Let Me Begin...

Let me begin by saying that I intend to start all this off on the right foot. I'm going to do a big "Inaugural Post" following the State of the Union speech this evening. I will not, however be live blogging it, or micro blogging it or any sort of such thing, mostly because I will be at work. I work an hourly wage job part time in addition to going to school and so, this blog, as excited as I am about it, comes after those responsibilties. I ask that all of you out there on the internets bear with me. This is an ongoing project and I will try to be as prompt with discussions as possible. So at least let me tell you where else you can go to get the political discourse you so thoroughly desire. Let me, for the record say that I would try The Rachel Maddow Show or Nate Silver's 538 for discussions on big national issues. Both do an excellent job of analysis. The former of those resources is, as I am, an entity with a leftward spin to it, the latter tries to be objective and, I believe, does a fair job of it. I will most certainly link to both of these sites as well as many others regularly to help make my points, but I will also strive to add my own bit to the discussion as well.

Before we do anything of any real depth (which I will save for the breakdown of the State of the Union Address) I will say that the things that are coming out of the White House before the speech don't encourage me. The President is, as many of you probably already know, proposing a "Spending Freeze" for all discretionary spending exclusive of Defense, Intelligence, State and the like. I think this is a terrible plan. First, it is purely reactionary when the President needs to be proactive. He is seeing his numbers slide, as one would and should expect with an economy as it is, and is trying to do something to create a turnaround. However, adopting the economic strategy of the opponent you soundly defeated 14 months earlier is just poor policy. If the idea is to make Republicans, and possibly more importantly Tea Baggers, like him because he's suddently being mindful of the deficit, the idea is poorly thought out. When the deficit is brought up as it is regularly by the President's political opponents, the answer is to remind them of the deficits that they irresponsibly (and against their "Small Government" cries) ran up fighting two unnecessary and reactionary wars. And then to point out that the Federal Government is one of the only entities capable of spending currently, and that spending is exactly what is needed to keep this Great Recession from becoming a second Great Depression.

Secondly, I want to challenge the wisdom of excluding the Pentagon from this spending freeze. If it really IS the right thing to do, why not include one of the biggest budgets in Washington? It looks to me like the President is trying to avoid being accused of being "soft on terror" and "not giving the troops the backing they need" when the Republicans in Congress are always going to accuse him of this anyway. I think it is high time that the Defense Department budget was looked at as a main contributor to our debt and deficit problem. Looking at American defense spending versus the Entire rest of the world would seem to support that we are spending way too much on defense. When there is so much talk in Washington about "trimming the fat" why is it that the DoD budget is viewed as 100% lean? The pie graph on the privious link would seem to support that we very nearly spend more on defense than the rest of the world put together. If we can't defend ourselves with, say, half that, or $300 billion dollars, it's time to ask what we are doing wrong.

More is to come after the State of the Union this evening. I think I've soapboxed enough for now.