This afternoon the new president signed an executive order that will close the detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay naval base on the island of Cuba. Fine; he won the presidency, this is one of the things he promised to do, and he is going to do it. But there are several oddities to consider here. It was the opponents of Gitmo’s existence, not its advocates, who fetishized it and the proceedings therein. Gitmo was a means, not an end; one way of solving a convoluted problem that will not go away just because the facility is shuttered. Gitmo was a method of holding stateless actors—terrorists whose loyalty was not to a given country but to a group or movement–in a condition of statelessness. The purpose of doing so was to ensure that our enemies in the war on terror were not regularized, did not achieve the legal standing of lawful combatants in a sovereign fighting force. That was, as well, the reason they were denied the protections of the Geneva Convention, which, under the terms of the convention as written, they were not entitled to.
Determining how to deal with this unprecedented state of affairs is now the problem of the Obama administration, which will soon find the legal and moral problems raised by the detention of terrorists cannot be wished away with the stroke of an executive-action pen. If they are wished away in this manner without a corresponding seriousness about neutralizing the specific threat from captured terrorists, we will eventually reap the whirlwind and they will be responsible.
“We intend to win this fight,” President Obama said. “We are going to win it on our own terms.” That’s wonderful, as long as he remembers that the other people in the fight have their own terms too, and their terms won’t necessarily include letting us win it on our own terms.
I actually lke this idea but I can’t explain why
Why are you for interfering with the free market? Why distort the tax code to encourage the growth of organizations that crowd out public investment? Why aren’t you taking the fiscally conservative position?
Could it be that you only play a fiscal conservative on TV and you have no real principles?
Next you’ll be telling us you favored the TARP bailout.
You did? Really?
Wow.
20 to 1 that David Saperstein will support it if he is told to.
Obama’s new Robin Hood plan. Take from the poor to give to the poor, to make everyone more dependent on the Messiah.
Obama and Congress are evidently for charity only when they can direct it toward their own circles.
Re: priorities — it says that Obama is doing what he said he should’ve done about tax cuts in the stimulus bill. Recall at his press conference that he said he should’ve originally put fewer tax cuts in the stimulus bill, so he could’ve eventually “given up” more tax cuts to the Rs – in a display of bipartinship – and ultimately gotten where he wanted to be anyhow. I’ll bet this idea is a red herring – it garners way too much attention, distracting folks from the really outrageous parts of the bill. Then when Obama ultimately gives in to his critics on this, he can point to this as another example of his bipartisanship. And when the critics keep harping on other — more destructive — aspects of the bill, he can say “well, I can’t give in on everything.”
sam- who is that?
I can understand why Obama and Biden have no particular understanding of the charitable deduction and how it motivates giving. The record appears to show that neither of these skinflints has ever given anything worth spitting at. (Of course they support charity – so long as it’s someone else’s money.)
Jonas:
Good point. But you forget – from the poor to the poor, passing through a few of the big O’s buddies’ sticky fingers along the way.
Agreed. Liberals does not know anything about charity, they haven’t given a thing. Remember Biden? They don’t pay taxes and they don’t do charity either.
Politicians gives the money in charity if they were caught holding the money given by the likes of Madoff and Stanford. Publicity stunt? Maybe. But nobody knows if they ever did.
As a comunity organizer, Obama was pretty good at living off of and certainly, in the case of educational funds he aws suppoed to administer, wasting charity.
Maybe he has therefore come to the conclusion that charities are a waste of money, and sees no reason to give up tax revenues so that charities can continue to collect and distribute funds.
All munificence will henceforth come from the Great Leader, who knows a ‘profits and earnings’ ratio when he sees one.
#2–Quite right; a flat tax, no deductions. Let the market prevail. Glad to have you on board.
#s 2 & 11,
Yes,Flat tax,no deductions,no IRS,let the market prevail.
And no Inflation,
#12 – here’s hoping that Obama & the Gang get things so impossibly messed up so fast that the country will get monetary religion.
Myna is right. Nick Kristoff penned a column last December in the NYT pointing out liberals give much less to charity than conservatives. “Spread the wealth around?” Yes, but only by government fiat.
“We are generally supportive of health-care reform and working with the administration toward this goal, but I don’t see it as my job to find the money for this,” said William Daroff, UJC’s vice president for public policy and the director of its Washington office, which lobbies for hundreds of millions of dollars annually in federal money for social services.
Holy Logic-Choppers, Batman. They’re not even trying to put a good face on it any more.
“I want what I want when I want it, and I want it paid for with SOMEONE ELSE’S MONEY!”
Trolls loyal to Obama should fund this. Your dear leader is too big to fail.
Um, can’t you guys find a way to tax the Rich without having them, you know, cut back on their contributions to my charity?
Hypocrites & phonies.
The thing to remember is that the rich overwhelming donate money to things for rich people. When someone claims a charitable deduction they are paying their money to the charity instead of paying their taxes. Talk about Faith based giving, we already support massive giving to religious organizations through our tax code. Conservatives constantly try obscure the reality that their is no difference financially between a tax cut and gift from the government. They both equally remove money from the treasury.
I love Mardi Gras, but did you know that you are paying for it. All the krews are non-profit charitable organizations. The rich of New Orleans throw wild parties, and control nearly all aspects of New Orleans through these clubs. They aren’t just or even primarily about wild parties.
I love the theater. But many theater groups are non-profit organizations. Instead of paying their taxes rich people give to the theater. But the tickets are still 40-200 dollars a head, not exactly helping the poor.
The original exemption for non-profit giving was so a rich woman could give away all her money and become a nun without spending the rest of her days in federal prison for tax evasion. But now the deductions have become little more than means for the Rich to party tax free.
Yes, there are alot of phonies out there. Educap is another non-profit under investigation by the IRS.
Mr Hotchkiss, Jr — Bless your heart. You really do think a tax cut is a gift from the government. You have no idea that government generates NOTHING, and its only resources are those generated by the people, for their own purposes. There is no wealth that was not created by an individual human, and no income that is not the earned result of work and initiative by an individual human. Government is an overhead cost of civil life, not its originator or sustainer. Government is like paying your utililty bill; like paying your clerical help, or the security guard, or the people who clean the toilets and take out the trash. These folks all perform a needed function, but what they do doesn’t make the enterprise as a whole succeed. It’s the salesmen, designers, manufacturing workers, engineers, managers, marketers, and senior leaders who make an enterprise generate income and wealth. Government doesn’t perform any of these functions in human life. It is an administrative cost.
The individual, acting in his private capacity, is the rainmaker of wealth and income. Unless he is doing that, government has nothing to tax.
It’s also not true that the wealthy give only to the arts. They give billions each year to charitable organizations. The non-wealthy also give to charitable organizations.
A lot of the folks who run charitable institutions are big Obama and Socialist Party supporters. You know they are feeling very betrayed right now. Enjoy your change, suckers.
They got duped. They think they will be first in line at the foodchain. They didn’t know they have to work on it…hah! Obama eat his own.