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The Expansionist
Sunday, August 28, 2005
 
Of Backbone and Skin.
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(1) Standing Up to the Feds. A number of states have told the Federal Government that they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. The particular cause of this multistate rebellion is the declared intention of the Federal Government to close down hosts of military bases (especially but not solely in Blue States) and remove the equipment that state National Guard units use in their work to defend not just the Nation from invasion or in military action abroad but in fulfilling their responsibilities to their own area. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania

reacted with defiance.

"Unless they get the (federal court) decision overturned, no one is going anywhere," the Democratic governor said in a statement posted to his Web site.

"If someone showed up tomorrow from the federal government and said 'give us the planes', as the Commander in Chief of the 111th, my answer would be 'no' and we'd hand them [U.S. District Court] Judge (John) Padova's order."

Rendell has explained that the bulk of the National Guard's work is in local emergencies and homeland security.

The governor commands the unit's activities 90 percent of the time, as it responds to floods, errant planes and other emergencies, Rendell said. Federal officials command the Guard only when it is activated for missions such as the war in Iraq.

How are we safer with fewer military bases? Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts is one of the bases from which aircraft were scrambled on 9/11. If it is closed, who will be closer? How far apart can bases be and still provide us good security in this day of local attacks?
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Current military thinking seems to be that all challenges will originate from thousands of miles away and can be headed off far from our shores. That's not what happened on 9/11. The earlier model was that we need to have military units and trained men and materiel in place all over the country, because emergencies can arise anywhere at any time, without warning and without any ability to intercept a force far from our borders. Which view is more sensible?
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Communist China is building a strong submarine force, and many military observers believes China is preparing for war against the United States, at least in the Taiwan Strait when it chooses to conquer Taiwan, and possibly as part of its aspirations to replace the U.S. as at least the dominant power in the Asia-West Pacific region and possibly on planet Earth. (After all, they think, China has more than four times as many people as the U.S. Why shouldn't it be dominant over so relatively small a country?)
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If Chinese or any other enemy attempts to land sabotage units or infiltrate terrorists onto our shores by landing in a remote part of our huge coastline, who will be there to stop them? How much of our coastline is patrolled. Now? In the future?
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At present, China is not in cahoots with al-Qaeda or other anti-U.S. terrorist organizations. Surely that could change. Is it really so hard to envision Communist China landing a team of suicide bombers and a mid-size Japanese car on some secluded beach within a couple of hours' driving time of Los Angeles — with a suitcase-sized nuclear weapon in the trunk? China has nuclear weapons technology and submarines. You do the math. L.A., San Fran, Seattle, Silicon Valley — all front on the Pacific Ocean, right across from China. But if such targets were regarded as too obvious, Chinese submarines traveling across the Indian Ocean could pick up terrorists from the Middle East and proceed to attack New York, Boston's complex of high-tech educational institutions and laboratories, even Washington, which is a short drive from quiet beaches in Delaware. Am I the only one thinking such things? Or are Chinese Communists and Islamist terrorists thinking similar thoughts?
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The old model of national defense, that every part of the Nation (but especially our shores) must be within easy reach of military force, is correct. The newer model that we can rely upon intercepting threats thousands of miles away is just plain wrong.
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So I am very pleased that governors and other state representatives are fiting the needless base closings. The claim is that these closings will save some $38 billion over 20 years. Think about that: that's $1.9 billion a year.
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It is almost impossible to find a simple statement of the size of the Federal budget in dollars. You can find charts, that allow you to approximate, but a simple statement, "The total Federal budget for fiscal year 2006 is $______" is apparently information you are not to know, because it is carefully concealed on the several websites that purport to tell you about it. You can get a breakdown by department (Defense: around $475.4 billion), but you have to guess from a chart as to total size: about $2.3 TRILLION, roughly 20% of the Nation's economy. As a proportion of the Defense budget, $1.9 billion is less than 4/10 of 1%! Of the entire Federal Budget, 1.9 billion is 1/1,210th. Stated another way around, there are about 300 million Americans today. $1.9 billion is $6.33 per person for an entire year, and that is not distributed evenly but is slightly shifted toward the more prosperous.
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The "savings", even if not entirely illusory, would not begin right away, because closing down bases is expensive and takes time, as much as three years in some cases. I am not persuaded that the base closings now proposed make the slightest bit of sense, any way you look at it. At a time when we are more aggressively engaged with the world than ever before, to be closing down military bases seems completely inconsistent with our goals and needs.
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In any event, the revolt occasioned by the base-closing recommendations could prove salutary if states say, "No", and demand that the National Guard, which is a state militia, is a state responsibility over which states have authority, and demand that Defense moneys — which are taken from the people of all the states — be disributed in some rational way among the states.
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(2) Nonsense About Tanning. A study by some American 'scientists' claims, according to a summary at iWon.com, that

anywhere from 25-50% of people catching rays at the beach may actually be addicted to tanning. After interviewing 145 beachgoers, U.S. researchers found that a significant portion met a series of addiction criteria traditionally used to diagnose alcoholism and other substance use disorders.

A Reuters story summarizing the findings shows the flimsiness of the assertion.
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This country has got to stop calling everything people like to do and do regularly "addiction". That trivializes real addictions and tries to push onto people guilts for things they enjoy. The Puritans who founded parts of what became this country are still having negative effects upon our culture. Sometimes it's good, in both the moral and health senses, to do what gives us pleasure, and we should have the good sense to tell bluenoses who see "addiction" in everything to shut the hell up.





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