Mountain Views News          Saturday, April 9, 2011

13

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, April 9, 2011 


STUART Tolchin..........On LIFE

HAIL Hamilton My Turn

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WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 
DREAM?


Something Is Terribly 
Wrong In Afghanistan

 
The

strength 
of Taliban 
forces are 
currently estimated 
to be 
about 10,000 
fighters. Of 
that number 
only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, 
full-time insurgents. Add to that an estimated 
100 to 300 full-time combatants 
are foreigners, from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, 
Chechnya, various Arab countries and 
perhaps even Turkey and western China.

 Arrayed against them are 170,000 well 
paid but not so motivated Afghan soldiers 
and 98,000 US soldiers. Calls for more 
troops could be in the offing.

 That means a ragtag army of 10,000 
insurgents who have no tanks, no heavy 
artillery, no jet fighters, no helicopters, 
no sophisticated body armor, no night vision 
googles, no GPS or satellite communications 
are successfully holding down a 
massive 270,000 force of Afghan and US 
soldiers, backed by billions of dollars and 
every high tech weapon imaginable. 

 Yet the situation in Afghanistan is being 
described as “grave” and, despite President 
Obama’s promise to withdraw all US forces 
by July, we may be stuck in Afghanistan 
for “years.”

 This is quite a contrast to the start of the 
war back in October 2001. Then US Special 
Operations Forces on horseback, using 
close air support (CAS), fought along side 
Afghan ground forces supplied primarily 
by the Northern Alliance. By December, 
two months after the war began, the Taliban 
were routed from Kabul and Osama 
bin Laden was scurrying for shelter in Tora 
Bora. 

 In fact, so few Allied ground forces 
were facing the enemy that it wasn’t until 
three months after the war began that the 
first US soldier, Sgt. First Class Nathan R. 
Chapman, 31, a Green Beret, was killed 
January 5, 2002.

 My point is that somehow we went from 
the Northern Alliance successfully fighting 
the Taliban to the US trying to fight the 
Afghan war alone, while well paid Afghan 
soldiers -- having suffered more than 8,600 
killed and 26,000 wounded -- show little 
desire to engage the Taliban and seem to 
prefer the safety of marching around the 
parade grounds.

 According to one observer: “Among the 
Afghans, mass illiteracy, equipment loss, 
crime and corruption, which is prevalent 
in the police, have blunted readiness, immaturity 
and ill discipline bedevil many 
units. Illicit drug use persists, and some 
American officers worry about loyalty and 
intelligence leaks.”

 This raises a fundamental question: 
Why have the wars in Afghanistan and 
Iraq been so easy to wage? In a December 
7, 2009, NY Times editorial, more than a 
year ago, columnist Bob Herbert wrote:

 “The idea that fewer than 1 percent of 
Americans are being called on to fight in 
Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending 
them into combat again and again and 
again -- for three tours, four tours, five 
tours, six tours -- is obscene. All decent 
people should object. “The reason it is 
so easy for the US to declare wars, and to 
continue fighting year after year after year, 
is because so few Americans feel the actual 
pain of those wars....”

 I don’t think our current way of waging 
war, which is pretty pain-free for most 
citizens, is what the architects of America 
had in mind. Here’s George Washington’s 
view: “It must be laid down as a primary 
position and the basis of our system, that 
every citizen who enjoys the protection of 
a free government owes not only a proportion 
of his property, but even his personal 
service to the defense of it.”

 In other words, in a democracy like 
ours if war is righteous enough to wage the 
price for it should be born by all, not just 
a brave few.

 When you consider the 1,500 Americans 
who have been killed in Afghanistan 
and the nearly 5,000 in Iraq, it is a high cost 
indeed. Add to these figures the estimated 
370,000 wounded and the cost is immeasurable. 
And for what? Oil and natural gas!

 The Pentagon’s official count of our 
wounded is only 32,987. Yet there have 
been more than 320,000 confirmed casualties 
with brain injuries alone -- from serious 
concussions to irreversible brain damage. 
Who’s kidding who?

 And this doesn’t take into account the 
more than $1.2 trillion already spent on 
these wars or the estimated $4 to $6 trillion 
that they will ultimately cost. What 
we are doing is indefensible. It’s time we 
ended this deadly foolishness and stropped 
using war, the ultimate obscenity, to solve 
the world’s problems. Enough is enough! 
It’s time we bring our troops home.

