Archive for February, 2007

Economic Generator or Corporate Welfare?

Published
by
seanb
on 27 February 2007
in Democracy, General, Political and Society
. 0 Comments

The Florida Marlins Major League Baseball Club has been seeking a new stadium here in Miami for years. Having been to a few MLB games where they currently play, Dolphin Stadium, I can understand why they would want their own purpose-built facility. Quite frankly, the experience seemed a bit… lacking, for want of a better term. We seemed too removed from the game, being so far back from the players.

However, while I have enjoyed a few ball games, I am not a regular attendee at the Marlins games, or any other major league sport in this area. Put succinctly, I cannot afford to attend these games on a regular basis. Sure, my family would love to go to every single home game played by the Florida Panthers, but we don’t have the coin to be able to afford even the occasional dalliance.

This leads me to my question: Should the taxpayers of the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County, and the State of Florida foot the bill for a purpose-built facility to host a team of players who make, on average, five times what the average citizen of the locale makes, when that team of players is owned by a multimillionaire? The Miami Herald is reporting that the team may be close to a deal that will allow just that.

I think that the answer to this question should be predicated on a rate of return on this investment that is guaranteed by the club. For example, if the aforementioned people, by way of their government, invest $430 million in a stadium for the ball club, the ball club should turn around and guarantee a return on this investment of a certain, modest, percentage, say 5%, over the next 15-20 years.

I might suggest that the money from this investment return be invested in low- to lower-middle income housing in the area immediately around the area that is being proposed for the stadium site – a notoriously blighted area that was supposed to have been helped by the building of the Miami Arena and American Airlines Arena, former and current homes, respectively, of the National Champion Miami Heat NBA Club.

On the War…

Published
by
seanb
on 22 February 2007
in Iraq and War
. 0 Comments

Over the past few weeks, I have been asking myself a series of questions about the war we are fighting in Iraq:

  1. How did we get there?
  2. Could it have been avoided?
  3. Why are we there?
  4. What can we do to get out as soon as possible, with as few additional casualties as necessary?
  5. What can we do to curb the bloodlust our Executive branch appears to feel it has the right to exact on civilizations that do not acquiesce to its demands?

In fact, as some of you who may read this know, I have been increasingly concerned about the actions of this administration on this issue; and have begun to take action on my part to bring to fruition satisfactory answers to the aforementioned questions from our leadership.

It’s clear that questions one, two, and three, while important, should be left to later analysis; it is more important to get answers to questions five and four, in that order, before too much longer.

Because of the stance our Commander-in-Chief has taken vis-a-vis the desires of the American people to start reducing our troops (namely his thumbing his nose at us), and because of the stance our Commander-in-Chief has taken regarding drawing the hard line in the sand regarding Iran, and its nuclear intentions, the time has come to tie our Executive branch’s hands and prohibit any further unilateral military action from being taken. Congress needs to act sooner, rather than later, to revoke the President’s right to use force in this so-called “War on Terror,” before we find ourselves much deeper in Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”, writ large.

As far as answering question number four, it is my opinion that the Kucinich plan for Iraq represents our best opportunity to get our troops out of harms’ way, and bring them home to protect us. I don’t believe we should become isolationist – far from it – but I do believe that a firm defense to the “war on terror” starts right here at home, by protecting the assets we have worked so hard to build. Defending these assets does not mean that we will need to fight this war on our turf; better management of intelligence assets and information can help protect us much more than the $250,000,000 per day we’re spending on a failed war in a foreign country we had no right to invade in the first place. Witness the United Kingdom’s recent foiling of terrorist plots on their own soil, without having to resort to sending a massive amount of troops into harms way to accomplish the task.

I urge you to take a look at alternative plans to the one put forth by the Executive leadership of this great land. There is a much broader way to protect ourselves while bringing peace and stability to the world stage.

Democracies Should be Bridging Societies…

Published
by
seanb
on 21 February 2007
in Democracy, Political and Society
. 0 Comments

George Takei’s Answer to Tim Hardaway

Tim Hardaway, former NBA all-star, said, quite publicly, that he hates gays. The following day, he renamed a business here in Miami, to remove his name (and stigma from his views), so as to not link his comments with his business, potentially reducing his profits.

