While the US Justice Department debates the wisdom of filing criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Sweden has filed an arrest warrant for him for an alleged rape in that country. That arrest warrant for Assange via Interpol will make it even more difficult for him to travel between counties. What are the pros and cons of Sweden or for that matter the United States of America arresting Julian Assange? The charges facing Assange in Sweden have nothing and everything to do with the mischief he has been up to on the world stage via his Wikileaks website in recent months. While there are many supporters of Julian Assange around the world, I do not count myself as one of them. To me, Mr. Assange is on a one man mission to promote himself at the expense of the military, politicians and soon at least one large bank in the United States.
So what are the pros and cons of the United States arresting Julian Assange on espionage charges? The biggest thing on the pros side is that Assange would be removed as a free man to stick his finger of rebellion in the face of nations around the world via his access to classified secrets that have been leaked to him. However, the cons of the US arresting Julian Assange and putting him on trial might be even bigger than the initial good feeling many people would experience once he is finally behind bars. Throughout history, people like Assange have popped onto the public radar and promoted themselves at the expense of others, like military personnel serving in Afghanistan. The last thing the United States of America and other nations around the world want to do is turn Julian Assange into a hero, which is is not.
While the pros of arresting Julian Assange might seem like a good idea in the short run, in the long run it would be a disaster for any nation who puts him on trial. Rightly or wrongly, most of the time when a character like Julian Assange makes the choice to take on the governments of the world, old age is something they do not live long enough to experience. The only thing the governments of the world can do to finally put a stop to Julian Assange's actions, is to discredit him in a way that people, newspapers and the media stop paying attention to what he has to say. Most of the time, people obsessed with personal self promotion like Julian Assange - will eventually be brought down by their own arrogance of narcissistic greatness.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Pros/Cons Of Increasing Taxes On The Rich
Few things in life will bring as much heated debate in the United States as the question of whether or not the taxes of the rich should be increased or not. What are the pros and cons to increasing the taxes of millionaires and billionaires? The answer to that question depends mainly on your political point of view more than anything else. The pros to raising taxes on the rich involve raising tax revenue from the people who have the best ability to pay. The cons of raising the taxes of the rich revolve around the fact that rich people in the United States create the most new jobs and what is need right now more than anything else in the US is new job creation.
For a bean counter, with a narrow view of the world of finance, it makes perfect sense to tax the daylights out of the rich in order to not only balance the US budget, but to also fund additional federal programs. To liberals and other socialist leaning Americans, most of what is wrong with this country could be cured simply be increasing the taxes on the richest among us. For die-hard conservatives, the idea of taxing the richest Americans is nothing less than biting the hand that fuels the US economy. To conservative leaning Americans, the biggest thing on the cons side of increasing the taxes of the rich - is that by doing so the largest potential job creators in that nation will choose to just write huge checks to the US federal government - instead of putting that same money back into expanding their businesses and creating new jobs.
While I personal lean right politically, I do believe that some kind of middle ground must be found between the conservative view that no taxes should ever be raised on anyone and the liberal view that no limit should be placed on increasing the taxes on rich Americans. There are pros and cons to any US federal government tax increase and for me as long as the President and Congress do not put into place massive government spending cuts, no new taxes for anyone should be put on the table. No one group of Americans - rich, middle class or poor should escape the financial pain that will be necessary to clean up the mess our elected representatives have created on our behalf for decades. While there are pros and cons to increasing taxes on the rich, all Americans must be willing to step up and accept their part of fixing this huge financial problem.
For a bean counter, with a narrow view of the world of finance, it makes perfect sense to tax the daylights out of the rich in order to not only balance the US budget, but to also fund additional federal programs. To liberals and other socialist leaning Americans, most of what is wrong with this country could be cured simply be increasing the taxes on the richest among us. For die-hard conservatives, the idea of taxing the richest Americans is nothing less than biting the hand that fuels the US economy. To conservative leaning Americans, the biggest thing on the cons side of increasing the taxes of the rich - is that by doing so the largest potential job creators in that nation will choose to just write huge checks to the US federal government - instead of putting that same money back into expanding their businesses and creating new jobs.
While I personal lean right politically, I do believe that some kind of middle ground must be found between the conservative view that no taxes should ever be raised on anyone and the liberal view that no limit should be placed on increasing the taxes on rich Americans. There are pros and cons to any US federal government tax increase and for me as long as the President and Congress do not put into place massive government spending cuts, no new taxes for anyone should be put on the table. No one group of Americans - rich, middle class or poor should escape the financial pain that will be necessary to clean up the mess our elected representatives have created on our behalf for decades. While there are pros and cons to increasing taxes on the rich, all Americans must be willing to step up and accept their part of fixing this huge financial problem.
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