. . . Then Act Like A Super-Power

The United States has the largest most advanced military in the world. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Yet, the United States has refused to use its power in a responsible manner.

In 1997 Liberia’s Second Civil War began, and it continued through 2003. In June 2003, after there was evidence that President Charles Taylor had engaged in crimes against humanity including terrorizing Sierra Leon’s civilian population, sexual violence and recruiting child soldiers, the United States refused to intervene and send military troops even though the United Nations and Western African nations called for US intervention.

Despite knowledge of war crime occurring in Western Africa, the United States refused to intervene and attempt to stabilize the region. Instead, again, the US decided that it would allow Africa to continue to suffer at the hands of warlords and tyrants. Thus, when the Unites States was called upon to use its military power for purposes of good, it turned its back and decided to continue to focus solely on its unnecessary war in Iraq.

This was not the first time the US turned its back on Africa. No soldiers were sent into Rwanda when there was genocide occurring. While the US organized NATO and led a coalition to stop the genocide and other war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, this one “humanitarian” act is insufficient for the US to say that it is living up to its great responsibility.

Having the world’s largest most advanced military requires that the United States step up when military action is called for. It must be used when innocent people are being killed or terrorized regardless of where it occurs. The military cannot be used solely to fight unnecessary wars that fulfill the Administration’s personal agendas while claiming that it is over extended and cannot engage in protecting the African people.

It is the United States’ responsibility to be a leader in the international arena. It can only do that when it is willing to become part of the international community and lead by example. Standing up for the unprotected and defenseless is the first example that must be made.

It's Not A War

Once again, we are hearing that we should not question the Administration during “times of war.” First, for any administration to claim that the people need to censor themselves because the administration does not want to be bothered with dissent is in and of itself anti-democratic. Further, it is unlikely that any insurgents in Iraq is watching the news and saying because there are voices of dissent, the insurgents must be winning the hearts and minds of the Americans. Of course, under the theory that there should not be any questioning of the administration would also lead one to believe that there should not be any elections until the “war” is over, whenever that will occur. Of course we have not cancelled elections and the opposition party is not restricted to only saying they are going to continue the “war” the way this administration is doing it – just because the opposition party is saying this does not mean that it is legally restricted to saying it.

Nonetheless, even if it were true that we should not question the Administration during “times of war” the rhetoric does not work any more because we are not at war.

In 2000, when Governor Bush was running for office, he said that he would not allow the United States to engage in nation building. Nonetheless, he broke that promise many years ago. On May 2, 2003, Bush went to the USS Lincoln and announced that the mission was accomplished. At that moment, he officially declared that the war in Iraq was over. Starting on May 3, 2003 through the present the United States has been solely engaged in nation building. There is no ongoing war, and the Administration cannot claim that we are at war. Thus, the people should feel free to voice dissent whenever and however they wish.

Just because there are skirmishes and people are being killed does not mean we are at war. In any of this nation’s biggest cities, there are people who are being shot at and killed on a regular basis; however, noone would claim that there is a war going on in those cities. In Mogadishu, the United States Army was engaged in battles with “insurgents,” but noone declared that to be a war. Rather, that was nation building that was started by President Bush, 41, and continued by President Clinton. Thus, shootings and killings do not necessarily qualify an action as a war.

To be a war, a nation must still be engaged in military conflict with another nation. Although, the Administration has tried to change this definition to suit its own needs it has been unsuccessful to do so. On May 2, 2003, Bush announced that the Iraqi government had been overthrown and that it was no longer under the control of Saddam Hussein. When that occurred, the war against Iraq ended. At that point the United States determined that it needed to rebuild the destruction and help establish a new government and economy so it would be a stable nation. In come Haliburton, Bechtel and other US corporations to make a profit off the backs of Americans and Iraqis alike.

So long as we are engaged in nation building and profit making, the Administration needs to stop threatening people who engage in dissent. George Bush criticized the Clinton Administration for his nation building efforts, and Bush should be open to the same form of criticism. The media and politicians should also start calling the Administration’s actions what they are: Nation Building.

Tax Man (Part II) - Coporate Tax Avoidance

Groups that are paying the least amount in taxes or avoiding taxes all together are the ones that are receiving the greatest subsidies from the government. Those who are at the top of the income brackets and the major corporations, which pay the least percentage of their income in taxes, are the ones that get the greatest benefit from governmental services and they have the most to lose when the governmental programs fail.

