Which brings us to
Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry has
promised to send $60 million of non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, even
though they have said that
3. Roll back
foreign aid
Speaking of radical
Islam, Egypt's new President is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently this isn't a problem for the State
Department, because we're sending them $1.3 billion in military aid,
anyway. Wow. Just think how many Syrian radical Islamists
or Libyan al Qaeda members we could arm with all that money.
And then there are
the other countries: Haiti, Palestine,
Uganda... All told, America will give
about $50 billion away to foreigners.
And most of them won't even get to vote in the mid-term elections.
4. Stop the war
on medical marijuana
President Obama's
Drug-Enforcement Agency continues to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries
in California, Oregon, and other states, despite both clinical studies
and anecdotal evidence that medical marijuana is effective
against many diseases. And who has been
primarily responsible for stopping research into medical marijuana? Oh yeah, it's
While we're at it,
maybe it's time to consider legalizing all drug use. After all, Portugal found that 10 years after
legalization, recreational drug use had actually decreased by half. But
in America, 48% of all prisoners in federal jails are there for drug offenses,
compared to 7.5% for violent crimes, at an annual cost of $30,000 per prisoner. Meanwhile, the War on Drugs costs the federal
government over $15 billion per year.
Maybe it's time we "just say no."
5. End corporate
subsidies
Love them or hate
them, Tad DeHaven of the CATO Institute has identified $100 billion of possible
corporate welfare cuts in the federal budget. Big Pharma, agribusinesses, Wall Street... Suffice it to say that when Forbes says
it's time to cut corporate welfare, then maybe it's time to cut corporate
welfare.
See, that wasn't so
hard, was it? There are plenty of places
to cut the federal budget without harming basic services or national security.
The problem is,
every one of those budget items has an entrenched constituency fighting to keep
it as big as possible. So, even though
the national debt is now over $52,000 for every man, woman, and child in
America, it's likely that the President and Congress will find some way to
reach a last-minute deal to sink us even further into debt.
It's time to get in
the lifeboats. Women and firemen first,
of course.
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