Romney, Big Bird & Bin Laden

“I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

- Mitt Romney, at the debate, October 3, 2012.

Three questions.

1. Romney's method of choice for financing government expenditures, 
2. His grasp of numbers, and 
3. His focus and priorities.

First, Romney's method of choice for financing US government expenditures.

Romney said,

"I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it." 

I don't understand why China - or more accurately, bond holders in China - is Romney's method of choice for financing US government expenditures. What's wrong with borrowing money from bondholders in England? US Bondholders? Or taxing US taxpayers for US government expenditures? (That is, after all, what it means to “Balance the Budget.”) Looking to bondholders in China - which is the Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party - seems to be one of those “Entangling Alliances” that Pres. Washington warned us not to get into. 

Second, his grasp of numbers.

The Federal Budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is $338.9 million for fiscal 2012 - $338,900,000. That's a lot of money. However, the Federal Budget of the USA is 3.5 Trillion - $3,500,000,000,000.

Budget

PBS:        $338,900,000

USA:  $3,500,000,000,000

Diff: $3,499,661,100,000 - which rounds to $3.5 Trillion.

The funds allocated to the Public Broadcasting System are 0.00968% of the Federal budget - a rounding error. Looked at another way, recognizing that the population of the US is roughly 307 million people, the Federal budget is roughly $11,400.65 per person. The funds allocated to PBS are $1.10 per person. Without PBS: the budget is $11,399.55. 

Per Capita

PBS:       $1.10

USA:  $11,400.65

Diff: $11,399.55

So either Romney can't do math, which, I think, suggests that he'd not be a very good President, or he has another reason for wanting to eliminate PBS, one that he should share with the taxpayers.

This brings up Romney's focus and priorities.

Gov. Romney may have a good reason for wanting to eliminate PBS, and he may be thinking like an investment banker, thinking that CPB operates at a financial loss; that there's no quantifiable return on investment. I think this was how he operated as Governor of Massachusetts. And it suggests, to me, that he would not be a good President, at best like Herbert Hoover, at worst, like George W. Bush.

Remember what Romney said in 2007?

“It's not moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” 

This may be why John McCain was the Republican nominee in 2008. And as Biden said,

“We will follow that SOB to the gates of hell.” As Biden said, more recently, “Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive.”

Should The President have Known About Al Queda's Planned Attack on Sept 11?

Did President George W. Bush drop the ball on National Security?  What would a President Gore have done differently?

My song, "Gone Now Forever"  ( XB Cold Fingers / You Tube ) tells the story of a man who was lost on September 11, and his family. My friend Maria loves it, but it brings a tear to her eye. It also brings me anger, and resolve.

I also wrote "City of Heroes" ( XB Cold Fingers ) to attempt come to grips with the attack of September 11. This began as an eyewittness account - I saw the flames from 34th Street and 7th and walked down as far as 18th St. It developed into a tribute to the men, women and children killed or whos lives were disrupted by the terrorist hijackers, including the cops and firefighters, who rushed into the Trade Center and the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

As I learned more about "Al Queda," which means "The Base," I re-wrote the song to challenge the notion of "Holy War." No religious leaders, I think, are worth following if the teach that “We are Saved and They are to be killed.”

Then, as I began to understand the official American response to the terrorist act, to the “Unholy War” that “brought the twin towers down,” I added an additional focus: our official response, the war in Iraq, our use of torture.

But … President Clinton and Vice President Gore knew that bin Laden was a threat. They knew he financed and or masterminded the simultaneous attacks on U. S. embassies in Dar Es Salam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya on August 7, 1998, and the October, 2000 attack on the U. S. S. Cole.

Should The President, then George W. Bush, have had a better understanding of the threat posed by bin Laden and his people? Tony Karon, in “Time” magazine on May 30, 2001, 3 months before the attack on the Pentagon and the second attack on The World Trade Center, wrote, 

“the conviction in New York of four footsoldiers of Osama bin Laden's jihad to drive the United States out of the Middle East.... the man named in the indictment as the architect of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania wasn't even in court … Bin Laden remains holed up in Afghanistan under the protection of its ruling Taliban militia, and reiterated that it has no intention of handing him over for trial....“

“The war on terrorism is primarily about intelligence — being able to monitor your enemy's communications and anticipate his actions in order to confound his plans and keep him on the defensive.”

As we know from the mission that brought bin Laden to justice, in Pakistan, far from Kabul and even farther from Baghdad, the 'war on terrorism' is a war than can be effectively waged with small teams of commandos using “actionable intelligence.”

Should the President have been able to foil the attacks of September 11? This is an unknowable question. However, We sustained:

1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City,

1993 bombing of the World Trade Center,

1998 bombings of the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,

2000 bombing of the U. S. S. Cole.

And we foiled Al Queda's Millennium plot.

Should the President have been able to foil the attacks of September 11? Here's the timeline of events.  Here's the unclassified version of the August 6, 2001 intelligence memo to President Bush.  What do you think? 

And what would a President Gore have done?  

It's pretty clear that he would not have let bin Laden go and gone into Iraq. But what else? Gore knew that bin Laden was a threat.Clinton, as Commander-In-Chief, set up the CIA unit tasked to investigate bin Laden in 1996. After the Embassies were bombed he ordered an attack on bin Laden's compound in Sudan.