 I’m sitting down to write this article on Monday, April 
4th, 2011. April 4th is a special day not just because it 
is my wife’s birthday but because of what happened to 
America on that day in 1968. Probably a great many 
of you weren’t even around but for those of you old 
enough to remember it was a sad end to a beautiful dream. If you 
recall the date it was on that evening that the news of the assassination 
of Martin Luther King was spread across the world.

 Right now I’m looking at a button that I found downstairs on the 
table that sits in front of our giant television. In the center of the 
button is a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, a young looking man 
in a suit jacket with his long-sleeved shirt and cuff-linked left hand 
showing below his wrist watch as his hand points upward and his left 
index finger rests against his left cheek. He looks to be a thoughtful 
young man and on the bottom of the button are the dates of his 
lifespan Jan 15, 1929- April 4, 1968. Yes, he was only thirty nine years 
old at the time of his murder. Amazing, isn’t it? One thinks of him 
as so much older. Perhaps this feeling of agedness is related to the 
respect we all have for his most famous statement. This statement is 
written in capital letters at the top of the button, I HAVE A DREAM.

 What was that Dream and where has it gone? It was a radical 
assertion that called for not only the end of racial discrimination 
but also included an awareness of the horrors of poverty and the 
confidence that change be brought about by non-violent means. He 
was not just the champion of African-Americans but really spoke for 
all of us who desperately yearn to live in a world which expressed a 
kind of aesthetic harmony, the City on the Hill, the Best Creation 
of Mankind. His dream was a restatement of Man’s ancient wish for 
Peace on Earth and Universal Goodwill—and he was willing to fight 
for it, but non-violently.

 It is my belief that many of the original European men, women, and 
children who braved the ocean voyage to this unknown came in the 
hope of making real this same beautiful vision of freedom, equality, 
and justice for all. Unfortunately, the dream quickly was obscured. 
The societies which were constructed were expression of a kind of 
fundamentalism that demanded a rigid conformity to a Puritan 
vision of life. Think about the Taliban and compare that society to 
the witch trials of Salem Massachusetts and the murder of Native 
Americans and the enslavement of Africans.

 Remember at the time of his death Dr. King was in Memphis 
Tennessee supporting demands by a public service Janitor’s Union. 
That’s right a UNION! And he was speaking about the need to 
end the Viet Nam War soon after President Johnson had lied to the 
American Public in order to gain the authorization to escalate the 
war. Sound familiar. For generations the United States has supported 
and helped establish government by tyrants in order to satisfy our 
continued appetite for oil and material comfort at the unavoidable 
cost of the loss of our vision of the Dream. 

 At some point America must make a decision. What do we want? 
Is it the Dream or the oil and the conveniences that require the 
continued supply of energy? Isn’t the achievement of a world of peace 
and brotherhood and respect for the maintenance of our ecological 
systems more important. Perhaps if we can stop killing each other 
and destroying our planet we can regain contact with our original 
vision? 

 It is forty three years after the death of Martin Luther King which 
was coincidentally forty three years after the dropping of the atomic 
bombs upon the nation of Japan. The release of these bombs should 
have been enough to demonstrate that technology had progressed to 
a capability of total world destruction. Perhaps this was the moment 
when knowledge could have been shared in such a way as to avoid 
our world wide race to oblivion. Is it only a matter of time until some 
war or some accident linked to a natural disaster brings about world 
destruction? If you had to choose between the likelihood of world 
peace versus the likelihood of world destruction what would be your 
prediction? 

 As I walk outside the next morning the sun is shining and much 
of my gloom is gone. Certainly, we have made some progress but 
the truth is that the only thing certain about the future is that it is 
uncertain. I believe that Dr. King would have smiled at the election 
of Barack Obama but it takes more than an election to end racial 
discrimination. Discrimination is still alive but so is the Dream. It 
is a Dream that can be shared with the whole world. Now, if only 
dreaming was all that was necessary but that’s another dream... 