Regardless of Mr. Hardaway’s apology, I found George Takei’s tongue-in-cheek response to Hardaway (via Jimmy Kimmel’s show on ABC) to be quite funny, and while not completely appropriate for prime-time, I believe it presents a nice response to Mr. Hardaway.

In a democracy such as ours, we should try to bridge our gaps as much as possible, rather than being insular. It is only through tapping everyone’s strengths that we will truly succeed as a democracy.

Offending a friend…

Published
by
seanb
on 18 February 2007
in Iraq, Political and War
. 2 Comments

In response to the post of a friend (click here to view the post), I signed on to The Working Families Party’s eLetter to a Representative, and put in five e-mail addresses on their page to encourage participation from people who I thought may have been like-minded. Okay… some of them I knew were like-minded, one of them I knew was not. But hey, why not spread the wealth after they’ve sent me posts about the “good news that goes on in Iraq…” (you know the news – the stuff the media here refuses to report).

Anyhow, to make a short story long, it turns out that my friend was extremely offended by me sending her that e-mail. See, her father fought in Vietnam, and she had heard “stories about how the troops felt fighting an unpopular war”. It is her opinion that we were right to take out Saddam Hussein, and that calling to bring the troops home is basically “throwing them under the bus,” and leaving them open to attack. She then went on to say that she doesn’t believe in following leadership blindly.

I didn’t want to throw further fuel on the fire, so I didn’t ask her exactly what she felt she was doing by supporting the leadership’s efforts; and I didn’t have the quick wit that my wife did, who suggested that I should have said: “I have only the troops’ welfare in mind when I say we should bring them home today.”

Oh to have been so blessed with quick wit.

A Non-Binding Start to the New Year

Published
by
seanb
on 12 February 2007
in Iraq, Political and War
. 1 Comment

Yes, I know this is my first post of the new year.  No, the blog is not abandoned.  And thank you for the gentle nudge, Toledo Lefty.  I got hung up in that writer’s fog that comes from not writing… if you don’t write, you don’t produce… are you familiar with that death spiral?  Anyhow, on with the show.

Both houses of the Congress of the United States have talked about, kicked about, debated, and otherwise discussed non-binding resolutions stating something akin to the fact that President George W. Bush’s plan to increase troops in Iraq is not in the national interest.  While non-binding resolutions are one of the limited powers our Legislative branch in government has in controlling the behavior of the Executive, I don’t believe they are the most effective… in fact, I am of the opinion they are particularly weak – especially against the incumbent Executive leadership.

I believe that while it is important for our representatives’ words to be on record against the troop increase Mr. Bush has proposed, I think that the longer the Democrats try to drag out the discussions on these non-binding resolutions, the more we play into the hands of the now-minority Republican party’s efforts to sling more mud.  It’s time to strike while the iron is still hot, and in this day and age of TV-based millisecond attention spans, the iron does not stay hot for very long.  I’d say that the iron is probably pretty close to lukewarm right now.

We need to put a cap on the spending for the Iraq war at last year’s numbers, and then start a draw down (programmed, not precipitous) of the troops, along with allotted funding, aiming to have the bulk of the troops home by the end of 2008.  Don’t give the President what he wants.  It’s not “not supporting the troops,” it’s “no longer having faith in the mission their leader sent them to, based on fallacious information.”

Would this play out in an ugly fashion?  You bet it would, because 2008 is a Presidential election year.  And because most people interested in the White House are interested in the power the White House brings, more than they are interested in doing the right thing by our men and women who are serving in our armed forces, especially in the two theaters where battle is now occurring.  This is quite unfortunate; however, the only way we are going to force this Executive administration to listen to reason, is to have the Legislative branch reason for them.

To reason for them, we’re going to have to make the money do the talking.  Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to make the money walk away from the war and defense budget to some other, more useful spending, like finding long-term solutions to the problem of keeping the oil flowing.  Perhaps something like funding green/alternative energy projects to get us off our diet so rich in foreign oil, so we don’t “need” to be in these areas to keep them stable to begin with.

We shouldn’t be there… and we should never have gone.
And we shouldn’t be playing politics with the lives of our troops.