What do you think about the 120 billion dollar Iraq War compromise between the Democrats and the Republicans?

Answer 1

i think a timetable would have been cheaper than 20 billion in pork. what did a non binding timetable amount to anyway

Answer 2

I don't think it was a compromise at all. Bush got the money he needed to continue the insanity in Iraq, and the American people got... the tab! But I also object to calling the activity in Iraq a "war." In a war, two opposing nations fight one another. Here, the nation we declared war on lost in about three days, and now, the new Iraqi government is supposedly on our side. Innocent civilians and a few of our forces are dying, and we just have to take the Pentagon's word that they're fighting anyone else - terrorists, they claim, although the ones they take to Guantanamo Bay always turn out to be bus drivers or shop clerks. It's not worth any of my money...

Answer 3

a majority of Americans want the war ended and the Democrats knew that. I am a liberal but am very ashamed of the Democrats that went along with this bill. This was our chance to show bush that we were not backing down, guess I was wrong.

Answer 4

This money would have been enough to eradicate poverty in the world.
This would have limited the population growth. In turn it would have increased the resources available per capita.... and then decreased the future risk related to the resources (conflicts).
In turn the outlooks for peace in the world would have been increased.

Answer 5

I think it sucks. My party sold out and for what? I will be paying very close attention to who votes which way on this bill. Anyone who votes yes will not be getting my vote again.

Answer 6

i say this world is so f*cked up with so many problems....


who gives a hoot at this point..


im just waitin out my life....

Answer 7

It pales in comparison to the 80 trillion our privately enterprise corporate government owes the American people!

CAFRs: The BIGGEST Secret - $60 Trillion Invested By Fed, State, & Local
Governments!
http://www.rense.com/general2/bigsecret.htm

Reported - but for all purposes HIDDEN from American taxpayers - Local, State and Federal governments currently hold about 60+ trillion dollars of profitable investments in real estate, pension funds, insurance companies, liquid investment funds, bond financing accounts and corporate stock portfolios (32 Trillion) over 53% of America's stock market, and a large percentage of the international stock market, etc., are all revealed in their required filing of CAFRs (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports) and noted reports therein.

CAFRs And Pending US 'Economic Collapse'
http://www.rense.com/general74/cafrss.htm
(Note - The following is a response to a following email below)

Ernest: I read your comments to TruthOut towards CAFR and composite wealth held and needed to correct you on a few points.

1 Composite wealth may now be 80 trillion but I always use a conservative 60 trillion plus. This money is standing investment and cash accounts. How much is surplus revenue? A complete audit would determine that. It is not hidden if someone knows where to look. It is just never talked about by all organized segments of this country due to the money involved and who has their hands in the pockets. Just to name a few; the News Media, Organized Education, the established political parties, and all higher ups from government administration. The investments are both domestic and international. The primary three investment arenas are where the labor is cheap such as China, Mexico / South America, and the Soviet Block Countries.

2 There "is" an Economic Disaster looming. Government in their greed to hoard the wealth has taken over the market. In fact government "is" the market now. Many traders over the last ten years kept looking at different sectors and were saying "There is no way these prices can hold, they are way over priced" as they continued to go higher.

Well, what was happening was that prices were going higher based on the monopoly of government investments as they grew. In 1929, the public was the primary holder and they would and did have panic selling spree causing the collapse. Now government is the primary holder and they orchestrate continued gains to perpetuate their balance sheets.

Here a bubble exists but a bubble under ultimate control. If 100% of the public panicked and sold every share they owned, the market would have a severe dip but then come right back and then shoot higher with government now picking up most of those shares at a discount and then by effect would own 100% of the market.

Government did this before and after 911. They had massive short derivatives held going into 911 whereby a few trillion were picked up on those derivatives almost overnight as time goes when the derivatives were exited from.

Even though they lost money on their physical holding, the derivatives substantially counterbalanced those losses, and then the market over the following years went higher than it was when 911 occurred and thus a few extra trillions of dollars for the government holdings. In compensation to the public, government then forced interest rates down to the lowest levels in a few decades to directly benefit the public.

Does this type of bubble create the potential for an Economic Disaster? Yes, it does.

Will it lead to an Economic Disaster? It probably will not. When you own all of the cookies in the cookie jar, you set the price. People complain about taxation and one point they do not realize is that through this government monopoly of the markets, with government also controlling the reports and what blurbs comes out in the News, they orchestrate the ups and downs whereby the public market players are simply swarming minnows to be eaten at will. The public gets liberated of a few extra trillions of dollars over the years from this game. Look at the losses to the public from 911 on their 401K plans. Many dropped by 40 to 60% in value. In the alternative government pensions barely missed a heart beat.

I will bring forward one last point here. Pensions contributions and fund balances are determined by projections of return on the holdings to meet payouts that are needed at retirement. If interest rates are low over a specific term of years, then projections dictate higher balances. If returns are high on average over the years then lower balances are needed. On government pensions from 1991 to 2000, the returns were grand.

Many of these multibillion dollar state funds such as Arizona, Washington, and Oregon were accomplishing returns of depending upon what year you looked at, from between 16 to 23%. Compound those apples each year! They government employees were not aware of this being that they were told the return being accomplished was 7 or 8%, the "actuarial projection" being used and not the real rate of return.

