Nader: Implement speculation tax to stave off 'fiscal cliff'

By Ralph Nader
In the debate over the “fiscal cliff,” President Obama and congressional Republicans have returned to the proposals that they were sparring over before the election. They remain at odds over key elements of revenue and spending. Yet both sides are unwilling to consider a minuscule tax on financial transactions that could be a major source of income.
A financial transaction tax would apply to purchases and sales of derivatives, options and stocks. The tax would be small, half a penny or less on each dollar of the transaction value, depending on the product. This idea is often called a “speculation tax,” because it would hit hardest at frothy high-volume trading as opposed to sober long-term investment.

Republicans Can Cut Pentagon Waste, too
Guest Perspective/Jack Shanahan

Presidential candidates routinely rail against big government, but they're often silent when it comes to denouncing the biggest source of waste, redundancy, and inefficiency in the federal bureaucracy. That is, the Pentagon.
This year, against a backdrop of ballooning deficits and serious threats from terrorists, we're already starting to see a few candidates break freefrom the taboo against calling for serious cuts in defense spending.
But if you listen closely to the presidential hopefuls traipsing though Iowaand New Hampshire these days, you'd think it's only a few of the Democrats who will cut Cold War weapons systems from the Pentagon budget - and their proposed cuts are mostly nominal compared to the potential savings that could be realized.
Sen. Joe Biden, for example, opposes space-based weapons. Gov. Bill Richardson wants to cut 10 percent from the Pentagon budget. Both candidates would cut the V-22 Osprey and the F-22 Raptor fighter plane. And Sen. John Edwards opposes Star Wars.
All of these programs are big bonanza projects for defense contractors, butare of little or no use for our national defense.
The failures of missile defense are the stuff of legend, and offensive space-based weapons are almost literally pie-in-the-sky ideas that could trigger an arms race in space.
The Osprey, a helicopter-airplane hybrid, offers only marginal improvements to our existing helicopters, yet costs five times as much and has killed 23 Marines in test flights.
The F-22, designed to fight Soviet jets, brings little to an Air Force that has easily proven its superiority in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why the Air Force has tried to convert the F-22 to close-air support missions. But at 25 times the cost of a regular A-10, it's hard to see the value of a supersonic stealth fighter to attack ground targets.
Cutting these programs would potentially save taxpayers more than $80 billion over the next four years without affecting our national security.
Republicans on the presidential stump can hardly manage to name a single multi-billion dollar system that they would cut, though most deserve credit for at least acknowledging the fact that substantial waste can be found over at the Pentagon.
This is strange, because some brave Republicans have indeed stood up in the past and called for an end to the Pentagon's Cold War relics.
When he was Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney canceled the Osprey, only to have it saved by Congress. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to scale back production of the F-22.
Just last year, President Bush tried to scale back the Army's ambitious Future Combat System, a bloated weapons project, only to be overruled by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. John McCain is famous for his scorn for pork spending, including wasteful defense programs, and has fought to rein in cost overruns on big acquisition projects.
But it's one thing to talk about cutting waste in the abstract, and quite another to single out programs that have built-in constituencies in Congress and the defense industry.
In an era where it's considered politically safe to lavish money on defense budgets regardless of the threat to America, it takes leadership to stand above parochial interests.
Now is the time for Republican candidates to muster some of the courage they will surely need if elected President, and name specific Cold War weapons systems that would be cut under their Administrations.
And it's time for Democratic candidates, like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have yet to name specific Cold War relics that should be axed, to tell us what they plan to cut.
And all candidates, Republicans and Democrats, should go further, offering their own plans to save tens of billions in wasteful defense spending. There's no doubt the savings are there for the taking.

Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (USN, ret) formally commanded the U.S. Second Fleet and heads the Military Advisory Committee of the Priorities Campaign.

