ed howard
11-17-2011, 11:19 AM
Ron Paul is consistent and has been saying the same thing for 30 years - this is good - but it does not create news.
Saying bring the troops home is same old - same old to the media - and to many voters. Presenting new/different information increases
the odds of getting media and helping the message sink in with more voters. Create a vision for the voters to embrace.
On the military:
Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Ron Paul could create a vision of a "Lean Mean Fighting Machine" military for America.
A commitment to an armed forces that can quickly deploy 20%-25% of its active duty forces anywhere they are needed.
He needs to remind people at every turn that while our troops do a good job, the massive waste & crippling paralysis in the
military must end. While we need to stop meddling in foreign countries, if & when we need to defend ourselves, we need a Lean Mean Fighting Machine - that can get the job done.
Example 1:
1.4 million active duty troops worldwide and the US military couldn't deploy 8% of our forces to Iraq & Afghanistan
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004598.html 1,400,000 in 2000-2007
We had to call on the national guard for almost a third of the troops we deployed.
calling up the guard means extra salaries - active duty troops are already being paid.
So in spite of the fact that we spend over a trillion dollars on security each year,
our military had to go to congress for more money in order to do what we have been paying
it trillions to do. This is its primary responsibility - waging war - and over 92% of our
troops are un-deployable? So you end up with troops in America, Germany and Japan
turning on the TV to watch the guard wage war in Iraq - while at the same time, with 20,000
members of the guard deployed to Iraq & Afghanistan, many got to tune in to see their
states pummeled by Katrina ( a disaster they were specifically trained to respond to)
being assisted by 18,000 federal troops stateside. 7 years into these wars our military was still dependent
on the guard for over a third of its troops.
http://www.veteransforamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/our-national-guard-too-high-a-price.pdf
Example 2:
Base waste.
We have 3 combat brigades that deploy to the middle east from Germany. To do this
first they move the soldiers to Germany with families, dogs, furniture etc. for a 3 year tour.
There they train until deployed for a year leaving the family in Germany.
But there is a problem. Between the German bases and the Middle East sit the Alps.
Over 95% of armored forces must deploy by ship, so those in Germany are loaded on trains and shipped by rail to
northern German ports, unload the trains and reload it all onto a ship, then all the way around Spain and into the Mediterranean.
Also - when the tour is over - we have to move all the households back to the states...
Well guess what -
Armored brigades from the USA can deploy to the Balkans and the Middle East faster and cheaper than those in Germany.
Why do they keep the German bases?
Army Generals love the imperial flavor of their German bases, where 48 U.S. Army Generals live in expensive historic villas.
Get this - Rumsfeld tried to end this madness. implemented a plan to shift half of the 73,000 U.S. soldiers and their 100,000 family members based in Germany back to the USA. This would free thousands of soldiers now committed to base support duties for infantry units. Rumsfeld implemented a detailed relocation plan that identified exactly which domestic bases these Army units would move, and began an expensive construction plan to expand and upgrade facilities at these bases -- Fort Bliss, Fort Carson, and Fort Stewart. When transfers are complete, the Army estimates it will save $176 million per year by closing its large bases at Bamberg and Schwienfurt in Germany. The new facilities are ready at Army bases in the USA and thousands of empty homes are available. After spending all the money preparing for the move, Rumsfeld had retired, the Obama administration took over and the Generals convinced the new administration that the move required further study.
So we spent a ton of money upgrading facilities so we could save money and are still wasting the money - double screwed!
Typical of our broken government - in an attempt to eliminate waste, we waste even more.
For 3 years the Obama administration has done nothing to move this forward.
A Paul Administration could expedite the Rumsfeld plan to reduce U.S. troop levels in Germany.
http://www.g2mil.com/germanbases.htm
Many hundreds of millions saved, more effective deployment, reduced stress on military families, and troops spending their incomes in the USA
This is a win, win, win, win situation.
note: Need more Examples.
This kind of talk may appeal to some conservatives "on the fence" while getting more coverage from the media.
Follow-up
Then follow up a week later talking about this crazy out-of-control fed gov that can't even do the basic functions correctly that
are in the constitution.
Lets look at a few examples:
Post office
Treasury
Census
Military
Post office (nuf said)
Treasury
$100 Bill Fiasco
The Series 2009 $100 bill redesign was unveiled on April 21, 2010, and was to be issued to the public in February 11, 2011.
Production of the redesigned high-tech bills was shut down in December 2010 because as many as 30% were unusable
due to a manufacturing flaw. A vertical crease in the paper reveals a blank space on the bill when pulled out
$100 bills
After a decade of development,
The US Mint printed over $100 Billion dollars worth of the new $100 bill before they realized that up to a third are defective.