After 911 when interest rates dropped to 1%, government actuaries who determined the "projected" return to determined fund balance needs dropped the actuarial projection term for return used from 7 8% to 3.5 to 4%. Here this "doubled" the projected fund balances required and all government employees were told that their pension funds were in danger of being under funded due to 911 and increases in contributions were needed. It appears the government employees are played just as easily as the general public is. (True rates of returns for government pensions are back up to 12 to 16% but not a peep to the government employees) See, what our parents use to say to us when we were little children is still true, "Silence is golden."

EXAMPLE OF AN ACTUARIAL PROJECTION: ANNUAL BENEFIT PAYMENTS NEEDED AT RETIREMET $50,000

* Required fund balance needed if a projection of 2.5% return is used would be: $2,000,000.00 needed per employee.

* Required fund balance needed if a projection of 10% return is used would be: $500,000.00 needed per employee. As you can see, the projected rate of returned used can make a substantial difference as to if "Over Funded" or "Under Funded” The only issue here for truth is; What is the REAL averaged rate of return. If it becomes obvious that local government is juggling the projected actuarial rate of return for the purpose of grossly inflating the money they have under management and tricking government employees to contribute more for the same purpose, then that is clear fraud being perpetrated against the taxpayer and those lower level government employees. (They should have been getting refunds not asked for increased contributions) How do you find out REAL TRUTH per this matter? Look! Do a Google search on as an example "New York State Retirement Fund" CAFR and it will pop up for down loading. Put in quotes the entity you are looking for which gives hit returns for the exact phrase and CAFR next to it on the search line. Do a search again with PERS in the search line. PERS being Public Employees Retirement. So, Look, Learn, and then Act! Review your State, City, County, and School district Public Employees Retirement fund today. Learn what is real. (Especially you government employees who may be getting a snow job handed to you by upper administration)

Yours truly,

Walter J. Burien, Jr. P. O. Box 2112 Saint Johns, AZ 85936 928-445-3532 ------------------ Pension funds pay a salary at retirement. Any local government can be restructured to meet their annual budget needs "Without" Taxes in the same fashion. TRF (Tax Retirement Funds) now meeting every City, County, State's annual budgetary needs! They have already proven that it will work! CAFR1 says: Make it law and make it so!

10/29/2006 - Ernest Wiebe wrote:

Dear Truthout:

There is more than $80 trillion hidden in the coffers of the Federal, State and city governments of the USA, that has been pilfered from the US taxpayers since 1946. Canada, Europe and down under have the same ream job done on them. Who do you think owns the majority of the shares of your or their Fortune 500, your government. Check out that your government owns 80% of Microsoft. It's in the books.

The truth of this is if you discern the regular bookkeeping and the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, CAFRs, over 84 thousand of these are filed yearly. It is not ever mentioned in the GDP, but study the GNP and the CAFRs. You see, The USA receives twice as much revenue from their foreign investments yearly as they receive from tax revenues. But these funds are not ear-marked for reduction of the debt or up-keep and infrastructure. Canada receives about an equal amount. They have the nerve to call it Consolidated instead of Composite and classify it in the Stat-Can as "Own Source Revenue”. Now these funds were laundered to a few companies in Australia and Spain that build new autopistas or buy up existing highways, bridges and turn them into tollroads. In fact many of your interstate highways are at risk at this very moment. Spain is purchasing them and will collect the tolls forever, (in Spain I paid 10 cents a Km). As you now have no US Constitution or Bill of Rights, so long suckers. You are too late my friend.

You should keep a sharp eye and really learn how much has been set up for the government officials' retirement pensions.

In fact, I dare you to and then answer respond to me what you learn, but you likely know all this, maybe even receive copies as do all the main news media brass, as does every senator and congressman. But nobody wants to touch this RICO thing. Even my government will not respond to my numerous E-mails on this subject, they know they will be destroyed as some of your officials have been.

The US federal judges set one up a pension plan for themselves that pays them $8 million cash on retirement and they needed only one year on the bench to qualify!! Read it and weep.

Check with the c.c. Walter Burien at CAFR1. Enter: "Walter Burien and CAFR" in Google and learn the truth.

Sincerely, Ernest Wiebe of Canada.

----- Original Message -----

From: "t r u t h o u t" To: Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 7:42 AM Subject: Top Government Official Says US on Verge of Economic Disaster http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102906Z.shtml

There's a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.
See:
What Are CAFRs?
http://www.rense.com/general74/whatr.htm

CAFR - The Biggest Shell Game For Theft In This World's History!
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/cafr1/CAFR.html

CAFRs: The BIGGEST Secret - $60 Trillion Invested By Fed, State, & Local
Governments!
http://www.rense.com/general2/bigsecret.htm

U.S. Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports - CAFRs By states
These URLs for complete website: http://financenet.gov/state/cafr.htm http://financenet.gov/state/reports.htm http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/gasb/rlinks/index.html

25 Trillion Diverted to India by Bush Sr.
http://www.arcticbeacon.com/

Since November 2005 a massive fraud, estimated at $25 trillion, has been funneled to India by corrupt American officials in one of the largest fund-washing and money-laundering schemes ever devised in the history of the world, according to Ambassador Leo Wanta, and as reported Thursday by London financial writer, Christopher Story. The massive money laundering scheme has come to light as a result of the brash and arrogant actions of President Bush and the Federal Reserve Board, who have been unscrupulously blocking a $4.5 trillion settlement due Ambassador Wanta and earmarked for the American people and the betterment of the economy. The settlement is a portion of the $27.5 trillion offshore fund established at the end of the Cold War, which is now under the legal control of Ambassador Wanta, as duly appointed trustor under direction of former President Ronald Reagan.