<p>“You know that I’ve complained bitterly about the US unwillingness to work with the Sistani-led Shia political majority. In fact, the moment of clarity for me was when Bush published his 100 page public report on Iraq with NO MENTION of “Sistani” or “Shia” in the narratives about the political situation in the country. I finished reading that report and knew conclusively that our government either had no clue or was intentionally lying.”</p>
<p>It wouldn’t have been that hard to do, either. Sistani would have welcomed the opportunity to come out from under Iran’s shield, could have dealt with the Kurds, eliminated Al-Sadr, and guaranteed human rights to the Sunnis. But U.S. blinkers about Iran (as usual) got in the way of clear thinking. </p>
<p>Now, I think they’ll just end up fighting it out, and the U.S. is mostly irrelevant, except in that we keep on serving pork in the Green Zone lunchrooms. (Chandrasekharan’s book is extraordinary.)</p>
<p>“Overtaxing the rich would probably lead to more problems in the economy than it would solve. Tightening the belt a little won’t hurt, of course. But a loosey-goosey “eat the rich” sort of plan could have seriously negative effects on the economy.”</p>
<p>They’ve been eating at the government trough for the last five years (take a look at the defense, raw materials, and oil stocks indices lately), so it would be quite hard in fact to “overtax”. If you just took back even a portion of the five years’ worth of ill-gotten gains, the problems of the spendthrift conservatives can indeed be overcome. But it’s not going to come from the middle class. So the choices left are: the rich, or my kids.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that you can’t look at the costs of the war in an economic void. Yes, it cost billions upon billions of dollars. It also generated a fair amount of GDP in many sectors as well.</p>
<p>Even if we were to tax a fair portion of the top 1%'s income away, it wouldn’t really change much. But it might negatively affect many areas of the economy.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the only thing that’s going to pay back the war is fiscally conservative policies and the acceptance of the bill as yet another addition to our tab.</p>
<p>Obviously UCLAri has not heard of opportunity cost, investment multiplier and a host of other macroeconomic factors. To use that reasoning, blowing things up and rebuilding them would be another way of generating GDP. </p>
<p>Sorry UCLAri , but statements like this display a shocking degree of economic illiteracy. The question is not whether an activity generates GDP. After all, spending a million on drilling worthless holes in the ground still counts as a million toward GDP. But effective expenditures, especially public ones, have a multiplier effect, and often are asset building. For example, money spent on education employs teachers, who in turn spend their paychecks to buy groceries…and we increase intellectual capital to boot. Money for iraq may provide a multiplier for mideast based contractors, but does d*mn little for us here.</p>
<p>I never said that the net effect was positive, so please don’t attack my economic knowledge (for one, I study it at the graduate level…)</p>
<p>All I’m saying is that the little online clock that says that “X USD spent” is the actual cost is silly. For example, many contracts lead to dollars spent in the US, particularly in the defense sector. We can’t completely discount all the dollars being spent on planes, guns, and engineers. It’s not where I’d prefer dollars being spent, but it’s not like we’re only watching dollars disappear into Iraq.</p>
<p>Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia, I think, sums it up best: there are things in life- life itself- that are priceless. No doubt, many of the blunders of the war, such as poor protection for the troops in the way of effective body armor, will end up costing us.</p>
<p>But we should not completely overlook the economic pluses just to make the economic negatives look bigger. The negatives speak for themselves.</p>
<p>If you study econ at the grad level, maybe you have the wrong teachers?</p>
<p>For the life of me, I can’t see how an intelligent person could argue that there are “pluses” to the Iraq war from an economic POV. You could only come to this conclusion if you posited (assumed, in econ-speak) that the money being spent was free. But it is not. It is either taxed or borrowed. Either it is forgone spending for something else now, or later. In any case, it is money being spent for little value.</p>
<p>I just don’t see any way around this, UCLAri.</p>
<p>Engineers at Lockheed, for example, spend money on groceries just like teachers do. I’m not saying that the money comes off the money tree, however.</p>
