Quote Originally Posted by VanChilds View Post
Kirk, for one I find it curious the personal involvement you take in America considering that you don't fly the Stars and Stripes under your name. Do you live in the US? Secondly I'm not hearing you give reasonable solutions. If AIG is guilty of fraud then they will be prosecuted and then one way or the other the bonuses will be re-couped. If there is a legal means of getting the bonuses back then so be it. But to allow the feds to change the tax laws to punish is a dangerous step. If you know our govt then you know you give them a inch they will take a mile. Considering how inept our federal govt has been both past and present why grow their scope and impact? Lastly our military has been utilized poorly. We could make aiding and abetting terrorist groups so horrible a crime even Iran would think twice. Now I can safely assume this attitude doesn't suit you so what is your solution to dealing with islamic radicals? You can't really feel that there is the chance for rationale thought or real two way dialogue, do you?
I used to live in the US and still pay taxes to the IRS which gives me a right to complain about how the country is run. There's no guarantee that AIG will be prosecuted for anything. The government has gone to great lengths not to open any investigations of Wall Street and will almost certainly continue to do so, something that greatly damages the US economy in the long run.

The US has a tax code with so many loopholes that if you do make a lot of money you can pay a single digit/low teens tax rate every year, and these loopholes have been gained by lobbying. I don't see why the country can be effectively cheated and looted but the first time it makes an effort to end the cheating and looting then changing tax laws is suddenly something you can't do -- it was fine to move things in the opposite direction for the last thirty years.

The governemt has handles the financial crisis ineptly because the mechanisms they used to have for regulating finance have been dismantled, most notably over the past seven years. There are some areas where the government needs to grow its scope and impact.

Bombing foreign countries will just create more terrorism, qed. Military action to prevent terrorism failed dismally in Iraq, Bush was reduced to putting terrorists on the US payroll so they wouldn't kill as many American soldiers. America can't say abetting terrorist groups is punishable by military action when America also supports terrorist groups, but in general if you try and use military force to enforce your will some people on the other end of that action are going to violently disagree with you. Even George Bush's Secretary of Defence has advocated negotiating with the Taliban.

In general I'd like to see America extend and prolong its position in the world for as long as possible and not piss it up the wall in as short a time as possible, but that's what America's leaders seem determined to do.