By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Going to my dentist is sobering but not for the reason you think.
q and Afghanistan. Half century ago, we suffered a terrible toll in Vietnam. Many states here are larger, land wise, than these countries. Some states have bigger populations, too.
Current wars require the least personal sacrifice ever. Lack of a draft keeps our own kids home. We suffer no shortages or drags on lifestyle due to commitments to far-flung regions. Best of all, we don’t pay for the wars. We borrow money and hand the bill to those young ones lucky enough to not come home in a body bag.
Even LBJ imposed a surtax to pay for the Vietnam conflict.
President Obama campaigned on how he would get us out of these wars. At this rate, candidates in 2016 will be promising the same.
It is all about threat of nuclear retaliation, oil and other trade issues. Presidential candidates tell one story to win, and then dance to a different drummer when facing the big picture.
China is another example of why presidential campaigns produce baloney.
About the same size as the U.S., China has four times our population. Every campaign brings promises of ending currency manipulation that gives Chinese a huge advantage in world trade, causing us to lose so many jobs here.
Even this year’s Congressional campaigns will generate reams of rhetoric of how we are going to “get tough” on China. Congress members quickly learn they have an unwilling partner in whomever occupies the White House.
Truth is, we are wary of China as a threat to our security. At best, the theory is to “keep our enemies closer.”
A group based north of Pittsburgh lobbied Congress about how much China’s currency manipulation robbed us of family-sustaining jobs. Pennsylvania chapter of Committee for a Prosperous America won over Kathy Dahlkemper, a one-term member of Congress from Northwest PA. Soon she got a phone call from the Obama White House to “butt out.”
India remains a mystery.
India has the same size population as China, crammed onto a land mass similar to Alaska. How long will democracy prevail when starvation and poverty are so prevalent?
Russia was the planet’s largest country in terms of acreage when it was a tightly knit government of a half-dozen states. That threat diminished when President Reagan demanded Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down that (Berlin) wall.” Thanks to the world’s most dangerous demagogue, Vladimir Putin, a Time Magazine cover now poses the question “Cold War II?”
Recently we were shocked when lunatics shot down a commercial airliner with 116 innocent humans aboard over Mali. This country is a landlocked banana republic in West Africa, about two-thirds the size of Alaska.
Our closest geographic neighbors, Canada and Mexico, offer little solace.
Universal healthcare in Canada works because it is affordable, largely due to drug costs subsidized by us.
Citizens there were nervous during the 2009 debate over Obamacare. Canadians believed the U.S. would end their artificially lower prices for pharmaceuticals and push some drug development costs on our northern neighbors.
Little to worry. Big Pharma paid well to insure pick pocketing of US consumers continue. They had already proven their might with the implementation of the donut hole in Medicare where lower prices are forbidden.
Mexico poses our strangest foreign relationship. Our neighbors to the south help the US remain world center for illegal drug consumption. Bribery and murder are basic components in this economic scheme.
Campaign rhetoric on immigration differs from policy. Democrats want to keep the borders open to turn Texas Democrat and Florida into a solid partisan stronghold.
Republicans are confused.
One segment of the GOP forgets that if the US had always adhered to a “closed border” policy, they might not be here. The other – corporate farms, meatpackers, some industrialists – cannot thrive without the cheap labor.
Bottom Line: The world is a mess, but this bottom line cannot be written in our lifetime.
EDITOR: To the above we can only add that we wish that we met Dick Miller on a long cruise. We would have a lot to talk and, at times, debate about.
