Tag Archives: spending

The Cost of a Celebration

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President Donald Trump held America’s Independence Day celebration with a Salute to America, centered at the Lincoln Memorial.

Together, we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told—the story of America.  Today, just as it did 243 years ago, the future of American Freedom rests on the shoulders of men and women willing to defend it.

Just to pick out a couple of things: The Wall Street Journal cited “Democrats” complaining about

the use of military hardware for a traditionally nonpartisan celebration.

Because defending our nation’s existence and celebrating those who do that defense isn’t nonpartisan.  Sure.

And this one:

The Pentagon has said it wouldn’t have cost estimates until next week at the earliest.

I have some estimates now—not on the costs of the military units’ performances, but on those costs unique to their participation in the Salute to America celebration.

The aircraft—and their pilots—used consisted of

B-2 stealth bomber
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
F-22 Raptor
F/A-18 Hornet
Air Force One
Marine One

Their cost that’s unique to the celebration is a good approximation of zero.  Those sorties flown—every single one of them—count as nav currency sorties and formation-keeping currency sorties, and they are a direct substitute for sorties that otherwise would have to be flown as part of any pilot’s currency training.  Furthermore, the fuel and maintenance resulting from the sorties also are already accounted for in those required currency sorties.

M1 Abrams tanks
M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles

Here, the costs will be somewhat incremental, but some—the transport part—will count for existing currency requirements, similarly to the aircraft costs.

The incremental costs just aren’t that great.

Tax and Spent Progressive-Democrats

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In spades.  They’re in a race to bankrupt us.  Or, as The Wall Street Journal put it,

The Democratic presidential primary is turning into a bidding war.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) has broken out of the starting gate with an offer of forgiveness of $640 billion in student debt for our votes.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I, VT), though, has caught her at the first turn: he’s offering $1.6 trillion (yes, that’s with a ‘t’) in canceled student debt plus tuition-free “public” colleges.

And both, and their fellow horse racers, are offering tens of trillions more dollars on their Green New Deal variants, health care for all variants, government jobs guarantee variants, social security for all variants, and on and on.

Free stuff for all, and all they want is our votes.  And the destruction of our economy and our wallets.

The Land of the Free

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Free Stuff, that is.  Here’s the latest from Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, MA).  In addition to all the other free stuff she wants us to have, now she wants free child care.

[F]amilies living below the 200% poverty threshold (roughly $51,500 for a family of four) would get free access to child care and early education….

With this, Warren wants folks who, by her own definition, are not poverty-ridden to get free child care.  Notice, too, she’s lumped in with child care her “early education”—that’s her tacit admission that our public schools no longer provide actual education; they’re just child care facilities.

More importantly than that, though, is how she would pay for all of this.

Warren proposed using money from the ultra-millionaire tax that she announced at the end of January. Under the tax, anyone with more than $50 million in assets would pay a 2% tax. For those who have assets valued at $1 billion or higher, it would be a 3% tax.

That might—might—cover expenses for the first few years.  But Warren has no clue of what to do next (beyond, I assume, the usual Progressive-Democrat “solution” of raise taxes some more).  Warren has no clue where to get the money for all this free stuff (recall that she’s using her tax on the evil rich for other spending, too) when we don’t have any more rich because they’ve been taxed out of existence, no one aspires to be rich anymore (with the associated loss of economic activity and steady impoverishment of our population as a whole), the few remaining rich have moved their money overseas (and perhaps joined their money).

But hey—it’s Free Stuff today.  It’s votes today.

More important even than all of that is the moral damage she proposes to do to us Americans.  No longer are we to be responsible individuals, we’re just to be come wards of the State.  Her State.  Her State will supplant our individual morality with her own version; her State will strip us of our individual responsibilities, our individual duties.  Her State will do those.

Elizabeth Warren’s State is a socialist State.  John Adams wrote more than one hundred years ago that the nation of our Constitution required a virtuous, moral people to run it.  That’s not Elizabeth Warren’s State.

An Experiment in Progressivism

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This one has the advantage of being live and current. The Progressive-Democratic Party has extended its control over the State of California.  The results accumulating from the several years of Progressive-Democratic dominance (now outright control) are these.  California has

  • the highest welfare numbers (a third of all Americans on welfare live in California)
  • the largest contingent of illegal immigrants
  • a burgeoning homeless population
  • onerous regulations on business and private property
  • mediocre public schools
  • high income taxes (the highest marginal rate is 13.3%) and sales taxes
  • a yawning gap between rich and poor
  • its own summer blend of expensive gasoline
  • bedraggled and crowded roads
  • a widely mocked high-speed rail boondoggle

Sadly, it doesn’t get any better than that for California.  Or for our United States if the Progressive-Democratic Party makes further gains in 2020 or beyond.

Putin Threatens

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during his state-of-the-nation address Wednesday, warned that Russia will aim new hypersonic missiles at the US should it deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

Russia and its predecessor USSR have aimed weapons, including nuclear weapons—ICBMs, SLBMS, nuclear-armed bombers—at the US since they first acquired the weapons.  Does anyone really believe Putin doesn’t already have nuclear weapons aimed at the US today?  Is anyone interested in some beachfront property north of Santa Fe?

No, Putin’s threat just puts a premium on our deploying anti-missile systems at home, in Europe, around Asia, and in orbit as well as on developing heavily upgraded such systems and then deploying them, too.  Putin’s threat also puts a premium on developing upgraded offensive systems, including nuclear, and deploying them at home, in Europe, around Asia, and in orbit.

This is an arms race that Russia can no more afford to sustain technologically or fiscally than could the USSR a prior arms race.  It’s an arms race we should strongly encourage and actively pursue.