[Peace-discuss] what if Chinese troops had a base in Texas?

[Robert Naiman]

At the moment, I am pretty sympathetic to Wayne's side of this argument.

There are certain things which in my opinion are good things to do,
which are very hard to do unless you use the coercive power of
government.

Like, a lot of us like to travel, even to Chicago. If you want to go
to Chicago, the fact that there are roads to Chicago is extremely
helpful. If you drive, you use the road. If you take a bus, you also
use the road. If you take the train, you're using a different kind of
road.

It's hard to build major roads, for buses or trains, unless you use
the coercive power of government. The roads to Chicago weren't built
by holding a bake sale, taking donations. They weren't built by
volunteer labor. They were built by taxation. Roads are a public good.
Mainstream economics says that if you don't use the coercive power of
government, you aren't going to get a socially efficient amount of
public goods, because people will "free ride" and you won't raise
enough money. I am not a libertarian on these questions. I want the
government to produce public goods and to tax people to pay for them.

But the coercive power of government is currently being abused in a
massive way. The government and the major media that support the
government on this question claim that occupying Afghanistan is a
public good, and we should all pay taxes for it. And we seem to be
having a pretty hard time turning this around.

And the question of whether "foreign aid," as it exists today, is more
like occupying Afghanistan or more like building a road to Chicago is
far from trivial. I am currently of the view that "foreign aid," as it
exists today, is, on the whole, more like occupying Afghanistan than
it is like building a road to Chicago.

There are certainly important exceptions. The UN Global Fund for AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria, which is funded by US tax dollars, is in my
opinion, much more like the road to Chicago. The Global Fund was
established by progressive anti-AIDS and development activists. It is
highly transparent: you can see exactly what it is funding. What it's
funding are mosquito nets, clinics, public health education, ARVs. All
good stuff. A very good investment in human life.

But I can't be happy with the idea that there is a black box called
"foreign aid," and as a liberal I have to support this black box,
because the black box also includes military "aid" to Israel and Egypt
and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Colombia and Mexico. This black box
is paying for the cruel deaths of many innocents. And that's just the
beginning. There is also "food aid," for example, which is
significantly about dumping the US agricultural surplus, wiping out
the livelihoods of farmers in other countries and undermining the
ability of these countries to feed themselves.

So we need to do something else besides fight over whether "foreign
aid" is "good" or "bad." We need to figure out means to fund the good
stuff and not the bad stuff.

I think we should experiment with making taxation to support "foreign
aid" more voluntary.

What if Congress were to cut the black box called "foreign aid" by
10%, but at the same time, Congress were to make it easier to donate
to the part of foreign aid that we like.

So, for example, when you fill out your federal income tax form, there
could be a section called, "Allocate U.S. foreign aid," which you
could skip if you want. If you skip it, it would not affect your taxes
at all. The section would have a series of check boxes, and by
checking some of the boxes, you'd be saying, "Yes, I want some of my
tax dollars to go to support this."

Working Assets has a voting system like this. The government does a
little bit of this, at both the federal and state level. At the
federal level, you can check a box to support public funding of
elections. At the state level, you can check a box to support benefits
for veterans and to support environmental conservation.

I think we should expand these mechanisms. It could have the effect of
building greater political support for the good part of foreign aid,
while cutting support for the evil stuff. And I think we should expand
their use on the domestic side. It could have the effect of increasing
funding for sex education, for needle exchange programs, for drug
treatment and mental health services, for reproductive health services
for poor women and women in the military, for public radio and TV, for
culture and the arts, for support for veterans. If some people want to
fund faith based initiatives and abstinence-only sex education, they
can do that too.




On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 5:03 PM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:
> Jennie,
> In regard to foreign aid, there is nothing in the constitution that should
> prohibit individuals
> from giving their money to the Tamil Tigers or the Freedom Fighters of
> Freedonia or whomever
> they like.  But why should the giverment plunder the unwilling to support
> Mubarak or
> some other Mussolini or Pinochet in the name of some corporate interest?
>
> Likewise domestically you should be able give your money to whomever you
> want and collect cash from
> concerned citizens and do what you want with it.
> Under the Obama plan,  you forfeit your life and wealth under threat of
> total loss and incarceration for use by the FBI and the TSA
> and their Blackwater buddies to buy moon suits to wear while they pepper
> spray your friends,
> and similar ends perhaps less overtly repulsive.
>
> If you give money to Bob's organization and you dont like how he spends it,
> you can cut him off.  If
> he manages it to suit you, you can give him more and encourage others to do
> likewise.  If Obama
> ignores you, there ain't shee-it that you can do about it.  His outfit will
> jail you if you dont pay them tribute.
> He is simply irresistible, and good luck in finding out where your money
> went, there's no telling.
>
> Illinois can try and chastise its citizens with scorpions regarding taxation
> and redistribution if it wants, but the
> good people of Illinois ought not be telling the lesser folk of
> Massachusetts, Montana, Mississippi, or Morocco,
> or Myanmar how to live, and invoke federal force to cause it to happen.
>
>
>
> On 12/26/2011 1:56 AM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>>
>> Some excellent points here -- Ron Paul has it absolutely right re the
>> military stuff, but NOT re $upport domestically and internationally. Hoping
>> Paul's numbers will scare Obama et al enuff to force some of the changes
>> many of us hoped for last time around.
>> Happy Holidays, everyone.
>>  --Jenifer
>>
>> --- On *Wed, 12/21/11, Robert Naiman /<naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>/*
>> wrote:
>>
>>    [my only regret about this video is that it was not my idea.]
>>
>>    How would Americans feel if Chinese troops had a military base in
>>    Texas?
>>    What if they were patrolling American streets? Making "mistakes" that
>>    killed American civilians? What if they were not subject to American
>>    law?
>>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMHBEAeNa-c
>>
>>    Robert Naiman
>>    Policy Director
>>    Just Foreign Policy
>>    www.justforeignpolicy.org
>>    naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>>    </mc/compose?to=naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
>>
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>



-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org