Just as an example of the tax avoidance problem, Enron paid no tax four of the last five years it was in existence and it received a million dollar refund from government on at least one occasion. Thus, not only did it not pay taxes, it actually made money on the backs of others who were paying taxes. Nonetheless, it, like other major business, benefitted from the government programs it failed to pay for or support.

Every business that has an internet portal has gained a subsidy from the government as it is was the U.S. military that developed the internet and no business was required to pay to access it or to reimburse the government for its development. The interstate system is used the most by companies that are shipping products from one place to another and helping to ensure that their employees can get to work in a timely fashion every day. Companies shipping products through the air either through overnight courier services or otherwise are reliant on the government continuing to ensure that air travel is safe and efficient. The pharmaceutical companies receive a great deal of protection by the FDA conducting the testing process and many drugs that are found to be defective after being released rightfully receive immunity from tort claims based upon their the FDA testing process. Businesses are the ones who receive the greatest benefit from tax dollars as they are using the governmental services in greater quantities than individuals are.

When the government systems fail, the businesses are the ones that have the greatest to lose. When the Northeast blackout occurred in 2003 the nation lost between $7 and $10 billion dollars in the course of two days. The reason for the blackout was that the government deregulated the electrical industry and the private companies determined that there was no cost benefit in maintaining the Ohio powerlines, which, when they failed, affected the entire Northeast. Thus, government’s failure to maintain the systems resulted in significant losses for businesses.

When the New York subway and bus workers went on strike, New York City businesses lost approximately $400 million per day. The companies were not closed down the way they were when the blackout occurred; however, due to the reduced number of employees who could get to work and other complications that the strike caused resulted in significant losses.

Commercial cruise lines, such as Carnival, avoid taxes and U.S. law by having their ships fly under a Liberian flag opposed to a United States flag. By flagging the ships in Liberia, the ships are governed by Liberian tax laws, which are virtually non-existent; however, the ships likely never dock in Liberia during the course of their service and the companies rely upon port security and the U.S. Coast Guard when emergencies occur. All these are in operation because our taxes pay for them, even if the cruise lines which rely on them do not.

In sum, when the government programs fail, it is the businesses that have the most to lose, yet businesses are paying the lowest percentage of their overall income to taxes compared to individual tax payers. So long as businesses are more reliant on the governmental services than individuals, the businesses should be required to pay their fair share of income tax and not receive huge tax breaks by the Federal and State governments.

Tax Man (Part I): Personal Income Tax

April 17 is tax day since April 15 falls on a Saturday this year. It is a day that is dreaded by many, but we need to reevaluate how we assess the paying of our taxes, which is that we need to evaluate the cost opposed to the benefits.

The United States pays less in taxes than most other nations. Payroll taxes are less than thirty percent, and this is significantly less than what other first world nations are paying. But the real determination as to whether the amount being paid is justified is what you are receiving for the money paid.

Government services ensure that we drink clean water, have clean air, a stable electrical grid system, and useable roads are used by nearly every American. There are government inspectors that inspect the meat we eat, the buildings we spend time in to ensure they are properly built, when there are chemical spills or unknown contaminates in an area, the government has services such as the CDC or a local HazMat team that arrives to assess the threats to the people who have been exposed to it.

The government provides security on our roads, ports, skies, waters. The FAA regulates the flight of airplanes and has rules and regulations in place to ensure that airplanes are safe for travel and that they operate in an orderly manner so there are not collisions either on the ground or in the air. The reason that flying is the safest mode of travel is that the government has had a hand in the process since almost the first day to ensure that it was that way and that it would remain that way. Every mariner in US ocean waters can call upon the Coast Guard when in distress at no cost to to the person seeking to be rescued.

Further, the government tests the drugs that we are prescribed and verifies that they do what the manufacturer claims they are supposed to do. There are of course a number of other services that are provided, but everyone relies on the government providing these services and without tax dollars being paid, these services cannot be provided.

Taxes do not go only to the “welfare state” as alleged by many on the right. The amount of money being put into the national welfare system, health insurance, food stamps, Head Start programs and other programs for the lower income groups is minimal compared to the money paid for services that are utilized by all.

So as we pay our taxes on Monday, we should be happy that our nation has devoted its time and money on these programs and ensured that we remain safe and prosperous.

Academic Accountability

The No Child Left Behind Act has imposed new requirements on the nations schools. Teachers and schools are scrutinized based upon standardized tests which may or may not be relevant to the actual determination of whether the schools and teachers are performing adequately. However, if the nation wants real improvement in their school systems, then we need to reevaluate the amount of time we are willing to devote to the education process, not the testing method of evaluating the education system.

