Realitybites said:
Roads are a legitimate function of government. In general, the maintenance of domestic public infrastructure is. Water supply, sewage, etc also are.
Running up 35 trillion in debt heading on its way to 50 trillion within a decade as the standard of living of citizens is continually degraded and then shipping another 60 billion to country halfway around the world that's involved in an unnecessary war is not.
It is your *opinion* that degrading the Russian military is necessary. You have consistently failed to make a case that the modern Russian state poses any military threat to the west. The majority of the country disagrees with you.
Whiterock is part of - or at least a defender of - that government-american class who can go to the CIA, go on an overseas posting for 5 years, and retire at 40 with a full pension while the majority of Americans have no access to a pension period. He is as big a part of the problem we face as Biden, BLM, and woke academics.
You are wrong about an awful lot up there. Making war is also a legitimate function of government. We sent an expeditionary force to Africa in our earliest days to defend our interests. You make valid points about deficits, but deficits don't matter when your interests are threatened - they must be defended or they will be ceded. And if you wish to fix the budget, I would advise that you start with bigger numbers than $60b, which is a one-time spend that is precisely 0.17% of the debt. To fix a budget deficit, you have to start with the biggest numbers on the books, like payroll and entitlement programs, and cut double-digit percentages out of things, and/or have a meaningful tax increase.
Degrading the Russian war machine is necessary because Russia has pointedly not joined the modern age and continues to send its armies across borders with its neighbors, with a stated intent of reconstituting the footprint of the former USSR, which of course involves a number of Nato members with whom we trade and are obligated to defend. Just mind-numbingly stupid to say Russia poses no threat to us, or that we have zero interest in what happens in Ukraine. As a member of Nato, we have the exact same interests as NATO, which means we have to treat the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the same level of urgency as Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, etc.....and that invasion most definitely is a threat to them.
So your points are completely unserious on both fiscal and foreign policy grounds.
But I save the best part for last. The "cushy retirement" complaint makes the rounds on the internet from time to time, and is always dead-wrong. Congressmen don't get to retire at full pay after a single term. They have standard civil service retirement = the longer you work, the more you make in retirement. CIA officers today have the same basic retirement plan that guys at the Soil Conservation office over on I-35 next to the John Deere dealership get = FERS, aka standard civil service retirement. The only amendment is,
if one has served abroad for 5 years, one may retire at age 50 with 20 years of service, or at any age with 25yrs of service. Such terms of course mitigate the amount of money the USG has to contribute to the 401K during the latter years (highest income) of a career, and reduces the defined benefit plan as well, given that it is a simple function of percentage points X number of years. I was a relative rarity in joining CIA straight out of college. Most of my basic training class had done other things before joining, and a fairly goodly percentage of CIA folks are retirees from military service - communicators, tech officers, signals collection officers, paramilitary types, etc...so the average age of CIA personnel is quite older than you'd think. 20-25 years of service takes most CIA officers into their 60's (which of course is why the age/service amendments were made in the first place....) And....of course.....a VERY small percentage of CIA officers serve abroad. The vast majority of folks at Langley get exactly what those soil conservation office guys here in Waco get, because they never had a chance to serve abroad due to the fact that there are no overseas positions in their career category ergo never qualify for the early retirement provisions (ergo the legend of the little old lady in tennis shoes).
Please learn more and think better.
