Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
comments: americanbeacon@hotmail.com
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
With our byzantine tax code now costing Americans more than a full day to follow, I propose a quick and easy solution to the complexity of our tax system that would result in instant tax simplification.
Enact a federal law prohibiting Members of Congress and Senators from employing the use of professional tax preparers and require these federal legislators to complete their own tax returns.
If we had a Government Officials Taxed with Citizens in Harmony Act (GOTCHA), it would take politicians about 20 minutes to subsequently simplify the tax code.
4/15/2004 09:18:00 AM
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Thus far, the 9/11 commission's public hearings, as opposed to the staff reports, have been good for little other than politics and hyperventilating news coverage. While everyone focuses on whom to blame, we should be debating how to improve.
The glaring intelligence deficiencies revealed by the staff report are notably not in information gathering, but in the synthesis and analysis of numerous, disparate bits of data. The clear need is for more information-sharing between agencies and more powerful data analysis tools.
This is what makes the Democrats' opposition to renewing the Patriot Act (information sharing), developing the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness database (data synthesis), and upgrading the Department of Homeland Security's CAPPS system (data analysis) so mind-boggling. These are necessary to remedy the systemic and technological shortcomings that allowed 9/11 to transpire. Amazingly, not only do Democrats blame President Bush for those shortcomings, but they also oppose the solutions.
4/13/2004 08:08:00 PM
Monday, April 12, 2004
1. The critics pillory the administration for failing to attack Afghanistan before September 11 (when there was no "imminent" threat), but excoriate the decision to remove the Iraqi threat before it became imminent. This despite the fact that the sole fugitive of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was given refuge in Iraq and that Saddam's Mukhbarat spy agency was in contact with Osama bin Laden in Sudan, where Clinton destroyed a pharmaceutical factory he claimed was a WMD site. With every major intelligence agency in the world concluding that Saddam possessed banned weapons, and with the UN concluding that Saddam had failed to destroy the weapons, delivery systems and development programs that the UN knew he had, and knowing of the purported Saddam-Al Qaeda links, would it have been prudent for an American President to rely on hope AFTER the catastrophic results of waiting for imminence proved too costly on September 11? The 20/20 hindisght we are now witnessing demonstrates that we can no longer wait for proof beyond a reasonable doubt and that action must be taken BEFORE threats fully materialize. Furthermore, though containment and Mutually Assured Destruction worked in the Cold War against a rational enemy, those strategies do not work in the war on terror against a suicidal enemy. Coalition pilots patrolling no-fly zones were under constant threat, as were other US forces in the region enforcing the "containment" of Saddam. The deaths of sailors on the USS Cole and of soldiers at the Khobar Towers proved that containment was not sustainable as a strategy.
2. The critics rail against the government's failure to "connect the dots" of a multitude of disparate bits of data, but have also torpedoed plans by the Department of Defense to develop the TIA (Total Information Awareness) database to compile and synthesize that data. Refusing to allow technology to help sift through all the raw data that is collected means that it will be done mostly manually by human beings who cannot possibly detect trends or patterns as quickly or accurately as computers can.
3. The critics complain that it was known that hijacking was a potential Al Qaeda tactic, but have been undermining the completion of the CAPPS-II passenger screening system and refuse to allow any profiling to be used (both of which are what make Israeli airline security the best in the world).
4. The critics lambaste the poor record of information-sharing between agencies, but oppose renewal of the PATRIOT Act, which broke down the legal barriers between the FBI and CIA. Apparently, liberals do not want authorities to have the same investigative powers in the war on terror as they have long had to pursue drug dealers (roving wiretaps) or child abusers (library records).
5. The critics decry the lack of American human intelligence capabilities, though many (such as John Kerry) have voted to cut funds for such purposes. The Church Commission (led by Democratic Senator Frank Church) and Jimmy Cartner's CIA Director Stansfield Turner gutted American intelligence capabilities.
4/12/2004 10:35:00 AM
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