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LEFT TURN


HOWARD Hays As I See It

Congressional 

Republicans have a 
problem with the 2011 
budget: If there's to be a 
government shut-down, 
it's how to get credit 
for it among their Tea 
Party supporters, while 
convincing the rest of us 
(those who don't regard 
the president as a Muslim infiltrator from 
Kenya) it was really the Democrats' fault. 
(Don't laugh - according to a February survey 
from Public Policy, 21% of Republicans aren't 
sure whether President Obama was born in the 
United States. 51% are convinced he wasn't.)

 Jumping ahead, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) 
has presented a Republican budget for 2012. 
He claims the Congressional Budget Office's 
prediction of $143 billion in savings over 
the next ten years under the Affordable Care 
Act simply isn't so, that instead it will cost 
$1.4 trillion. So, under that assumption, 
repealing the ACA would shave $1.543 trillion 
off President Obama's figures just like that. 
Cost savings and greater efficiency would be 
brought to Medicare by eliminating frivolous 
boards, like the one charged with bringing cost 
savings and greater efficiency to Medicare.

 In keeping with conservative goals, more 
choice and "flexibility" would be available to 
individuals. Seniors in Medicare would have 
the choice to pay substantially more out-of-
pocket for roughly the same coverage offered 
now, or pay about the same and receive 
significantly less. Private insurers would have 
the flexibility to spend seniors' payments and 
taxpayer subsidies on marketing campaigns 
and million-dollar salaries, rather than having 
"big government" dictate the funds instead be 
spent on actual healthcare.

 Rep. Ryan demonstrates consistency and 
conviction. In 2003 he joined those arguing 
that turning Medicare over to private insurers 
would be a cost-saver. Instead, according to the 
Commonwealth Fund, Medicare Advantage 
raised costs 12-13% over the traditional plan 
and cost taxpayers an extra $33 billion over 
its first five years. Plan administrators were 
prohibited from negotiating for lower drug 
prices, so Big Pharma CEOs could have the 
flexibility to choose whether to add another 
corporate jet to the fleet.

 There's also the insistence that lowering 
taxes for the wealthiest, with seniors, students, 
the poor and middle class footing the bill, is 
somehow good for the economy. Rep. Ryan 
made that argument eight years ago, and seems 
blissfully unaware of the consequences.

 The question now is not how much to cut 
taxes, but how much fatter to make the refund 
checks going to those who don't need them. In 
the Senate last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-
VT) listed a number of firms Republicans feel 
need more help from the rest of us:

 ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits in 
2009, and got a $156 million IRS rebate.

 Bank of America made $4.4 billion in 
profits, after $1 trillion in bailouts (Federal 
Reserve and U.S. Treasury), and got a $1.4 
billion refund from the IRS.

 Over the past five years, G.E. took in $26 
billion in U.S. profits, along with $4.1 billion in 
tax refunds. 

 Chevron got a $19 million refund from 
the IRS after reporting profits of $10 billion for 
2009.

 Goldman Sachs in 2008 made $2.3 billion in 
profits after receiving $800 billion in bailouts, 
and paid an effective tax rate of a bit more than 
1%.

 Citigroup paid no federal income taxes on 
profits of $4 billion, after receiving $2.5 trillion 
in bailouts. 

 Sen. Sanders concluded, "We have a deficit 
problem. It has to be addressed, but it cannot be 
addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, 
the poor, young people, the most vulnerable 
in this country. The wealthiest people and the 
largest corporations in this country have got 
to contribute. We've got to talk about shared 
sacrifice."

 The more people are working in good-paying 
jobs, the more taxes are being paid to bring 
down the deficit. The thirty years after WWII 
saw a 75% rise in productivity along with a 
similar rise in real wages, creating the largest 
middle-class the world had seen. According 
to Princeton Prof. Alan Blinder, since 1978 
productivity increased 86%, but wages only 
by 37% - and minus benefits, mostly for rising 
health care costs, real wages haven't increased 
at all.

 Over the past thirty years the share of the 
nation's income going to the richest 1% grew 
from 8% to 24%. The share of the nation's 
wealth controlled by that 1% has grown to 40%. 
The tax rate paid by the wealthiest dropped 
from 70% during the Eisenhower years to 
about 16%. A billionaire hedge fund manager 
might pay at half the rate of a $50,000-a-year 
teacher. 

