What America could buy for $145 billion dollars (the 2007 Iraq war budget).

Universal Healthcare.

The best educational system in the world.

Buy back our 'paper' from the Chinese.

 

A Prius for everyone..

 

Stabilization of social security

A crap load of solar panels

 

A tax refund of $1,450 per U.S. household.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Feb 13 2007, 09:21 PM) [snapback]390027[/snapback]</div>

How many solar panels and how much would it cost to take the US entirely off fossils for general power needs? Sounds like this $145 billion could take us a lot there.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Feb 13 2007, 10:52 PM) [snapback]389974[/snapback]</div>

Imagine what we could by if:

We did not have to waste money on Welfare payments?
We had merrit testing for teachers and fired the bad one and closed the bad public schools?
We did away with funding the NPR?
We did away with our payments to the UN?
We stopped pork barrel projects?

All the above are recurring expenses forever whereas the Iraq War will have a conclusion.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Feb 14 2007, 08:10 AM) [snapback]390110[/snapback]</div>

sorry about the spelling error.

I also forgot to mention, what would the cost be of another major terror attack on the US? How much did 9/11 cost us? Figures are around $1,200,000,000 in market equity and $800,000,000 in associated costs like physical damages, lost wages, insurance claims, etc.

And the money spent on the war for a large part remains in our economy, no? When you buy a tank or gun or bullet - where is it made - some of the few things that are made here and not in china. Soldiers are governenment employees. If you want to argue that the money given to Iraq to rebuild it is wasted - that would be more to the point. Then you need to figure how many hundreds of billions we give away to other countries too.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Feb 14 2007, 09:10 AM) [snapback]390110[/snapback]</div>

We did not have to waste money on Welfare payments?
More crime.
We had merrit testing for teachers and fired the bad one and closed the bad public schools?
Even fewer people staying in teaching. More crowded classrooms. A less educated underclass. (And by the way, principals in Chicago are already allowed to fire nontenured teachers with a click of a mouse, not even face to face, just select one of five items from a menu. They fire some good young teachers this way simply because they have to meet budget numbers).
We did away with funding the NPR?
Less money than we spend on Iraq in a day.
We did away with our payments to the UN?
We practically do this already.
We stopped pork barrel projects?
Unhappy people at Halliburton.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Feb 14 2007, 10:29 AM) [snapback]390154[/snapback]</div>

Nice comeback.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Feb 14 2007, 01:41 PM) [snapback]390298[/snapback]</div>

Which response did you refer to?
Actually fairly unimpressive/bland. From from Nobel like.

 

How about $10 BILLION dollars?

Auditors: Billions Squandered in Iraq.

"About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on
Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.

More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall."

""There is no accountability," said David M. Walker, who heads the auditing arm of Congress. "Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable.""

What's sauce for the teachers is sauce for the contractors.

I suggest our entire Government butT itself out of education and stop playing the "accountability" card until that $10 BILLION dollars is paid back and then earmarked to pay for the unfunded mandates of No Child Left Behind. Until that happens, I suggest all of our politicians should drink a big cup of STFU.

 

The EV1's that GM crushed were a program that (according to GM's bloated claim) cost them 1 billion. You could have pourd 145 TIMES that expense into electric vehicles, which would have gotten us off our middle east oil addiction ... and destroyed the mid east economies ... that pour big $$ into destroying the U.S. as well as their selves. Their countries would have to go back to throwing swords at each other, in stead of rockets and potentially nukes.

 

It would buy roughly 1.61 years worth of health services given out due to obesity problems (90 billion anually).

Or maybe a new agricultural system that doesn't invloved corn and soybeans? Who the F%$# needs a chicken nugget that can barely be called chicken?

"The nugget says Michael Pollan in his bestselling new book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is the reason chicken has supplanted beef as the most popular meat in America.

If you think that Chicken McNuggets are just pieces of chicken fried in a pan, you would be wrong. According to the McDonald's Brochure on Nutritional Values, they are made from 38 ingredients including:

Chicken (53%), water, salt, modified corn starch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat), sodium phosphates, chicken broth powder (to restore some of the flavor that processing leaches out), seasoning (vegetable oil, extracts of rosemary, mono, di- and triglycerides, lecithin). Battered and breaded with water, enriched bleached wheat flour (niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached wheat flour, modified corn starch, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, dried whey, corn starch. Batter is set in vegetable shortening. Cooked in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, (may contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated corn oil and/or partially hydrogenated canola oil and/or cottonseed oil and/or sunflower oil and/or corn oil).

Then there’s citric acid and Dimethylpolysiloxane (added as an anti-foaming agent). According to the Handbook of Food Additives this “is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen and reproductive effector: it’s also flammable.â€

If that’s not enough, here’s the kicker: TBHQ is added to help preserve freshness. Pollan says in his book, “Perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to ‘help preserve freshness.’ According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food.â€

Our system sucks!

 

I'm so glad I don't eat McNuggets.

Now I'm not ever going to in the future.

But I do like a nice roast chicken.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Feb 15 2007, 09:27 PM) [snapback]391294[/snapback]</div>

Read the book or buy it on CD like I did. VERY informative!

The CDs are very easy to listen to while commuting. I'm on chapter 8 already and I am retaining every bit as much as I would had I read it. Amazon has it for $26 on CD or you might be able to download it somewhere cheaper. It does contain 13 cds though.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Feb 14 2007, 09:06 AM) [snapback]390125[/snapback]</div>

Really? Who says? Who hates us? I have relatives and friends in European countries who are much appreciative of our efforts to curtail the dangerous military and weapons buildup in the Middle East countries.

If the world hates us so much why don't they initiate military action against us? Plenty of those countries you claim to hate us have nuclear capability and could figuratively and literally render US soil as glass within minutes with the push of a few buttons. But they don't. And won't.

Wonder why?

Yes, war and terrorism are terrible things. And no doubt the war in Iraq has been poorly managed. But the past proves diplomacy usually to be much more ineffective.

Rick
#4 2006