrination, that's why the left wants to spend money on it. If it were up to us, we'd privatize it, and then education would be run by corporations, some of which would be run by liberals some would be run by conservatives, and whoever was better at it would end up dominating the field.

It wasn't all liberal agenda, but there was a heavy slant. I think it's a loser of an argument, since it would be arguing against Auraptor. I think you'd have to say this many $ could have made the US energy independent, could have bought this many barrels of oil, could have built a conservative education system to rival the liberal establishment. Then he might think twice about it.

Could have balanced the budget?

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Monday, August 28, 2006 6:21 PM

DREAMTROVE

Dayve,

Sorry, left on both accounts. Public safety is cops, which are a traditional democrat lobby. Port container inspectors were a platform item of Kerry '04. Nothing right wing about that.

Conservatives don't really give a damn about homeland security. The whole idea was invented as a sort of SS police force, it was part of the socialist agenda way back when. This was in Shachtman's original proposal, and it has showed up in other neocon wings. The large scale security force provide the police in police state, and helps prevent the organization of a real political opposition to the agenda. This is how you make a soviet union. Then again, maybe Auraptor would be for it (j/k)

Frem

Quote:
You ever want REAL capitalism to happen in america, as opposed to the "must-protect-our-monopoly" so-called 'capitalism' bought and paid for in congress by the MMCI Combie's lobbyist cash, you have to slay the beast... and starving it would go a long way towards that.

This sounded good. What's the beast?

Quote:
This isn't a war, it's a corporate feeding frenzy.

Sort of, but that distorts the issue, it's a feeding frenzy of an elite which controls some corporations, but it's for their own personal benefit, not the benefit of those corporations.

Quote:
And shut up with that "liberal agenda" shoveljob you morons, it's naught more than a list of EXAMPLES of what that money could fund - not what it necessarily would.... for my own thought securing our southern border would be worth the freakin investment.

Um, I was suggesting what might make a sound argument. The argument as presented comes across as "Instead of doing your thing, all of that money could have been spent doing my thing."

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:11 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
If it were up to us, we'd privatize it, and then education would be run by corporations

*loud smashing noise*
OWwww! My toe hurts!
See, I just had this knee-jerk reaction to that last word....

Not of the Body Chrisisall

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:20 AM

CITIZEN

Yes education run by corporations would work sooo well.

What's the atomic weight of bollonium?
Delicious!

Which company founded America?
Coke Cola!

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:32 AM

CHRISISALL

*Johnny comes home from Enron Public School*

"Johnny, what did you learn in school today?"

"I learned that our teacher was only performing to 86% of projected expectation, so he was canned. Our new teacher has a history of performing up to 92% of projected expectation, although us kids have a bet going that upper management pressure will knock that down to unnacceptable numbers also. Our teacher turnover rate has traditionally been-"

"But Johnny, WHAT DID YOU LEARN TODAY?"

"Watch your back Mom, always watch your back."

Chrisisall

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:35 AM

CITIZEN

Is that is johnny?

I also learned that results and content are totally unimportant in the face of profitabllity. On an unrelated note I really need you to buy me these products from our sponsors...

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:45 AM

CHRISISALL

Johnny will come to understand the Bottom Line better, and who to make friends with quicker, I suppose. Attention to objectivly unimportant details made important by computer analysis will be our kid's strengths. They will finally be truly free of so-called reality.

Corporate Utopianist Chrisisall

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:01 AM

HERO

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Doing nothing would have cost more.

How do you figure? Doin' Jayne math now are we?

Your right. Doing nothing was not a realistic possibility. Whether we acted at the time or later, eventually we would have acted therefore, doing nothing doesn't really cost more.

I think the idea AU is trying to express is that failing to challenge terrorists and dictators would have encouraged their efforts. They would have continued to strike with ever more destructive results while further insulating themselves from an effective American response. Isreal would eventually be ashes, as would American and Euorpean cities.

Doing nothing was never an option. Eventually the aggressor parties would have forced America to do something, although if we waited to the very last then our final act would have been one of capitualtion. At that point it really doesn't matter how many elementary school teachers California has...those children would have already lost their future.