The determination of whether the schools are performing adequately by obtaining a snapshot view of a child’s reading and math levels at the end of the year does not show the child’s performance levels. A more accurate assessment of the education system is to test the students at the beginning of the year and again at the end of the year and evaluate their improvement. If a child is below reading level at the beginning of their fourth grade year, but they are closer to reading level at the end of the year, then their improvement has been significant and the schools can accurately state that they are properly educating the students and have successfully taught the student even though they may still be below level. On the other hand, if a student is at reading level when they start the fourth grade and remain at reading level at the end of the fourth grade, the child arguably has not improved. Nonetheless, the student with little or no improvement is the student the teachers are praised for having in their classrooms.

No Child Left Behind is a back door method of allowing students to leave the public school system and get into private schools with government funding (vouchers, charters, etc.) However, a recent study has shown that when public and private schools are controlled for the socio-economic differences, the pubic schools are outperforming the private schools. The public school system is merely getting criticized for doing their job and educating all of the nations children and not just those in a high income bracket who can afford to attend the private schools.

If we really want to see improvements of the school system, we need to revamp the education process, not by shifting from public to private system, but by spending more time educating our children. In most of the nation there are only 180 days of school. Most students spend less than eight hours in the classroom each day. Schools that start at 7:00 a.m. are ending around 2:00 p.m. In many teachers collective negotiations agreements the teachers are instructed that they must remain in the school for only a short amount of time after the students leave. So if students leave at 2:00 p.m., then the teachers have to remain until only 2:30 or so. Thus, if a student is looking for additional assistance, they are denied it because some teachers (not all) are leaving as soon after the last class as they can, even though they have not worked a full eight hour day as most full-time workers are required to work.

Our school systems cannot try to compete with international schools if we are not going to commit the time and energy to educating the students. The school year needs to be lengthened to at least 200 days per year, and the school day needs to become a real day of 9:00 to 5:00. During the summer, students forget a great deal of what they learned the year prior because they are not in class having the information reinforced. Further, more classes and material can be covered if the students remain in the classroom and not being unleashed early each afternoon. Only by committing the time necessary to educate our children will real improvements be accomplished.

Ex Post Facto Laws

The current administration has refused to become part of the International Criminal Court, which is charged with prosecuting war crimes. Prior to the creation of the Court, the United Nations charged two International Criminal Tribunals to prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Some nations refused to sign the Treaty of Rome, which created the Court, in part because the Court sought to prosecute crimes that had occurred prior to the treaty being fully executed. In other words, it was argued that the treaty and the tribunals sought to prosecute crimes ex post facto. The United States Constitution prohibits the creation of ex post facto laws as do many other nations constitutions. However, the tribunals and the Court should be allowed to prosecute the crimes that occurred even if they occurred prior to the tribunals or the Court’s creation.

This same argument was made during the Nuremberg trials. People questioned whether the Nazis could be prosecuted under laws that were established after the Nazis had committed genocide. The Nuremberg trials went forward anyway and prosecutions were successful. The creation of the laws after the committing of the offense did not undermine the legitimacy of the trials or the convictions.

There are certain acts which laws need not be created for them to shock the conscience and be deemed to be criminal. Genocide and crimes against humanity, which includes murder, rape, forced deportation, and other acts, are just such acts that if committed, even in the course of war, people know were improper and illegal. These are the types of crimes that critics say should not be prosecuted because there were established after the genocide, murders, rapes and other acts occurred. No one committing such acts nor anyone learning of these acts could reasonably question that these actions are illegal. People do not need to open up law books or international treaties to determine this; rather, the perpetrator and the observers need only search themselves for right and wrong to understand that these actions are criminal. Therefore, it is appropriate for these actions to be prosecuted regardless of when the treaties were signed.

No reasonable person would argue that the Mi Lai massacre was reprehensible and criminal. There was no international court designed to prosecute crimes at the time the massacre occurred; however, under the criminal treaties that are currently in place, these actions would constitute criminal acts that could be prosecuted. When reports of the massacre became public, the nation and the world were outraged. Everyone understood that these actions were beyond the scope of war and constituted improper and illegal actions. Had a criminal tribunal been established at the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. soldiers could have been and should have been prosecuted.

There is no difference between the Mi Lai massacre and the genocides that have occurred in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Everyone who engaged in the acts knew that the actions were beyond permissible acts of war. Once someone has gone beyond that threshold, the action should be deemed criminal and should be prosecuted. When the natural law of right and wrong has been violated, it is permissible for those criminal acts to be prosecuted regardless of when the criminal statute and international treaties were formalized.