Editor's Notes: If you would like to submit a guest perspective to Politizine, feel free: Email it to politizine@yahoo.com to be considered. Second point: $80 billion is a pretty good chunk of change. The next time you see, say, a certain Republican senator by the name of Judd Gregg going on and on about entitlements and how we are bankrupting the future for our children but when you point to a study by Public Citizen which showed more than $300-plus billion in corporate welfare, subsidies, giveaways and abuse, and he responds to you that Public Citizen is a "liberal" organization or says, eliminating those line items would be "raising taxes," point to the $80 billion mentioned here. Let's see if he can stammer through that one. Or, will he just call you a liberal and slough you off?

Local cuts to social service agencies are a disgrace

Concord City Council should cut CCTV budget

As a journalist who has covered municipal bodies in two different states for more than a decade, I am sometimes completely shocked at how intelligent elected officials can collectively come to some of the worst fiscal and public policy decisions. Call it “consensusitis,” if you will.

The Concord City Council’s decision to slash most social service agency funding by 33 percent or more is one of those decisions. Councilors will pontificate that there just isn’t any money despite all the fine work these organizations do. But that is not altogether true. While most line items in the budget were cut, one was not: CCTV, the cable media access center. In this year’s budget, CCTV will be awarded $11,000 more in operating expenses than in fiscal year 2007, according to documents. The amount CCTV will receive from the city this year is more than $234,000.

What is so shocking about this increase is that just last year, in testimony before a budget hearing to the council, I exposed tens of thousands of dollars in CCTV’s budget which should have used to fend off last year’s cuts at the recreation department and library. Thousands of dollars for personal IRA benefits, travel junkets, volunteer services, and legal funding and obscure miscellaneous line items which could never possibly be spent down. An analysis of the entire operation is well over due and might make for some interesting auditing, if anyone had the intestinal fortitude to implement some oversight.

But when asked if they had looked at any of this, the council’s silence was deafening. No, they hadn’t and had no intention of doing so, despite the budget crisis.

So, when budget time this year rolled around, and the warnings of doom and gloom started surfacing, and the Conservation Trust Fund got raided, I thought for sure that someone might finally take even a cursory look at the CCTV budget and all the potential money which can be used to stave off some of the cuts elsewhere.

Well, I thought wrong.

Interestingly, CCTV has shuffled its budget around. Sure, the money for the benes, dinners, treats for the board, and junkets remain. But CCTV has decided to take some of the miscellaneous money, along with the increase, and hire a sixth employee, who will handle producer training … A job which has historically been performed by the full-time employees who already work there. Since there are only a couple of trainings a month, viewers like me cannot possibly imagine that they need another full-time person for this job.

When CCTV came before the council to talk about its budget, not a question was raised concerning the meager fund-raising efforts, the lack of grant funding successes, the tens of thousands in developmental losses, or the extravagant expenses. They weren’t asked to explain the unneeded hire or to provide any information about the money they blew through last year or the fact that governmental meetings still look like 14th generation videotape in the digital age. There was no motion to make any cuts to CCTV during this budget crisis.

Juxtapose that with the questions social service agencies received about their fund-raising efforts and now, comments that they need better oversight by the council. You have got to be kidding, right?

The point is that about $60,000 or more could easily be shaved from the CCTV budget without any harm in current delivered service. And there is no need for a sixth employee while the rest of the city is in crisis. That is a lot of heating oil for the needy this winter or summer camp opportunities for less-affluent kids in our community. And let’s not even get started on the cuts to the homeless shelter, the rape crisis center, senior services, etc.

Later this year, when many of these great social service agencies start hitting us all up for more money to make up for the losses, don’t forget what has happened here. This city council thought it was more important to increase the funding for a cable access media center which few people use and even fewer people watch than to watch over those most in need. This decision, frankly, is a disgrace.

It might also be good to remember that 2007 is an election year. While there has been some turn over in the council recently, it does not seem to have done much good. Voters would be wise to consider electing councilors who understand fiscal prudence and the importance of social capital, as well as taking care of those most in need first.