I noticed some of you dismissing AU's comment as "nonsense". It does not surprise me. You advocate a "do nothing" approach. Then when someone argues the other side of the issue, your response isn't a passionate defense of your logical position...its "do nothing". AU is still out there, his position unrefuted. Were he instead the terrorist type and this a more violent forum rather then one of simple debate, your approach encourages the terrorist to strike again, knowing that you will not even raise a voice in protest. Slowly each of your voices is silenced (for terrorist debate points tend to leave lasting impressions on those unfortunate enough to hear them) until only the terrorist voice remains. At that point, you've lost the argument all because you were unwilling to make it.

H

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:07 AM

MISBEHAVEN

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

Public education is often actually just left wing indoctrination, that's why the left wants to spend money on it.

WTF? Since when did receving an education in math, science, history, language arts etc. become left-wing indoctrination?

Quote:
If it were up to us, we'd privatize it, and then education would be run by corporations

Yeah, that would work. The only thing this would accomplish is to make a select few very rich and widen the gulf between the haves and the have nots, because something tells me they won't be providing the education for free. So what happens to those who are unable to afford the education? SOL.

Quote:
some of which would be run by liberals some would be run by conservatives, and whoever was better at it would end up dominating the field.

And do you really want an education system that is driven by either political ideology? That's not the purpose of public education, but it'll likely be at least part of the agenda if education is privatized.

"The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation."
-Bertrand Russell

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:19 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I think there should be a few things in there like the number of small business loans it would pay for, or how many of the world's black market nukes could have been purchased with this kind of cash. Then I think you'd see less of a partisan split.

I think that money should be divided by the number of Californian tax-payers and let people get their own money back to do whatever the hell they want with it. If they want to donate it all to Head Start, or fund small business loans, or buy the biggest ass HDTV they can find, it's really THEIR money.

Can't Take My Gorram Sky

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:34 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:

Eventually the aggressor parties would have forced America to do something, although if we waited to the very last then our final act would have been one of capitualtion. At that point it really doesn't matter how many elementary school teachers California has...those children would have already lost their future.

How very dramatic. Yes, I see now that we were virtually there, thank goodness we acted as we did.

Quote:

I noticed some of you dismissing AU's comment as "nonsense". It does not surprise me. You advocate a "do nothing" approach. Then when someone argues the other side of the issue, your response isn't a passionate defense of your logical position...its "do nothing".

"Wait, you mean LITERALLY doing nothing? That wasn't gonna happen on any playing field..."
So that was a call to do nothing? You really are twisted, Lex.

Quote:

AU is still out there, his position unrefuted. Were he instead the terrorist type and this a more violent forum rather then one of simple debate, your approach encourages the terrorist to strike again, knowing that you will not even raise a voice in protest.

Attack me in an alley sometime, and I'll show you a voice in protest.

Look, what you guys miss is that we're not saying 'do nothing', we're not even saying 'no military response' (well, I'm not, anyway), we're saying DO IT RIGHT!

We could have achieved all that we have to this point without getting so many of our guys and girls killed in the process, but then I guess most 'Righties' don't care, eh? Cost of doin' business an' all, correct?

Bush makes me miss Reagan.

Chrisisall

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 9:28 AM

HERO

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
we're saying DO IT RIGHT!

Saw a nice spin on this by the Democratic Party last week. They pointed out that the War on Terror has now lasted longer then World War II. Thus if we can overcome the Nazis and the Japs in just a few years, why can't we beat the terrorists?

I find it odd that the Democrats are making an argument for the use of nuclear weapons...but I say, ok, if you really want to.

H

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 9:53 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Dream..

Quote:
This sounded good. What's the beast?

"bloated and incompetent military-media-corporate-industrial combine that gives 1/100th of the results for ten times the price."

These are the jackasses that we wind up paying $150 for a freakin toilet seat, cause they have a total monopoly on government contracts assisted by huge wads of lobbyist cash - case in point, KBR, whom I like to pick on because they were either unwilling, or unable, in many cases, to do work they had *already* been paid to do, you see.

So, they got the money, the work went undone... and they get more contracts ?!

Somethin wrong with that form of capitalism, dude - and yet these same corporations which give almost NO value to dollar spent are at the top of the list screaming "Free Enterprise" when someone wants to crush their monopoly and give a company who might actually give value for a buck, some kind of chance, you see ?

In the end, the defining trait of REAL free enterprise is "am i going to get more for my dollar with company X, Y or Z ?, and there's company E over here offering a special on something else if i buy this product from them, but company D has a better history of quality, hmmm...."