Almost a year ago, they announced the problem and put the 100 billion in storage. They have yet to announce that they
have found a solution to printing the bills correctly or that they have figured out a way to sort the defective ones out.
This is classic government gone amok.
Design a bill so complicated you can't print it,
Implement inadequate testing for confirming that production is scalable.
Fail to implement sufficient quality control to confirm the printed bills are good
Catch the problem only after over 100 Billion worth are printed.
Failure to set up a disaster recovery team that can quickly work through the printing problem and implement a fix.
Failure to come up with an efficient way to sort through the $100 billion.
The soonest we would see the 2009 $100 bill will be mid 2012. That is "if" it gets figured out.
-cost to taxpayers,
-in the years our mint has been struggling to print these pieces of paper, 3 versions of the Iphone have been designed, produced and sold.
http://www.newmoney.gov/media/update.htm
http://www.cnbc.com/id/40521684/The_Fed_Has_a_110_Billion_Problem_with_New_Benjami ns
$1 coins - "a maddening waste of money".
The fiasco of the Presidential dollar coin.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/coins-costing-taxpayers-14076274
Census
The fed gov is broken & dysfunctional.
One of the few functions it is required to do is the Census.
This has become a boondoggle of epic/typical proportions
We spent 13 billion to do the 2010 census which is $110.00 per household.
Compare that to under $1 for many countries.
We spent almost 3 times what we spent on the previous census and we dropped the long form.
FedGov spent $110 per household to do the 2010 Census ($13,000,000,000 total) -
vs $0.75 per household in Finland. (Economist June/4/2011)
http://www.economist.com/node/18772674
http://www.genealogybranches.com/censuscosts.html
150 times as much per person/household as Finland.
In 2010 we spent 3 times what the previous census cost - and for the first time we didn't include the long form.
We are spending a Billion dollars this year on the Census bureau - many times more than what
the entire census should cost - and we aren't even doing a census this year.
Our census cost 100 times (per person as India's - where they visit EVERY house.
In india they ask 64 questions (not 10 like here) and collect biometric data.
48mil us households visited out of 114mil (42%) vs 191mil (100%) visited in India
http://ut7.in/india-in-charts/2011/09/04/2011-india-census-vs-2011-u-s-census/
http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf
So while India's census workers only make a 1/4 as much as us workers, the combination
of visiting EVERY household combined with 6 times as many questions and
biometric data collection more than offsets the wage difference.
Those who claim that a higher standard of living or a more spread out population explain our higher costs ignore
Australia which visits every household twice and asks 60 questions for a fraction of the cost per person/household
while being spread out considerably more than us.
Military
(See Lean Mean Fighting machine).
We have over 1.4 million active duty troops worldwide and the military couldn't deploy 8% of our forces to Iraq & Afghanistan.
we had to call on the national guard for almost a third of the troops we deployed.
Other examples of GovGoneBad
FEMA & Corp. of Engineers
Katrina
- Billions wasted on toxic Katrina trailers.
- Billions wasted in the no bid contracts (70% were no bid contracts) given to politically connected out of state corporations like Hallburton while locking out local contractors without FedGov connections.
- Billions in cost run ups caused by people being prohibited from going to their homes to begin repairs before mold infestations took off. Being prohibited from accessing your home "until all utilities are restored" when all you want to do renovate before mold sets in is disgusting.
- Billions in volunteer aid and help stopped by FEMA turning back people coming to deliver supplies and volunteer. Local efforts to organize relief stalled with no way to deliver the supplies. Americans want to help each other and were shut down at the critical moment of compassion by FedGov.
"We'll take care of it - we're from the fedgov".
Net effect FedGov cost 4-10 times more than if they were not involved.
And the BIGGIE, the FedGov CAUSED a major portion of the damage & death in New Orleans. The Army Corp. of Engineers did so by not maintaining the dikes. - yikes. The courts determined that the drowning of New Orleans was not a natural disaster, but a preventable man-made travesty,
See Here
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/11/18/louisiana.katrina.lawsuit/
"For over 40 years, the Corps was aware that the Reach II levee protecting Chalmette and the Lower Ninth Ward was going to be compromised by the continued deterioration of the MRGO ... The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so."
So the FedGov spent way to much money repairing New Orleans after its 40 years of incompetence caused a big part of this nightmare - the wholesale distruction of entire neighborhoods and killing over 900 people (a mini-9-11). Yes over half of the 1800 Katrina deaths were in the Lower 9th Ward - killed by FedGov incompetence - not Katrina.
Scale back the incompetent, inefficient, crony-capitalist FedGov.
People don't realize that if Katrina had been a little worse or come in at a slightly different angle, more Americans might have died because of government incompetence than died in the 9-11 attacks.
Scale back the incompetent, inefficient, crony-capitalist FedGov.
