ddubb industries

All Enemies Foreign, Domestic, and Elected

May 20th, 2008 economic, political

An email is going around blaming illegal aliens and the Democratically controlled congress as the chief causes of our current financial woes. Yes, Democrats do like to spend money, but could they have possibly caused such economic shift in such a short amount of time? I’m no economist, but I wouldn’t credit Congress with such expedient results. Here’s my armchair-pundit opinion:

I realize that caring for illegal immigrants is a huge cost but compared to the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, two non-budgetary inestimable undefined projects, they are a bargain. Think about it: is it harder to take care of a generally hard-working people who live illegally within your borders and are mooching off your existing infrastructure who speak a simple language that most of us have learned in high school or is it harder to destroy an empire on the other side of the planet in the most violent region on earth in a hostile climate and impossible terrain where the people speak one of the most difficult languages and expect to rebuild THEIR infrastructure, secure THEIR borders, police THEIR neighborhoods, and not accidentally kill THEIR honest citizens making us more enemies, and then have to build a gigantic base in the middle of it all to babysit this process for rest of time?

Why single out the Democrats when it is this bi-partisan-initiated and Republican-perpetuated project that has drained our treasury, taken our focus off the security of US borders, and delayed the solutions to our domestic immigration problems? Isn’t OUR homeland’s security the reason we went to war in the first place? Are we insane? The wars have cost us MUCH more than taking care of uninvited persons on our continent. Seriously, in 2003 Bush estimated $74 billion as the total cost, now it’s estimated to hit $3 trillion—50 times more—for a non-budgetary item! The direct costs in cash and lives far outweigh the benefits, but it’s the negative macro-economic impact of an extended Middle Eastern occupation that is truly unfathomable. Imagine you couldn’t afford to build a $200,000 house but you decide to do it anyway, then halfway through you estimate it will be $10,000,000. Could you possibly continue?

Our nation is $9 trillion in debt (largely to the Chinese, the people who make everything we use, which is essentially the same as owing your soul to the company store) and the government is bailing out the banks and giving us kickbacks this year! Seriously!?! Our current economic downturn, of which the price of gas is just a major indicator, cannot be blamed on Democrats or illegals—two red herrings—but our complicit stupidity for acting impulsively and not counting the costs of war.

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.

Jesus (Luke 14:28-32)