Choices, you see, and choices based on VALUE, to the customer.

Say.. I want a coffeemaker, in my town here - I can go to supermegastore A and get an overpriced piece of imported crap for $19.99, or I can go to supermegastore B and get an overpriced piece of imported crap for $19.88..
(Or drive sixty miles to maybe find something else, on current gas prices)

So...Where's my choice ? how is this capitalism ?
I want competition, I want choices, and the ability to actually get value for my dollar instead of being given false choices by a set of monopolies.

Quote:
Sort of, but that distorts the issue, it's a feeding frenzy of an elite which controls some corporations, but it's for their own personal benefit, not the benefit of those corporations.

Sure, but what's the difference at my end ?
Jack-diddly - as a customer, the companies in question are not offering value for my dollar, only a situation which demands the dollar be spent, and MAYBE value given.

That's a scam, any way you slice it.

Quote:
Um, I was suggesting what might make a sound argument. The argument as presented comes across as "Instead of doing your thing, all of that money could have been spent doing my thing."

My snarky comments in that respect were aimed at the "Oh no the sky is falling, liberal agenda, socialism, we're all gonna diieeeee, Osamas gonna get us whine-whine-whine!!" crapola that I'm just really tired of hearing, it's just meaningless gabble, especially when one side blames the other, for something THEY did in the first place...
(not on this board, but I've seen people screaming at Dems for a gun law that Reps actually fronted and passed.. you tell me how that makes sense ?)

So yes, imma be downright nasty in response to such blathering, cause it's gettin really, really OLD.

I think public education is pretty busted, but that whole "liberal agenda" crap is a smokescreen to dismiss actual education and replace it with theocratic indoctrination to create safely ignorant and illiterate drones for the workplace or military.
(To deny that you'd have to deny the religious stance against literacy, a proven fact.)

You ain't gonna fix it with going overboard on PC and sensitivity to the point of not understanding cultural differences and not actually having convictions either, so neither "agenda" is really worth a damn, and neither one BELONGS in an educational system, nor does a corporate one.
(The movie Demolition Man is a good example of too MUCH sensitivity or what have you.)

We really need a whole new educational model, since ours has been broken a long time, but an educated populace is the very gravest threat to all THREE of those agendas, so they're never going to fund it, oh hell no.

Why not take all those taxes going to fund a failed hellhole of disaster we call an educational system, and return them to the families they were taken from in the first place, so they can afford to cut some hours out of their schedule of slaving to feed the governments tax dragon... and educate their own kids, hey, how about that?

But golly gee whiz, we can't trust parents to educate their children, they might actually DO it, and then where would the combine be ?

-Frem

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 11:36 AM

DREAMTROVE

Frem,

You still misunderstand me.

It's not mindless right wing blathering. The left-wing argument that blows its own horn repeatedly win no one over to its side, it's a completely self defeating tactic.

The list sounded like a list of stuff that every democrat promises and never delivers. You gotta figure that republicans didn't vote for those arguments, and so are unlikely to be swayed by the argument.

I think that this was C&L's goal, and they failed remarkably, as I see no point in convincing democrats that Iraq war money was mis-spent, since they all believe that already, many of them for different reasons.

The whole MIC issue with spending is rediculous. All of that overcharging fat gets spent overseas running military campaigns, political campaigns, and revolutions all for the purpose of acquiring new puppet regimes that feed either the agenda or the profit master which then makes more money to wage more chaos on the world.

We're not the only country doing this, but it is the reason that the world is such a mess. Any seriously look into various wars around the globe shows superpower money coming underhandedly from corrupt wheeler dealers to buy guns etc. I did some digging as to where the bilking money was going, and this is what I came up with. A whole lot of it goes into political campaigns as well, in the US and abroad.

The money from the big dig was almost entirely funnelled into US political campaigns. That's democracy in action.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006 11:38 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

that whole "liberal agenda" crap is a smokescreen to dismiss actual education and replace it with theocratic indoctrination to create safely ignorant and illiterate drones for the workplace or military.

Frem, I could have put it as well, but it would hae taken me the better part of a month....

The corporate and government computers tell the drones what to do and when to do it; how smart do they have to be anymore?

Norman co-ordinate Chrisisall

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