Any expectation of competence from the FedGov is fantasy.
Saying bring the troops home is same old - same old to the media - and to many voters. Presenting new/different information increases
the odds of getting media and helping the message sink in with more voters. Create a vision for the voters to embrace.
On the military:
Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Ron Paul could create a vision of a "Lean Mean Fighting Machine" military for America.
A commitment to an armed forces that can quickly deploy 20%-25% of its active duty forces anywhere they are needed.
He needs to remind people at every turn that while our troops do a good job, the massive waste & crippling paralysis in the
military must end. While we need to stop meddling in foreign countries, if & when we need to defend ourselves, we need a Lean Mean Fighting Machine - that can get the job done.
Example 1:
1.4 million active duty troops worldwide and the US military couldn't deploy 8% of our forces to Iraq & Afghanistan
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004598.html 1,400,000 in 2000-2007
We had to call on the national guard for almost a third of the troops we deployed.
calling up the guard means extra salaries - active duty troops are already being paid.
So in spite of the fact that we spend over a trillion dollars on security each year,
our military had to go to congress for more money in order to do what we have been paying
it trillions to do. This is its primary responsibility - waging war - and over 92% of our
troops are un-deployable? So you end up with troops in America, Germany and Japan
turning on the TV to watch the guard wage war in Iraq - while at the same time, with 20,000
members of the guard deployed to Iraq & Afghanistan, many got to tune in to see their
states pummeled by Katrina ( a disaster they were specifically trained to respond to)
being assisted by 18,000 federal troops stateside. 7 years into these wars our military was still dependent
on the guard for over a third of its troops.
http://www.veteransforamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/our-national-guard-too-high-a-price.pdf
Example 2:
Base waste.
We have 3 combat brigades that deploy to the middle east from Germany. To do this
first they move the soldiers to Germany with families, dogs, furniture etc. for a 3 year tour.
There they train until deployed for a year leaving the family in Germany.
But there is a problem. Between the German bases and the Middle East sit the Alps.
Over 95% of armored forces must deploy by ship, so those in Germany are loaded on trains and shipped by rail to
northern German ports, unload the trains and reload it all onto a ship, then all the way around Spain and into the Mediterranean.
Also - when the tour is over - we have to move all the households back to the states...
Well guess what -
Armored brigades from the USA can deploy to the Balkans and the Middle East faster and cheaper than those in Germany.
Why do they keep the German bases?
Army Generals love the imperial flavor of their German bases, where 48 U.S. Army Generals live in expensive historic villas.
Get this - Rumsfeld tried to end this madness. implemented a plan to shift half of the 73,000 U.S. soldiers and their 100,000 family members based in Germany back to the USA. This would free thousands of soldiers now committed to base support duties for infantry units. Rumsfeld implemented a detailed relocation plan that identified exactly which domestic bases these Army units would move, and began an expensive construction plan to expand and upgrade facilities at these bases -- Fort Bliss, Fort Carson, and Fort Stewart. When transfers are complete, the Army estimates it will save $176 million per year by closing its large bases at Bamberg and Schwienfurt in Germany. The new facilities are ready at Army bases in the USA and thousands of empty homes are available. After spending all the money preparing for the move, Rumsfeld had retired, the Obama administration took over and the Generals convinced the new administration that the move required further study.
So we spent a ton of money upgrading facilities so we could save money and are still wasting the money - double screwed!
Typical of our broken government - in an attempt to eliminate waste, we waste even more.
For 3 years the Obama administration has done nothing to move this forward.
A Paul Administration could expedite the Rumsfeld plan to reduce U.S. troop levels in Germany.
http://www.g2mil.com/germanbases.htm
Many hundreds of millions saved, more effective deployment, reduced stress on military families, and troops spending their incomes in the USA
This is a win, win, win, win situation.
note: Need more Examples.
This kind of talk may appeal to some conservatives "on the fence" while getting more coverage from the media.
Follow-up
Then follow up a week later talking about this crazy out-of-control fed gov that can't even do the basic functions correctly that
are in the constitution.
Lets look at a few examples:
Post office
Treasury
Census
Military
Post office (nuf said)
Treasury
$100 Bill Fiasco
The Series 2009 $100 bill redesign was unveiled on April 21, 2010, and was to be issued to the public in February 11, 2011.
Production of the redesigned high-tech bills was shut down in December 2010 because as many as 30% were unusable
due to a manufacturing flaw. A vertical crease in the paper reveals a blank space on the bill when pulled out
$100 bills
After a decade of development,
The US Mint printed over $100 Billion dollars worth of the new $100 bill before they realized that up to a third are defective.
Almost a year ago, they announced the problem and put the 100 billion in storage. They have yet to announce that they
have found a solution to printing the bills correctly or that they have figured out a way to sort the defective ones out.
