April 15, 2008
Editor:
Dave Uphoff
It looks like rough sliding ahead with energy and food prices rising, credit card delinquencies increasing, home prices plummeting, and the stock market languishing. Most of us older folks have seen rough financial times before and maybe what we are experiencing now is just a normal fluctuation in the business cycle. We are entering a recessionary period with a government that is deeply in debt. To help us out of the recession the government is sending stimulus checks to American taxpayers which will put us deeper in debt. We are essentially borrowing from foreigners so some of us can buy more foreign products. Whether this will stimulate the economy is debatable. One expert compared it to dipping water out of one end of the pool and pouring it into the other end in hopes of raising the level of water. Last week we learned from the Senate grilling of General David Patraeus on the status of the Iraq War that our government has spent over $500 billion on reconstruction in Iraq. Yet Iraq, which has billions of dollars of oil coming out of the ground, had budgeted only $10 billion for reconstruction and spent only 1/10 of that amount. The time has come for us to ask why we continue to pour billions of dollars into a corrupt country which has billions of dollars in oil revenue. In addition, we learned from Senate hearings earlier this year there is so much corruption in the various ministries in Iraq's government that it has banned a review of those departments since that may expose corruption at the highest level of an incompetent government led by Prime Mininster Nouri al-Maliki. To make matters worse, much of this money allocated to the various government bodies is lost or stolen and is being used to fund the insurgents who are killing American and Iraqi soldiers.
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Whether or not you support the war in Iraq, to allow our tax dollars to be wasted on a corrupt and incompetent government with enough of its own money to rebuild itself is outrageous. Our country needs to help itself. We can't afford to throw money away on other countries when there is so much need here at home. Why is Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, spending much of his fortune in Africa with the money that was supplied mostly by Americans? Our government must realize that welfare begins at home and that we must help out those here at home before we try to take care others. The rest of the world is catching up with us economically. It is time for them to take care of themselves and we take care of ourselves before we destroy our economy.
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emo wrote on 4/16/2008 at 18:56:04
What really sad is besides the 500 billion we already wasted, sorry spent. That the firms that got the rebuild contracts pay the employees over there 4x what one of our soldiers get. Also our goverment gave control over the oil production to a foriegn country. When we invaded Iraq all the told us we were going to tap into their oil and pay for this war and rebuild. But no schools are broke, my taxes keep going up, road a falling apart, people are out of work, and I can't aford to drive to work since they tore the train track out 20 years ago. But W's friends are making more money then ever.
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