 History shows that when the middle-class 
was larger and unions stronger, the deficit was 
smaller and the country more prosperous. 
But Congress has its own self-interest: in the 
freshman class, 60% of new members in the 
Senate, and 40% in the House, are millionaires 
(compared to 1% of the general population). 
There's protection of their own wealth at stake, 
as well as the interests funding their campaigns.

 For some, the recession's over. According 
to USA Today, CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 
to a pre-recession median of $9 million yearly. 
Pay for average workers grew by 2%. Much 
executive pay is tied to increased profits; but 
profits have grown not through expansion and 
productivity, but through cost cutting, layoffs 
and slashing benefits. 

 For the rest of us, we can be can be encouraged 
by recent progress. When President Obama 
took office, we were losing 750,000 jobs a 
month. We've gained 1.8 million jobs over the 
past 13 months, with 216,000 added in March 
alone.

 

 Republicans now want to wipe out the 
recent recovery and restore policies which 
brought about the recession in the first 
place; along with gutting worker protections, 
environmental regulations, support for 
education and minimal concern for those 
most in need. Motivations are clear; half the 
savings in Rep. Ryan's plan go not towards the 
deficit, but to finance extended tax cuts for the 
wealthiest.

 

 Should this come to pass, it won't be a matter 
of determining which party is responsible, but 
of blaming ourselves for turning control of our 
future over to those who believe we're led by a 
Muslim from Kenya.

DOLLARS AND SENSE?! - 

Some Comments on State and Federal 

Issues Made This Week By Our Elected 
Officials:

From The Mayor of LA County:

GOVERNOR’S “PUBLIC SAFETY” PLAN AN OXYMORON

 “Dumping state felons in our communities and calling it improving public 
safety is an oxymoron -- as is his contention that extending high taxes 
for another five years will pull California's economy out of the toilet,” said 
Los Angeles County Mayor Michael D. Antonovich in response to Governor 
Brown’s signing of Assembly Bill 109, transferring state prisoners to local 
jails. “The time is now for the Governor to return to earth and get real by 
keeping felons in state prison, eliminating the deficit, job killing red tape, and 
excessive taxation.”

From Congressman Adam Schiff (CA-29) on the potential government 
shutdown:

“I am still hopeful that a government shutdown can be avoided, and I am 
doing everything possible to call for a responsible resolution on the amount 
of spending cuts. It would be a terrible result, however, if policy riders unrelated 
to our budget were permitted to derail the budget negotiations. A 
shutdown will be harmful to our economic recovery and would represent 
a tragic outcome for the country. Under that circumstance, I have asked 
my staff to continue working without pay, so that we can meet the needs of 
constituents dependent on Social Security, Medicare, the Veterans Administration 
or other federal assistance. Moreover, if federal employees do not 
get paid, no Member of Congress should, and I will be donating my salary to 
charitable causes in my district.”

Mountain Views 
News

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the concerns of 
our readers are 
this newspaper’s 
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will be our guide. 

From U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on the potential government shutdown 
and the recent assault on women:

“Here we are, 12 hours away from the United States government shutting 
down. What is this over? It is over women’s health. The [budget] numbers 
have been agreed to, but it’s an opportunity for the right wing in the House 
to really sock it to women,” said Senator Feinstein.

At midnight Friday, the federal government will run out of money and begin 
a shutdown of key agencies and services, furloughing more than 177,000 
workers in California. 

CALIFORNIA IMMIGRATION BILLS DIE

(04-05) 14:13 PDT Sacramento, Calif. (AP) A legislative committee on 
Tuesday rejected twin bills by a Republican lawmaker who sought to crack 
down on illegal immigration in California, in part by requiring citizenship 
verification for anyone applying for a job or public benefits.

The legislation by Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a tea party member from 
San Bernardino County, faced long odds in a Legislature controlled by Democrats. 
(Donnelly also represents Sierra Madre, and parts of Arcadia and Monrovia.)

His main bill, AB26, would have allowed residents to sue so-called “sanctuary 
cities,” which do not cooperate with federal immigration officials, and 
required employers to verify applicants’ citizenship. It was rejected on a party-
line, 7-3 vote by the Assembly Judiciary Committee.