<p>And I think you can keep the personal attacks and comments out of it.</p>
<p>I believe we had that under Bill C…but then, his issues with poor (personal) judgement were more important to the electorate and hence the Republicans took over the White House. Yup, they threw out those “tax and spend” liberal Dems and now we have had 6 years of “don’t tax, just spend, spend, spend, cause it’s ok as long as it is for freedom in Iraq.” Deficit? What deficit? Oh you mean the one that was going away and now is bigger than ever?</p>
<p>Btw, I had some moments on election night. A client called several times, including just before his plane took off and right after it landed, wanting to know that updates I could get him above & beyond what he could get on CNN, wanting interpretations of developments, etc.</p>
<p>But the best was when D called. The first time she was <em>at</em> the DCCC victory party in D.C., right after Rahm spoke. She was there for Springsteen playing, and for the crowd going nuts when Webb finally went ahead in the Virginia count late in the evening. Couldn’t even hear her…I was just going “Hello? Hello?” It was her roommate’s phone so I didn’t even recognize the number. She called later, while walking to Union Station to get a cab home, giving me all the delectable details, and asking me for input about what the news sources were saying about various races, my readouts from the various Secretaries of State offices, etc. She called yet again when she got home.</p>
<p>I can’t say I’m unhappy with the California state results. It looks like we may have lost a State Senate seat in Orange County, a big deal only in that the Dems will lose the 2/3 majority required for tax & budget measures (a condition that contributes heavily to the political dysfunction in California). Otherwise, despite a lackluster campaign by Angelides at the top of the ticket followed by a yawner blowout by Feinstein on the next race down, Democrats swept the statewide offices except for Insurance Commissioner…the three Democrats in this house weren’t the only ones who voted against Cruz Bustamante as being an unethical hack.</p>
<p>I can live with the ballot measure outcomes. The odious Prop 85, one of those parental notification measures, got thrashed. The infrastructure bond measures all passed. </p>
<p>And locally, Prop Y, which instructs the police deparment to make enforcement of marijuana laws its lowest priority, won with 65 percent of the vote, thereby establishing once again that I’m in the most conservative 1/3 of the voting populace. (I’m for decriminalization, actually, just don’t like the idea of micromanaging the police…just to be clear.)</p>
<p>TheDad, I think a lot of us owe Cruz for giving us the opportunity to adopt a smug, self-congratulatory attitude and say “I’ve voted for a Republican when I thought he was the better candidate.”</p>
<p>I voted for Bustamante over Ahnold the last time around with the greatest reluctance. I’m a pretty good individual litmus test: if I’m not enthusiastic about a Democrat, they’re in trouble in this state. If I’m enthusiastic, they’re gonna win.</p>
<p>Well, the Greens nearly left the Senate in Republican control via Virginia and a third party left a Republican in control in Minnesota. I’ll blame Nader “there’s no difference between Gore and Bush” for 2000 forever.</p>
<p>Ari, I’m often nice. Some folks have no idea how restrained I am.</p>
<p>What we should have done, once the decision to take out Hussein was made, was quietly go to the Allaytollahs in Iran and say, “We will do your dirty work for you in Iraq, but we need to sit down and figure out where Iran and the US can find common interests…”</p>
<p>It seems to me that there was a period of time when Iran was very nervous about US intentions and demonstrating some degree of restraint. There might have been an opportunity.</p>
<p>In Iraq, we should have just let Sistani form a government with some window dressing of Sunni participation. If you know that’s the inevitable outcome, you might as well just go there right off the bat.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Bush keeps saying that victory is the only acceptable outcome. I have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s like the fire chief looking at a smoking pile of rubble and saying, “we must save the building.”</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, the only decision left to be made is how fast to cut 'n run. Probably outta go ahead and contract with Halliburton and Bechtel to build some heliports in the Green Zone, because the last Americans in Bagdhad will probably need them to get out.</p>