This is classic government gone amok.
Design a bill so complicated you can't print it,
Implement inadequate testing for confirming that production is scalable.
Fail to implement sufficient quality control to confirm the printed bills are good
Catch the problem only after over 100 Billion worth are printed.
Failure to set up a disaster recovery team that can quickly work through the printing problem and implement a fix.
Failure to come up with an efficient way to sort through the $100 billion.
The soonest we would see the 2009 $100 bill will be mid 2012. That is "if" it gets figured out.
-cost to taxpayers,
-in the years our mint has been struggling to print these pieces of paper, 3 versions of the Iphone have been designed, produced and sold.
http://www.newmoney.gov/media/update.htm
http://www.cnbc.com/id/40521684/The_Fed_Has_a_110_Billion_Problem_with_New_Benjami ns
$1 coins - "a maddening waste of money".
The fiasco of the Presidential dollar coin.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/coins-costing-taxpayers-14076274
Census
The fed gov is broken & dysfunctional.
One of the few functions it is required to do is the Census.
This has become a boondoggle of epic/typical proportions
We spent 13 billion to do the 2010 census which is $110.00 per household.
Compare that to under $1 for many countries.
We spent almost 3 times what we spent on the previous census and we dropped the long form.
FedGov spent $110 per household to do the 2010 Census ($13,000,000,000 total) -
vs $0.75 per household in Finland. (Economist June/4/2011)
http://www.economist.com/node/18772674
http://www.genealogybranches.com/censuscosts.html
150 times as much per person/household as Finland.
In 2010 we spent 3 times what the previous census cost - and for the first time we didn't include the long form.
We are spending a Billion dollars this year on the Census bureau - many times more than what
the entire census should cost - and we aren't even doing a census this year.
Our census cost 100 times (per person as India's - where they visit EVERY house.
In india they ask 64 questions (not 10 like here) and collect biometric data.
48mil us households visited out of 114mil (42%) vs 191mil (100%) visited in India
http://ut7.in/india-in-charts/2011/09/04/2011-india-census-vs-2011-u-s-census/
http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf
So while India's census workers only make a 1/4 as much as us workers, the combination
of visiting EVERY household combined with 6 times as many questions and
biometric data collection more than offsets the wage difference.
Those who claim that a higher standard of living or a more spread out population explain our higher costs ignore
Australia which visits every household twice and asks 60 questions for a fraction of the cost per person/household
while being spread out considerably more than us.
Military
(See Lean Mean Fighting machine).
We have over 1.4 million active duty troops worldwide and the military couldn't deploy 8% of our forces to Iraq & Afghanistan.
we had to call on the national guard for almost a third of the troops we deployed.
Other examples of GovGoneBad
FEMA & Corp. of Engineers
Katrina
- Billions wasted on toxic Katrina trailers.
- Billions wasted in the no bid contracts (70% were no bid contracts) given to politically connected out of state corporations like Hallburton while locking out local contractors without FedGov connections.
- Billions in cost run ups caused by people being prohibited from going to their homes to begin repairs before mold infestations took off. Being prohibited from accessing your home "until all utilities are restored" when all you want to do renovate before mold sets in is disgusting.
- Billions in volunteer aid and help stopped by FEMA turning back people coming to deliver supplies and volunteer. Local efforts to organize relief stalled with no way to deliver the supplies. Americans want to help each other and were shut down at the critical moment of compassion by FedGov.
"We'll take care of it - we're from the fedgov".
Net effect FedGov cost 4-10 times more than if they were not involved.
And the BIGGIE, the FedGov CAUSED a major portion of the damage & death in New Orleans. The Army Corp. of Engineers did so by not maintaining the dikes. - yikes. The courts determined that the drowning of New Orleans was not a natural disaster, but a preventable man-made travesty,
See Here
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/11/18/louisiana.katrina.lawsuit/
"For over 40 years, the Corps was aware that the Reach II levee protecting Chalmette and the Lower Ninth Ward was going to be compromised by the continued deterioration of the MRGO ... The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so."
So the FedGov spent way to much money repairing New Orleans after its 40 years of incompetence caused a big part of this nightmare - the wholesale distruction of entire neighborhoods and killing over 900 people (a mini-9-11). Yes over half of the 1800 Katrina deaths were in the Lower 9th Ward - killed by FedGov incompetence - not Katrina.
Scale back the incompetent, inefficient, crony-capitalist FedGov.
People don't realize that if Katrina had been a little worse or come in at a slightly different angle, more Americans might have died because of government incompetence than died in the 9-11 attacks.
Scale back the incompetent, inefficient, crony-capitalist FedGov.
Any expectation of competence from the FedGov is fantasy.